Transformation Team

6 February 2012

Our Team (I finally took a picture)

We’re a part of many different teams. One of these is called a "T2" or Transformation Team. It’s made up of missionaries with our same organization in the area (in our case Mexico City and Puebla).

We don’t all work directly together (although some of us do), but we come together to encourage, pray for, and support one another. We’re from 4 different countries, but we all love the Lord and Mexico – and we’re all citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3:20-21).

And today I finally got a picture! All right, I remembered at the last minute when everyone was rushing out the door – but we did get a picture! Here it is…

18 January 2012

Mexican Survivor (T2 edition)

Jim Missions, Video Blogs 2

Sadly, two people on our team of CAM missionaries are leaving to go to another team. Rollie and Jo Ann Smith are joining another team (for various reasons – none of them bad!). (Well, bad for us – because we’ll miss them!)

This gave us a golden opportunity. At our last team meeting, the other team members snuck out and made a video for them. After all, even missionaries can have fun. Sometimes.

As you’ll see, the video was really made for them, so some explanations are required before you watch. First, a "T2" is a Transformation Team (two ts, get it?) – that’s what our mission teams are called. All CAM missionaries are on a T2.

Secondly, some poetic license was being taken (ok, a LOT of poetic license!) – the Smiths aren’t really being sent to Pachuca (a place in central Mexico), but they’re joining the Pachuca team – so called because most of the missionaries have been from around Pachuca (actually, that’s not even the official team name).

Lastly, and most obviously, they changed teams because of mutual discussion and agreement, not … well, not for the reasons you’ll see here.

So even if you’re not an "insider", you might enjoy this video. A good reminder that we have some cool missionary friends. Or some weird missionary friends. Or both.

(By the way, as we told the Smiths – be sure to watch the whole thing – it’s just over 10 minutes)

12 January 2012

The Lime

Jim Mexico 1

I’m devastated. Every time we have a team meeting, I tell myself I’ll take a picture of everyone. Today I actually wrote it into the agenda (team leaders can do that kind of thing). But STILL I forgot to do it! 😥

Well, we had a good time with our team anyway – even though the event wasn’t immortalized digitally.

So, alas, you get a picture of something not nearly as exciting.

We have a spindly lime tree, in a pot. After about 2 years, it’s actually producing a lime. One. Hope it doesn’t pull the tree down. 😉

Why this picture? I’m trying to take a picture every day for 30 days. We’ll see if I do. 😉

27 November 2011

Travelling Mexico – and HOME at last…

Jim Family, Mexico, Prayer and Praise 1

I guess I haven’t really written much about our trip home – since we got home. So – here goes.

Last I wrote we had arrived in Mexico. Well, the trip down through Mexico took several days, but was fairly uneventful. Ok, Shari did get her hand shut in the van door, but she recovered quickly. And there was that incident with the jellyfish and I, but I’m fine now. Other than that it was fairly uneventful.

And we didn’t even get stopped by the police until we were on our way to conference. I felt like saying, "What took you so long?!"

So we arrived home a week ago today, and had a whole day at home before leaving the state. We got the van cleaned and verified (so we could drive it when we wanted in the city), unloaded the trailer, and did some other quick errands before packing up for our CAM team retreat and then the CAM Mexico conference.

We had a good time with our team, then were able to see missionaries from all over Mexico at the conference. I always get rather sick at conference – I think it’s because I don’t have time to adjust to the altitude change. So it’s always a bittersweet experience, but it’s great to see everyone. 🙂

The conference always falls on American Thanksgiving, so there’s an arrangement with the hotel that we have a Thanksgivingish dinner one day. Inexplicably, this Mexican-style decoration showed up (thanks to the hotel staff) that didn’t fit this rather patriotic American holiday at all…

American or Canadian Thanksgiving

Yes, that’s the 11-point Canadian maple leaf. So I’m not sure what we were celebrating, but the food was good. 🙂 And it was a nice blend of cultures to remind us of where we had been and where we were!

So we returned home Saturday night and crashed.

Today we were excited to go to Jesús María to worship with our church! I can’t possibly express how wonderful it is to be back! We had a great time seeing friends again, and were even able to go to a birthday party (Melanie’s – Happy Birthday!) and watch a piñata get smashed. If we doubted whether or not we were home, we don’t doubt it any longer! 😉

Now we’ve stopped home only a couple of days, and most of those days we were out and about. So as you may imagine, there are several inches of dust all over things, spider webs everywhere, laundry to do, and full and empty boxes, bins and suitcases scattered all over the place. If we can find our way to our beds tonight, and get all the stuff off them, we will try to get some sleep. Then maybe we can spend some time getting organized.

Maybe.

23 January 2009

The T2 Blueprint – New Website!

Jim Misc 0

Guess what I’ve been doing over the past week and a half? Well, I mentioned it already – I built a website. Well, I had lots of help from other co-workers, but let me tell you I’m amazed at what we accomplished in a few days, more or less from scratch.

The mission we’re with, CAM International, is implementing new policies based around teams. So they’re trying to make the policies – as well as resources, tips and materials – available to CAM missionaries wherever they are in the world. And that’s why the T2 Blueprint came into being.

A lot of the ideas and policies are still being worked on, so there’s still a lot to be added on the site. But you can see the basic structure, and in an hour or two you could probably know more about CAM than I do. You might even figure out what T2 stands for!

Actually, we essentially built two websites in the last few days. One part is a blog – the T2 Sandbox. This is where everyone with CAM can get together and share reports, ideas, news, resources – basically anything that can help us all to reach the world with God’s Word.

In fact, even if you’re not with CAM, you can still read the blog, and leave your own comments and ideas. Fun!

As I say, there’s still lots to be added. But it’s come a long way… well, from nothing. We used the excellent Site Build It! to build the site, with the addition of WordPress for the blog.

The site required doing a lot of things I’ve never done before. And, of course, doing those things a lot faster than ever before! The creative stuff I enjoyed. The programish computerish stuff I slugged through.

But now is the time that everyone in our organization is trying to understand how these teams work and how to further enhance our ministry. No time like the present to look to the year ahead and look to the Lord to do great things!