August 15 – 19 found us at the Global Partners Orientation for newly appointed missionaries, held in the Indianapolis area. This was the official start of our missionary experience!
Here, among other great and useful bits of information, major and minor, we developed a team building presentation for sharing our story and what we would be doing in Haiti: teaching English to adults who qualify (Marty) and computer skills to those who reach proficiency in English (Larry).
First delivery of our talk was before the other novice missionaries and those training us, followed by feedback, constructive criticism, etc. Very helpful.
Second presentation, a couple of days later, before the whole Global Partners staff – kind of a test to see how we had fine tuned, etc. It was then, when Larry and I walked up to podium, we saw that someone had shut the laptop.
The computer guy realized his computer had failed! Died! Kaputz!
Turns out, the computer guy handled this kind of crisis with good humor and set everyone at ease. And, our listeners were quite gracious even though there was good-natured ribbing, back and forth!
But, can you imagine how VERY L O N G it seemed to take for a computer to get itself organized so that two novice missionaries could get on with it!?
All’s well that ends well. And it was a good object lesson to the old adage – always have a back-up plan!!!
In fact, it will probably be a great example to be shared with the novice missionaries preparing presentations for a long time to come … of what NOT to do!!!
(We'll have our hard copy before our next presentation!!)
Ah, yes . . . the back-up plan! If anyone can handle a malfunction, Marty, I believe it would be you; and you would do it with such grace.
ReplyDeleteYou and Larry are in our prayers. I'm so excited for you.