It's been a busy month over here, with the holidays, Melissa's birthday, and of course, lots of ministry. Let's dive in!
It's cake time!
Bible First
Regarding the Bible First website that will allow people to do Bibie First online, we have been making progress, but not as quickly as we would have liked. So this week, Josh and I will starting on another "coding marathon" like we did back in October. Every day, for a week or two, we will get together and work on the website, with the goal to get it to the point to where we can begin to use it for our own students.
When it comes to the text of Bible First, the proofing of the Spanish translation is coming along well. Also, the Russian translation is now finished! The Russian translation will need some significant proofing before it will be ready to use, but it's always exciting to hit those milestones!
Good and Evil
Tolik is currently translating Chapter 12 of Good and Evil, and Josh and I are proofing Chapter 11. Since there are only 13 chapters, we are coming down the home stretch! (Of the translation part anyway. Layout and design comes next!)
Other Stuff
Since I am ETO's treasurer, the beginning of a new fiscal year always means lots of reports and statements. I'm mostly done with all that, but I still have a bit more to go.
Family
We recently learned that while Lydia has good vision in her left eye, her right eye's vision is actually quite poor. We are working on getting her glasses, which should hopefully help to correct the situation.
Other than that, things are going well on the family front. The kids are growing, school is going well, and after an unusually warm January, the kids are getting some good sledding in!
In case you were wondering, yes, I do speak Ukrainian. :) The church we attend usually has a mini sermon before the main sermon, and sometimes I am asked to do the mini sermon.
The big news of the month is that Carpathian Mountain Outreach is back! We took the summer of 2017 off to focus on literature and web development, but we will be heading back to the mountains in 2018. You can learn more by checking out the announcement on ETO's spiffy new blog, or you can go straight to the CMO site.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned literature/web development continues. I recently finished a big project that will allow users to switch the interface of the Bible First site to their preferred language. And now that we have gotten the CMO announcement out of the way, Josh and I are hoping to make some good progress on Good and Evil and the Bible First site.
Family
It's birthday season at our house! As of about a week ago, Briana is a big two-year-old! Melissa's birthday is coming up soon, and she is counting down the days. Then then begins the Christmas countdown! Lydia finished her kindergarten math book a few weeks ago, and she has moved up to first grade math. Katelin recently decided to try potty training Briana, but so far, about all we have to show for things is a lot of puddles!
Our web development marathon is now in the books, but the work continues. We were able to make our goal of importing test data into the application, but the import of the test data exposed some more bugs. (Which is what we expected.) So the development goes on.
Left to right: Nathan, Trevor, and Josh. Nerds for Jesus!
Lately, Josh and I have been dedicating our mornings to working on the Bible First app. We usually have a quick meeting on Skype, talk over what needs to be done, and then jump into the code. Progress is slow, but steady. And of course, Trevor does what he can from his side of the Atlantic.
Bible First
We recently received a note from Catherine, who is translating Bible First into French, saying that she had completed Lesson 3. In addition, the translation into Russian is now 90% complete! There is still a lot of proofing left to be done, but it is exciting to see the progress being made!
Good and Evil
Speaking of proofing, Josh and I just finished proofing Chapter 6 of Good and Evil, and plan to proof Chapter 7 sometime this next week. Tolik is making good progress on the translation, and it looks like he has just about finished translating Chapter 8. So maybe will will be proofing Chapters 7 and 8…? We'll see. There are 13 chapters in all, and our goal is to be finished with the translation by the end of the year.
Family
We had our first taste of winter last week when we got a light dusting of snow. Of course, the girls were determined to go play in it, even though there wasn't much of it, and it was all soaking wet. The girls are still enjoying their school. One of the highlights of the month was a couple of boxes that arrived from America. While there were a lot of Christmas and birthday presents that got set aside for their respective holidays, there was still enough fun stuff left to make it feel like Christmas had come a month early!
I'm happy to report that our web development marathon is well underway, and we are making good progress! Josh and Trevor are optimistic that within a couple days, we will be able to start importing test data into the new app. Then we can take things for a test drive and spend the rest of Trevor's time here squashing bugs and ironing out wrinkles. Hopefully by the time Trevor leaves on the 24th, we will be to the point where we are comfortable with importing our actual student data into the app, and we will begin using the app ourselves.
Trevor and Josh discuss the best way to structure the application.
On a personal note, I am by far the junior developer on the team, but I am excited that I have been able to make some meaningful contributions to our forward progress. As a result of everything going on, my abilities have increased exponentially in the last few weeks, but I sill have a long ways to go. I am looking forward to making more progress in the near future!
Family
Our family is currently dealing with some colds, so we would appreciate your prayers. School is going well. The weather has taken a turn for the cooler and the trees are starting to turn, but according to the forecast, we have a bit of Indian Summer coming our way next week (or Grandma Summer, as they call it over here). It will be nice to set aside the jackets for a few days before the cooler weather sets in for good.
