At My Desk

Sporting the John Deere cap gifted by a friend, enjoying my bouncy office chair, and feeling a little pregant!  3 days til due date (and probably a week or two of waiting after that). :)

Life in a Techie House

Life in a techie house: arriving home and finding your husband sitting on the floor loading Linux onto a 1U rackmount server. Too bad this picture doesn't show the server very well. It's propped up against the bookshelf beside Greg. Gotta love it when your living room echoes with the sounds of a plane trying to take off. Them servers are noisy!

Stop and take time

I talked to my brother-in-law briefly this evening. He was hoping my day had been less busy than the previous two posts. Comparatively, the emails were fewer. I think I only handled about 54 today. But then again, I was only at my desk for about 3 hours in between troubleshooting and working on a special project.

System Admin was back in the office today, but leaves for 10 days starting tomorrow. Domain Admin starts back in the office tomorrow (yay!) but then Network Admin leaves for a week on Sunday. I'm thinking I'll ban any more vacation days for anyone!

With Blackberry setup questions and new cell phone setups taking place and needing clarified this evening, I stopped by my laptop to send out an email or two.

But now - now I get to set aside my rushed day and sit and learn from the Lord. All the intern girls and IDT are getting together and Rach - one of my best friends here - is sharing with us this evening what the Lord has done in her life! I'm so thankful and so blessed!

210 emails?

I felt busy today. I checked my email count at the end of the day and realized I had handled (read, sorted, replied to, touched) around 210 helpdesk emails during the day. With an 8 hour day, that only averages out to 26 or so per hour. That's not a crazy-high amount for helpdesk, but it still classifies as "busy" to me! I made or received about 34 phone calls - probably all but four or five of them were helpdesk related. Between a printer acting up and volunteer logins getting set up and not-so nice database errors, we kept busy!

Someone called with an error that was showing up when they were accessing our main donor database. "MySQL error: Server shutdown in progress" YIKES!

With my Domain Admin on vacation and my Systems Admin out sick the last two days, I'm really looking forward to everyone being back in! Unfortunately, that won't happen for another two weeks...

I was thankful today for the gift of faith - "faith not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." The Lord blessed me with the desire to believe for a specific thing to happen. And even when I couldn't see it happening, the belief and faith was still there. It's amazing how much of a difference faith can make in your outlook.

I believe, God. I believe that you will be glorified in this situation.

"What if [specific thing] looks like it miserably fails? Will you still believe that I will be glorified?"

Yes, God. Even if it looks to me like it a failure, I believe that you will still glorify yourself through this.

Thankful Friday

Well, thanks to Jaime for passing on the reminder to be thankful! I'm quite tempted to turn my list of thanksgiving into a complaining list: my Thur/Fri heldpesk staff got transferred to the Canadian office (doesn't that sound official, Jess?), I almost got hit by a car while biking home from work today, and my desktop admin is on vacation Mon/Tues.

But...I'll look at things from the thankful side!

• Praise God that I've had Jess to help me with helpdesk for the last six months and praise God for the last 5 years of her work on purchse orders!
• Praise God that Lena is trained to take over her work and I don't have to make time to do it!
• Praise God that my coworkers get time off to be with their families!
• Praise God that we have beautiful weather the last two weeks for biking and mowing the lawn!

and not last and not least...

• Praise God for Oreos and milk!
  

Death and Life

The death toll in China is now almost 9,000 killed in the earthquake. While the Myanmar government reports the counts for the cyclone as 28,458 dead and 33,416 missing, outside group estimates for deaths range from 63,290 to 101,682. Outside groups also list 220,000 people as reported missing.

I was listening to an online sermon from Pastor Damian Kyle a couple weeks ago when he referenced Matthew 24:1-8. This is one of the "end time" sections where Jesus talks about his return and about nation rising against nation and earthquakes and famine and says, "these are the beginnings of birth pangs."

My teenage years were fairly immersed in prophecy and "end times," but what Pastor Damian said caught my attention. Birth pangs start slowly, he reminded us, and then gradually get closer and closer together and slowly get stronger and stronger.

With the many events of this past week--Myanmar's cyclone, China's earthquake, Hezbollah taking control over part of Lebanon, the US tornado season the deadliest in a decade--somehow it resembles perhaps another set of birth pangs.

In "regular daily" life here in Texas, we had another summer intern start today and I did her computer login and training. Five staff are changing offices tomorrow. I'm trying to coordinate their timing and moves. And we have staff visiting from www.donor.com to help with planning some website changes. I've been busy taking care of coffee and snacks for them. It helps them think, you know! And I read another chapter from Tales of the Resistance to a staff family this evening. It's been two years since we started the series...we're going kind of slow.

Tonight's chapter was "The Most Beautiful Player of All." My favorite. ...for when one has found one's real love, it is easy to leave what has only been pretend.

Starting the year - Bible Study

The internship year has started full force. Last week was busy with supper at someone else's home every evening. MTW was orientation activities. IT training was Wednesday and then Outlook and Excel training was today. It's been a busy week or two. And I'm still fighting off this cold thing. I get better and then I don't.

Caz has been delayed (I'm not sure when she's coming), but Jessie and Cassie and I are enjoying our time together. You can pray that Caz gets here soon. PLEASE pray that Caz gets here soon. Some things are kind of "on hold" until she arrives and I would really like to start the year well.

We're getting ready to volunteer on Saturday at Mission Arlington and we're excited about that. Well, at least I am. I think the girls will like it once they get into it.

Things are busy at the office. One of my co-workers in the IT department will be starting the GFA Spanish department -- translating Revolution in World Missions and other materials into Spanish so the Spanish churches and believers can partner with us. It just means there are fewer people to do the work in our department in the short-term.

Enough with this really long post. I'm off to bed.

Getting ready and sonnets

Tonight...I am tired. The kind of tired where I could change into my long flannel dress and cuddle up with my grandmother's quilt in my Lazy Boy recliner and just write. Write stories and feelings and emotions and sagas. Write of the peace in my house and the excitement in my soul. Write of the countdown for Jes and Cas and Caz to arrive for the year. Write of anxiousness of my heart and the faithfulness of God's promises. How much God loves us! There is nothing we do that takes him by surprise and nothing we can do to turn him away from us.

Tonight, I feel my failures acutely. I feel like I'm still in the middle of them and can never get out from underneath them. But I also am captured by the Lord's unending love for me. He knows. He knows my deepest yearnings and my greatest joys and my worst failures and He loves me.

Honestly? I am in my long flannel dress with my grandmother's quilt in my Lazy Boy recliner. But it's not a night for sagas and GPR submissions. It's a night for me to Skype our Australia office about intranet changes and work on my newsletter. And get the kleenex box. Achoo!

You know the depths of my heart and You love me the same.
You are amazing God.

Quiet Day

It was a quieter day in the office - I was actually working on getting past projects completed. My teenage helper and I actually worked on a couple tasks that had not been touched since May! Prayer: I have a meeting tomorrow to train some staff on software that I'm not sure I understand. Pray for wisdom and vision for me and clear communication.

Field - Several of our students in India were beaten this weekend. You can read their story and pray for them here.

Home - continue to pray for God's strength and direction to finish the year well. We've had quite a few situations this year that make us ask, "Why, God? Why is this happening?" Pray that we'll continue to have perseverance and His joy and peace in the midst of it.

Randomness - I came across a computer file today labeled "blog ideas." Many of them are quotes from various teaching times. I'll try to share a few over the next few blogs.

Today's quote from Brother K.P.: When you don't feel like praying, pray anyway. That's when you pray by faith.

Praise and Busy Day

Praise God - this news report indicates the release of the kidnapped German aid worker I mentioned in Saturday's post. The news report also indicates that two Germans were kidnapped (one of which was killed) by the Taliban about the same time the Korean team was kidnapped. I haven't seen any news on them.

In the GFA office - it was a full first day for our 10 new Road to Reality interns as they started in on orientation sessions. It was a busy day for the rest of us too. A morning staff meeting, a busy volunteer, a crashing database server, a contrary screen cover, switches that needed powercycled, phones to be logged in, printers that malfunctioned. But we survived. And got a lot done.

Back from ICCM

I'm back in Texas after a wonderful (and exhausting) four days at ICCM. It was a time of fun and excitement, of prayer and worship, of learning and sharing, of challenge and encouragement, of laughter and tears. It was a time to glorify God.

Today's free software link: http://www.opensong.org/ This is an amazing application that guitar enthusiasts might find helpful. Among other things, you can enter song lyrics and chords (no more messy notebook) and it will even transpose the chords for you if you need to play in a different key! Chords, songsheets, projection... it does it all!

Prayer requests:

• Pray for NM and his wife. After spending many years on the mission field in Africa, they are back in North America awaiting a kidney transplant for his wife. Pray for God to continue to provide for their needs and encourage them during this time.
• Pray for me to continue to track down and write down all the things I learned during ICCM.
• Pray for me to keep my attention focused back on my office and get caught up (and ahead) on projects and tasks.
• Pray for emotional stability and the Lord's joy for me!

Jesus, hope of the nations
Jesus, comfort for all who mourn
You are the source of heaven’s hope on earth...
(C)2002 Brian Doerksen

Thanks for praying

We had a quiet weekend -- one of my girls headed to CA to visit family and friends and the rest of us enjoyed some downtime. The lawn was supposed to get mowed. I spent most of the time pulling up weeds instead -- prickly weeds that I don't really want to cut up into pieces and scatter all over the lawn for fear of multiplication. I know, the plant probably doesn't work that way, but I'm not taking the chance. This plant would if it could. Personal vendetta and all that...

Part of my work this morning was busy getting new GFA volunteers logged into our network and helping them understand security and our computer system. New staff/volunteer login is part of my regular responsibilities and I look forward to it -- it allows me to meet all the new people personally.

I know someone out there is praying for me -- today started and ended as a God-Where-Are-You day, but inbetween there was peace. And even in the midst of the ending, there was the reminder that I can't stand on feelings. I need to be girded with truth, defended by righteousness and faith, and having done all -- to stand.

It's one thing to use your defensive armor. What does it look like to advance with the Word? (Eph 6:17)