Sierralima

I am being stretched, and as I am stretched I am growing. Work is opening up new challenges and opportunities for me, and conversations with some people I have known for a while are getting more deep. I am humbled to be thought ready for these things that are brought upon me.

China’s new large aircraft program is continuing, and some people are coming to Shanghai for some presentations regarding this. I have been asked to support this, but other priorities may make this difficult. I am excited about the possibilities and hope that I can be involved in this. Challenges in dealing with various issues for ARJ21 are also stretching me, causing me to better understand and react to dealings with the customer.

Youth group has brought deeper conversations with a few of the students in the past several weeks. Wisdom and grace are my prayer requests as we work through their issues of growing up. I am grateful and humbled to be a part of their lives, and hope I can stay close enough to God to be a positive influence.

Shanghai is still hot and humid, but that’s no longer much news. Stepping out of heavily air conditioned buildings or vehicles causes glasses to fog, but this is normal life here and things press on. However, we all look forward to October when it will be pleasant to walk outside again. Such is the cycle of life, I guess.

If anyone in Shanghai has been ignorant of the time of year to this point, all doubt was removed as you stepped out the door. The weather in Shanghai is now what people use as an excuse to leave. The temperature today was around 38 degrees (100 F) and characteristically for Shanghai, humid to boot. There seemed to be fewer people walking and riding bikes this afternoon, no doubt sitting out the heat in some shady or air conditioned place. Two more months of this and then it starts getting cooler.

It seems likely I will not go to Beijing next month for the olympics. I am considering attending an event or two that takes place in Shanghai. In some ways I suppose it would be silly not to take this opportunity.

But life in Shanghai continues as normal. Work goes on at its frenzied and chaotic pace, and while many families are travelling during the summer, there are still a few kids around to make youth group a nice comfortable place.

So I just got back from a goodbye dinner for one of the elders. Charlie has been the elder overseeing the youth ministry and will be moving back to the US in a month. This is a common scenario when living in Shanghai. Because the church is international, everyone has a home elsewhere. True, some people were born in China, and have emigrated to another country in the past before returning, but many people here were born elsewhere, and consider that there home. It seems like there are a lot of people leaving this year, but that may just be my imagination. I’m beginning to realize that this may not get better or be any easier the longer I am here. Working with the youth, many graduate every year. The more I know people, the more it will hurt.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So my plan is to update this website regularly on Sundays, and at other times if I feel like it. But it looks like tomorrow will be booked. We have flight test engineers from Cedar Rapids in town to do testing on the rig, and as they want to get as much done in as short a time as possible, they are pretty much working as much as they can. So far this has included evenings and weekends, and they have only been here two days. So tomorrow, Sunday, I will be working in the morning to support them in troubleshooting some of the problems they are having. In the afternoon our church is having a graduate recognition, and I’m supposed to be there to pray over those graduating, along with the other adult helpers. And right now, I’m waiting for a guy to get home so I can call and ask him about another problem we are having. One thing I dislike more than working on a weekend is making other people work on the weekend. (Which is why I’m feeling rather bad for my driver right now. I’ve kept him up past midnight twice this week, and he worked all day today as well.) Fortunately, everyone we are working with has been very helpful and supportive in getting our issues resolved as quickly as possible.

And that support is on top of Cedar Rapids trying to swim out of the flood. See this link for some info. At this time I don’t know anyone who has been affected more than trying to keep water out of their basements. At least, the people I have heard from haven’t been seriously affected, however with the water supply low, everyone in the area is being affected. Please keep them in your prayers.

That’s all for now.

There isn’t really a point to this post, it’s more of a proof of concept. I am currently in the car on the way to SAS for a play. My phone has Internet access so I’m killing time in the car listening to Su and Justina talking in the back.

It’s hard typing on this small keyboard.

So if you knew I had a website previously, you likely stopped looking at it quite some time ago. It hasn’t been updated in a really, really long time. This is due in large part because I am lazy. It is also due to the fact I have been living in China for the past year and a half, and found that my website was blocked. Well, today I switched to a different provider and, so far, I am not blocked. So, now we are back to just laziness.

There is a chance this site will be updated a little more often. But not tonight. It’s late and I need sleep.