Tech Team 2011

A nice thing about having almost your whole mission body on one continent is that we can all get together on a regular basis.  So right now I’m in Poland (Krista & Alex are arriving soon) working with a group of techies who are giving up their vacations & paying for the privilege to work on missionary laptops.  So while the missionaries (including myself) are in the meetings, these guys (no ladies this year) will be working diligently on fixing computers so that the missionaries can work more on helping people know God and less on struggling with computer issues.

This is my fourth year working with this group (some of them change every year but they all come from the Mark5Ministries) and it’s a blast to be with the geekest geeks.  Just as a little bit of how geeky they are – they started pulling out all the electronics they had in their pockets (and only in their pockets – not what was in their backpacks or luggage).  That’s what in the picture to the right.  There’s only 5 guys and they still had all of that in their pockets.

Wondering what kind of issues they encounter?  Below are two issues they had last year – one is where a screw was coming up through the motherboard and case shorting the motherboard (no one knows how that happened) and the other is a seriously messed up screen.

Things I love about Germany

Krista has started putting observations about Germany that she has been having as we’ve returned to our small village after being in America for a year on Facebook.  Here’s the beginning of her list:

#1 - The stoplight turns yellow right before it turns green, so you can rev your engine

#2 - mustard comes in toothpaste tubes!

#3 - Temperature right now 53 degrees. High tomorrow 67, high Sunday 66, high Monday 69, high Tuesday 69… ok so it’s a bit rainy right now, but I’d take rain over 108 any day

#4 - Bells, Bells, Bells… Every hour, 4 chimes and then the hour rings out, every quarter hour- one chime, every half hour- two chimes, every three quarters of an hour – 3 chimes. Believe me you hear every chime on jet lag. I like it! It makes my heart happy

#5 - No need for an alarm clock. Every morning at 7 the bells ring continuously for about 5 minutes …. wake up time. At 11 am the bells ring for 5 minutes to call the men out of the fields and tell the women to put the bread in the oven. At 4 pm the bells ring for 5 minutes to call the men out of the fields… work day is coming to an end.

#6 - Military time… this one takes a little getting used to.

#7 - We live in the little town of Kandern… whose claim to fame is that it was the birthplace of John Sutter, who started the California Gold Rush in 1848. This is his birthplace.

#8 - At church on Sunday they read off the names of everyone who had a birthday that past week. Kinda like facebook

#9 - Gooda Gouda…. Cheddar is hard to find here, but Gouda is cheap and tastes great. So we basically use it in place of Cheddar for everything… There is Jung (young) and mittlealt (middle-aged) versions. The young is very creamy, the middle-aged is more like sharp cheddar.