Baby Christians

By Molly


I get to do some really neat projects at TECH!  I showed you a handful a couple of posts earlier.  Now I have to show you one I did this week.

Pastor Metz, of Kilgore Bible Church, asked me to take care of a slide for his sermon about immature, or baby, Christians.  (He has an awesome sense of humor yet tremendously convicting messages.)  He liked the picture so much he is having me print it on their bulletins!

Here it is!

And the bulletin:

 

Honestly, I think this may have been the highlight of my workweek!  What a fun project!

Larry

Larry is an amazing artist.  He has been with Missionary TECH Team for over 30 years in the graphics department.  He began by doing hand-drawn illustrations and photographs, then silk screening, and he ended up learning the Adobe software and TEACHING it at Kilgore College, here in East Texas.

He has a great sense of humor!  Sometimes he can just make people laugh by making the right expression.  He's lighthearted, but has such a deep passion for the Lord.

When we joined the Team, Larry was just starting to struggle with his memory.  He was having a hard time remembering how to do particular commands in the design software.  He was having a hard time communicating with sister missions.  My manager in graphics asked me to help him as I could, so he had me begin interacting with Larry's clients for him.

It was a few weeks ago that Larry stopped coming into work.  He (with the help of his wife) has decided that it is time to retire.  His computer seemed to have stopped working in the office, and none of the programs were comprehensible.  He was discouraged and unhappy.

This Saturday is his retirement party.  I'm organizing a memory book for him from all of us at TECH... each person is going to write a memory of Larry that they have, and hopefully there will be accompanying pictures.


Larry came over to Stone House last night.  He comes over frequently for movie nights, and he teases me all the time about how next time we'll watch "Dumb and Dumber," because I think that movie is dumber than dumb.  I don't know if he knows he's teasing, or if he somehow thought I would really wanna see it... he kept bringing it up.  Then he started bringing it over and making us all laugh (he'd bring other movies, too).

Last night he really wanted to see "Dumb and Dumber." It was pretty bad, and it was 8:00 when the movie ended.  Since it was so early, I invited Larry to stay and play a game with us.  I like games.  Larry had never played Uno, so Joel, Matt and I taught him.  We played four games.  Larry won 3.  He won 3.


We had a great time with a movie, snacks, games, pop and popcorn.  Here are a couple of pictures:

R-L:  Secretive Joel, Smiling Larry and Busy Matt 

     

(Matt is acting really tough...)

    

Joel with his new hat, Larry taking a second look at his cards, and Matt reaching for the cheese HE put on the other side of the table, so he wouldn't eat it.

 

 Larry, Matt and Joel's cards.

As you think of it, please pray for Larry and his family through this transition in his life.  There are many changes and adaptations ahead.  Also, please pray that we would be able to be a help and friend to them.

Please Pray

Here are some prayer requests for our prayer partners!

Please pray for...


Matt:
- the accomplishment of assembling his IDP.  He needs to put together a compilation of all of his internship hours (the IDP).  This involves spreadsheets and time... Not the most fun thing to do, but in order to take his licensing tests he must have this completed.
- continued growth as a leader.


Molly:
- focus in the office.
- continued musical development.
- consistency in the Word.

Matt & Molly together:
- our friendships with neighbors, people in Bible study/on praise team, TECH Teammates, etc.
- abiding exactly where Christ has us; to show gratefulness to Him.
- listening to where God might be leading in the future, whether it is here or elsewhere.
- continued growth as disciples.



We would like to also be praying for you; please send us your prayer requests at ackermanteam@gmail.com.  We will be checking that e-mail more frequently now!


THANK YOU for praying!

Facilities Planning Update

(From Matt)

This past week I was able to work with Bob Schill, the senior architect at MTT who lives out of state, and we were able to make some progress on the Jubilee Campus planning in Shiashie, Ghana.  On this campus I am working on developing the plans for the church, which will seat over 1,000 attendees.  This is the same church I've mentioned in an earlier newsletter, I believe.   Plans for a campus of this extensiveness can take some time!  Here are some drawings of the church/campus development thus far.  These are sketches done by Bob, and the floor plan I developed on AutoCAD.

 

Bob focuses more on overseas projects at Missionary TECH Team, and architect Ken Selden focuses more on stateside church planning.  He is also permanently located out-of-state (working from home), but he has been in town since January.  He had me do a rendering of Lighthouse Baptist church in Kansas.  This is how the rendering turned out:

 

Bob recently brought me another project to work on.  It's a medical clinic in Burundi, a small country in Eastern Africa.  (For more info. about Burundi, see https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/by.html.)  The clinic needs a maternity ward and additional space, so Bob is currently doing the master planning, and I am helping with document compilation and AutoCAD drawings.

Molly and I are planning to tell you soon about our quick visit to Elgin, Illinois, where we did some TECH recruiting.  We are encouraged by the interest the students at Judson University (www.judsonu.edu) showed.

All of that to come!

Graphics Update

(From Molly)

As you probably know, I am a graphic artist in the Graphic Services department.  I am loving it!!!  I have designed, or assisted in the production of, a handful of projects , including (but not limited to---- I think that tag goes on there) the following:

 

(Panels for MTT's Computer Services department  

http://www.missionarytechteam.org/cs_info.php)

(Front and back labels for Hope Coffee 

www.Treesofhopefund.org)

 

(Adobe Software users needed for MTT's Graphics Services

http://www.missionarytechteam.org/gs_info.php)

(Cover/layout design for initial version of the TECH Intercessor; 

a newsletter sent out from MTT every two months)

(Kids Alive display layout planning and photo editing

http://www.kidsalive.org)

I'm quite enthusiastic about being able to hone in on artwork as one of my forms of worship.  Artwork has always had to be one of those things I would get to do if I had most everything else completed.  With it being my top priority now, I've enjoyed growing accustomed to making it my most frequent offering.  Unfortunately I've finished some weeks, realizing that the entire week I've wasted as I had treated the workday as "just another workday."  No matter where God has called me... to teach, to design displays, to clean bathrooms... aren't I supposed to use my time to worship the Lord?  I fall short of that more than I'd like to admit.  I'm excitedly anticipating more weeks to let God take my creativity as an offering and use my time to worship Him, as I continue to discipline myself to do just that!