Clearly I Have Issues: The We-Wu for August 5-9, 2024

Okay, for a minute there (or five), I thought I was literally going insane. I had the blog title, but I could not figure out how to add the text for the actual blog. The text box was just gone. It took a laughably long time for me to just refresh the page, at which time the box just appeared like there had never been an issue.

Clearly, I have issues. But we knew that already.

First things, I had a lovely time last week on my mini vacation. We did lots of day trips. We went to Shipshewana first. If you’ve never been there, I do highly recommend it. It’s a lovely little town in Amish country. I will say, it has changed quite a bit since the first time I went there probably 25 years ago. It used to be that the flea market was the biggest draw. There would be hundreds of vendors in dozens of lanes in this field with thousands of people buying furniture, plants, antiques, crafts, and tons of other stuff.

Now, however, the flea market is much smaller. There were whole sections just empty of vendors, and a lot of people were selling lots of the same stuff. There was a lot of dropshipped stuff you can buy in bulk on Temu or AliBaba and then mark it up and sell for a profit. There were a few of the old style booths, but the competition with cheap crap has to be annoying.

The big draw now is the local stores, the Amish countryside, the shows, and the auctions. We didn’t do any shows or auctions, but we do enjoy the stores, especially Eash. It was hotter than blazes, though.

My mom and I also did the 127 Yard Sale. (https://127yardsale.com/) This was our second year on the trail. I think we hit about 250 sales throughout the day. They have a lot of places with multiple vendors, and there is definitely a ton of variety. If you’re on Facebook, you may have seen that I could have bought a cannon. It is my dream to own a cannon. And a tank. But I’ll settle for the cannon right now. Alas, it was not meant to be. But I did find some fun stuff.

There was other stuff, but we should get to this week and talk about work. I had a headache all week, which may have been the result of all the sun and heat from last week and this week just piling up. But it was definitely unpleasant.

It always takes me a while to catch up with things after a vacation. I’m not great at ignoring emails while I’m gone, but I made a concerted effort this time to just let myself be unplugged. It was a great idea, but it also means more things for me to read and watch when I get back. But it was also a good opportunity to update the graphic for T&M status.

We do have a couple of new languages on there, but I do have to admit that most of the languages listed are moving rather slowly. Most had great momentum at first, but the translators never believe us when we tell them just how big this project actually is. 67 booklets and an app is hundreds of thousands of words, and they all have to be in the correct religious context. That adds to the complexity quite a bit.

But, we’re getting close on some of them, and we always find something to do. For example, I finished my art swaps for European templates, and now I’m putting the finishing touches on them. Plus, you really can’t discount all of the projects we’ve already finished.

I am extremely proud of my team. We know that God is using these booklets to do mighty things around the world. And I can’t help but notice that a lot of these projects were completed before contact with the countries where they are used was severely limited. It’s almost like God knew Train & Multiply would need to be completed and easily distributable. Go figure.

Is anyone watching the Olympics? I waver every year, and then I cave and learn all of these idiosyncratic rules about sports I never knew existed five minutes ago. I typically keep it up in the background while I’m working, and I end up yelling at France for screwing up in handball or telling some diver that her entry wasn’t vertical enough. I am the quintessential office chair judge. I will miss it when it’s done, but I don’t think I’ve adopted any sports as a hyper fixation this time. We do not need another curling.

I think that will do it for us this week. Stay cool, and if you find a cannon, give me a call.

Bye!