Hiding and Being Seen: The We-Wu for June 16-27, 2025

It’s People Week! And like I said, I did my best to avoid it. I mean stay out of the way.

Honestly, it’s not that bad. A little overwhelming for an introvert, but I don’t actually interact with a lot of people in my daily tasks. I’m support staff, so I’m here when you need me, but otherwise, I just keep trucking so you have what you need before you need it.

Anyway. Back to me hiding. I actually got a fair amount done this week. I started working on updating our process manuals so that we can ‘build capacity’ (they love that term around here) for the future. It’s been a while since we hired someone new, and we’ve changed a few things since I had to train someone. So that’s a huge work in progress.

And I finally finished the Hausa Camel! Mostly. I finished the proof file. There are some corrections that need to be made, but that’s for the translators. I ended up with 114 pages, which is truly ridiculous. But it’s a huge weight off my shoulders.

(At this point, I got called away and never did get back to my computer. So this has turned into a double We-Wu. I know I deprived you last week. I apologize. I’ll try to be appropriate verbose this week.)

The main thing I’m focusing on right now is updating procedure documents and updating the VCP English documents. We are at the end of the first cycle of VCP training (four years, eight terms), and more than 600 students will be graduating. And then we’re going to turn right back around and start the process over again, so we need to incorporate what we’ve learned into the earlier terms, when we were kinda building the plane as we flew it. I need to make sure all of that gets into the correct places. And document it all as we do it.

This week was a mix of that and working on my next prayer letter and meetings and the dreaded child safety training. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to do the training. But it’s very focused on sexual exploitation of minors, and that’s not a thing I enjoy learning about. I have very little compassion for someone who hurts a child. I’m of the ‘feet first into a wood chipper’ mindset. Not very Christlike of me. I am very aware of that.

Fortunately, I haven’t been confronted with that option firsthand, and I sincerely pray I never will be. This world is a terrifying place.

So, with this being Board Week, we actually had two extra chapels. And we had 2.5 really great speakers! I say 2.5 because the same person spoke for 1.5 of them. I thought it was valuable theological discussion.

There were two things that stuck with me from these chapels. The first was this:

It’s not done because we’re not doing it.

There’s a lot of emphasis on doing missions or church in a culturally-appropriate or generationally-relevant way. But that’s not what we were called to do. Our calling is to follow Christ. Was some of what he did counter to the culture of the day? Yes. But not all of it was. A lot of what Jesus did emphasized the culture. The things that aligned with Christ’s nature were encouraged. And I think that’s what we should pursue today. If it happens to be counter-cultural, fine. If it happens to be currently relevant or in vogue, great. But neither of these things should be what we’re pursuing. If we’re not doing something that Christ called us to do because it just isn’t ‘done’ in this culture, then we are sinning.

The second thing should perhaps go without saying, but our success is not defined by the world. It’s not even defined by us. We are successful as Christians when we pursue God’s will wholeheartedly. The safest place we can be is in the center of God’s will. It really doesn’t matter how people in this life think of us or what status we hold. All that matters is how God sees us.

Just a little encouragement and rumination for the week. It’s been a while since we did a deep dive. Maybe I’ll bring those back.

Next week is a holiday, so I’ll be outside, enjoying the sunshine and pretty explosives. I’ll definitely take the opportunity to work on some small stuff.

Bye!