They say that if you want your brain to stay young, you need to keep challenging it. At this rate, mine is either going to get into great shape or overheat from the strain.
Somehow, I’ve gotten into a situation where I’m learning three different kinds of website platforms at once, and in the middle of it all, we’re navigating the unfamiliar waters of an office suite upgrade.
WordPress
It started with our new Ethnos360 Spanish website. I was very happy when our home office told me that a bright young guy named Stephen N. was going to be designing it for us on WordPress. He’s been a tremendous blessing — very skilled and pleasant to work with — but I’m not sure he realized what he was in for when he took it on.
So he’s been getting me more and more involved. I have experience writing translated content for WordPress, but he keeps coaxing me into deeper waters and saying, “Here, you can handle this.” Right!
MS Office365 Sharepoint
I think I mentioned in our last letter that our online resource library of Spanish materials needs to be moved to the Global Partners Sharepoint site. That’s been another challenging exercise for me, but so far it hasn’t been overwhelming.
Stepping up to Office365
You’re probably a bolder soul than I, but I must confess that “upgrade” is not always a word that brings joy to my heart. The truth is that I still think of my MS Office 201o suite of tools as being fairly new, but let’s face it… we’re only a couple of months away from 2018 already!
So… yesterday I took the plunge — I uninstalled 2010 and climbed on to the Office365 train. It’s going to be a good investment of time and effort, I know, especially since I’m already working with Sharepoint, a component of that set of programs.
But, to judge by past experience, I expect I’m in for some major frustration. Perhaps you can relate. It’s still MS Office, and I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable user — we format entire books with Word — but although 365 is pretty, so far it’s looking like only about 81% familiar territory. It’s going to take a bit of exploring and poking around with my white cane to find my way around the other 19%.
I’ll probably end up firing off some anxious emails to our support people and occasionally let a complaint or two slip out of my mouth before I get comfortable again. But you know how it is… a month or two from now I won’t even remember how things worked in the old office suite.
So… we adapt and stay with the herd, don’t we? Because we must. Those who don’t, get picked off by the lions.
SquareSpace
To top it off, Matt, the worship director at Hill Country Bible Church we are involved in here in Leander, approached me a few weeks ago about helping with the new church website. The new Spanish congregation they started in September needs someone to help build and maintain the Spanish side of the website (and do some things on the English side, too).
Naturally, they chose a web program that was new to me. I’ve never worked with SquareSpace before… but I’m starting to find my way around.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no web programmer. You don’t have to know HTML to use these web platforms, they’re like building with TinkerToys or Legos, arranging prefabbed design pieces and joining them together — but each one has its own idiosyncrasies to figure out.
Family note – Eida’s dad
This last weekend, we had the opportunity to go visit Eida’s 96-year-old dad in Laredo. It’s a four- or five-hour drive each way from Leander, so we got an early start and were able to get there by 1 PM. We visited with him for about three hours, then arrived back home before 9 PM.
He’s in a much nicer nursing home now, and we found him doing noticeably better in mind and body than he had been the last time we visited, which we were glad to see. He was remembering Yucatán more clearly than his years in Southern California, so he shared some interesting stories about his childhood and we sang some old Spanish choruses together.
Your friendship and encouraging partnership mean a great deal to us. May God bless you and supply all your needs according to His riches in glory.
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