Connecting

This month has been FULL of communicating with people all over the continent about all sorts of different projects. We might be sitting in a 9'x9' office in the highlands of Mexico but just today we've been in touch with Argentina, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico City, Guatemala, Costa Rica, New Jersey, Tennessee and Colorado Springs. God is on the move around here and it is all we can do to try to keep up with him! I'm sure we'll end up writing more about this topic next month after we return from Argentina where we have 3 weeks of connecting type meetings.

In-Country Furlough

This actually should have gone on our July highlights but it slipped my mind so here it is…

Scott & Minnemie Murphy have been personal supporters and advocates for us at 1st Presbyterian Church in Florence, SC for years. They came to visit for a long weekend in early July and we had a great time showing them our life down here. Shortly after they got home Minnemie sent us the following note:

As Scott and I reflected on our visit with you guys, we felt strongly that is was more than just a vacation with 2 friends we highly respect and deeply love and enjoy. We feel like we were in a way sent as representatives of our congregation - even though we were not commissioned by them. Still we felt sent. Maybe not so much sent to you as sent back to 1st Pres to tell about God's work through you in Latin America and locally in Toluca.

So we are writing a short "report"... or rather a letter of appreciation to the missions committee for the role our church is playing in supporting and encouraging your ministry.

Since Tim's father recently retired as pastor of that church, we are grateful to have such enthusiastic advocates at the church.

Progress on the BIG project


• Animated Classes
  We finished another animated class. This one was the introduction, the demonstration class that will be available free online, so we still have 6 left to finish the 20 that make up the course.

  The way in which we present the course content has evolved significantly over the last 9 months so this introduction is something we couldn't have created a year ago. I think the "process of pastoring youth" presented in this introduction will be very helpful, even to people who don't end up taking the full course.
  
  
• Textbook
  At the meetings in Peru the steering committee decided that we would no longer offer the manual as a hardcover book at the RAICES conferences...instead, it will be offered digitally on CD's. If people choose to print off all or part of it that is up to them. We had been working with a graphic designer on this but it was a cumbersome process -- the communication via Internet, the foreign language of the document and the digital paradigm were more than the American retiree designer could keep up with.
                           

  We were at a standstill on this part of the project until we made contact with Cameron Crawford. He has really connected with the project and is bringing a lot more to the work than just a background in graphic design. He is well-versed in how to fuse both digital content as well as print material. We are excited.
  
  
• Extension course
  We've been making progress towards getting the tutorial system up and running. The first students turn in their first homework assignment the end of this month, so we can be working out the bugs before we open up the course to the general public online.