Research, training, airtime

Mama and I had a modicum of success with our research last night. I elected to do the research at work because it is more comfortable in many ways. We keep the room warmer than at the church; almost too warm.  I have two screens/monitors on my desktop for doing multiple parts of the research. I know how to work in Excel and Word more proficiently than in Numbers and Pages (Apple products). That was one of the challenges when we used my Mac Book at church. On my work computer, we were able to cover a lot of ground and see some good results from the searches we accomplished. With Numbers I was not able to figure out how to sort the spreadsheet to maximize our time by eliminating all the information we did not necessarily want to sift through. It was actually a fun evening. Like I stated earlier in this venture, Mama is very good at this. Last week I asked permission to come to the office after hours to do the research and that permission was happily granted. That makes using the set up I have at work even more comfortable.

Yesterday we were offered several dates for our One-on-one training. None of the original offerings appealed to me and Mama because they put us too far out in March – coordinating with my required travel, the kids visiting, Chase and Makaila’s baby being born, etc., etc., etc. I settled for one and replied to the request letting the admin scheduling the two-day sessions that we were anxious to get going. Our initial choice would have used four days of vacation – not what I had hoped for. We got a reply shortly after my response that let me know that the closest date, the one we had selected, was already taken. However, there had been a cancelation and an even closer date was open if we wanted it. The only caveat was that it was a Sunday and Monday. Mama and I thought on it, prayed on it and decided to take it. That said, we will fly to San Diego on Saturday, February 24^th and do our training the next two days. I have not received word when we are booked to come back to DFW but I requested the “red-eye” Monday evening, if available.

We also got a call from the company we are being trained by that we need to start our mentored training. That is a separate deal. We will get with a coach on a weekly basis for several weeks to be mentored on the investments we are discovering through our research. The only challenge there is that they want a guaranteed timeslot week upon week. Such a thing does not exist in our lives, so Mama and I are wrestling with how to pull that off. We have done so for FBI classes, but we were always able to rearrange those classes based on church activities and special conferences. We will need to have good internet access for each of those meetings, which also adds a level of difficulty to making the schedule work with Revival and Mission’s Conference coming over the next several weeks. Oh, well. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

So, our schedule is starting to get busy. Saturday, we have a Chinese New Year Dinner with our Chinese family. They already warned Mama that there may not be a lot of items that she would like. I am off Monday for President’s Day. That is a blessing. Tuesday is filled with several long meetings. Wednesday, I fly to Michigan to present a class. I will fly home Friday afternoon. Mama and I will fly out to San Diego some time Saturday and fly back some time Monday – hopefully. On top of all that we have Revival starting this Sunday, running through Wednesday. Of course, I will miss the Wednesday night service. I may have a twenty-four-hour break between flights - coming home from Michigan and flying out to San Diego.

Busy is good.