Oh, for just a bit more time...
Written by Michael Babienco on Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Greetings and salutations! I hope you, dear reader, are doing well. Here's an update on everything that's been going on and things that have happened over the last two months since my last post. Short version: AHHHH!
Missions updates
I suppose this is what everyone is coming for anyway, so missions stuff first! As you all know, I'm currently working towards heading to Cambodia with Adventist Frontier Missions (AFM) over the course of the next year. To do so, I have to raise $12,500, which covers all the things. I'll put an update on fundraising after stories. :)
It's been really awesome to see God working to encourage me and help my support team grow and thus see more clearly how He is the one behind getting me to Cambodia. Here are a few short stories on things that have happened over the last few months:
- A mom of a good friend of mine, who has experience teaching all the way from kindergarten through college, has offered to help me learn more about how to teach younger kids like I'll be teaching, since I'm totally unfamiliar with teaching methods for elementary/middle school. Awesome!
- I did some driving for a wedding this past weekend. Driving a 12 passenger van is not my favorite thing in the world, I came to find out, but it was fun anyway! The parents of the bride had offered to pay me for the four-hour shift, and I requested that they donate money towards my AFM fund. After finishing up my driving, the brother of the bride was paying those who needed to be paid, and I was handed almost 4x the amount that I had agreed to work for! It all went towards the mission funding!
- A labor and delivery nurse out in Washington state, who usually donates any money she makes on Sabbath (babies don’t choose the date they’re delivered!) towards various mission projects, such as Maranatha churches, volunteered to put any money she happens to earn on Sabbath over the next few months towards my funding.
- Several people who I know have donated without me explicitly talking to them about fundraising, including a few surprises. What a blessing to have friends that support you even without you asking them!
- I sat down for a while with one of the computing faculty members to chat, not only about computing, but also about missions in general. We had a wonderful chat that went on for quite some time. I had expected it to take a while, so I offered to supply both myself and the professor with some lentil soup for lunch. (Yum!) Like I said, we had a wonderful chat, and he had to go home to chat with his wife about joining my support team. In a few hours, I got this strange text: "My wife says I’m Esau and you’re Jacob. LOL" ...it took me a few minutes, but remember how I shared some lentil soup with the faculty member? Apparently, his wife thought I was getting a little too close to asking for "Esau's" birthright! It made for a pretty good laugh, and they both decided to support me in my missions endeavor!
- I was feeling rather distressed this past Sabbath about some other circumstances going on in life, and I was very much desiring some encouragement. I am the head librarian at the Collegedale SDA Church (a rather large church if you've never been there), and I sometimes have to wait a while after Sabbath School gets out to let those who were in Sabbath School finish talking and having other private conversations. I was waiting for this right outside the library when I saw two people walk out of a side hallway and head towards the sanctuary. Somehow, I managed to recognize both of the back of their heads...and they live in Colorado, so it was doubly surprising to see them (not to mention recognize the back of their heads)! In quite the flabbergasted tone of voice, I said, "Mr. {Name here}?!?!", and he turns around with his son, looks at me, and was equally confused to see me at Collegedale! In any case, it was wonderful to see some old friends from Ohio (they moved to Colorado a few years back), and this was just the encouragement I needed.
- My landlady is graciously letting me stay in my apartment through August even though my contract is up.
I've had many wonderful conversations with a good number of people about missions and what I'm headed to go do in the future. Thank you for your time, for listening, for asking questions, and for your support! If you'd like to be on my email list whenever I start sending those out, please contact me!
In terms of other AFM happenings, I was just reminded today that I have to take and complete a 120-hour TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) class before training, which starts 2 months from today. This is 120 hours that I had forgotten to plan on! Please pray for me as I somehow fit that into my already very busy schedule. I also got my second to last immunization last week. Only one more shot to go!
Support team building
As of May 22, 2018...
Thanks to generous folks from all walks of life (including a few total strangers!), I currently have 27.73% of my funding in! (Pretend like a giant confetti explosion just went off.) That's $3,467.20 out of $12,500. I realize that's not what my AFM website page says, but I have access to an internal website that has more up to date info than the main AFM website. Thank you!
I do have my first fundraising deadline coming up next month, however. In order to have all the funds I need for training, which starts July 22, I have to fundraise the first $5,000 of my funds (40%) by June 15. I've been able to watch God leading as I fundraise and build a support team, so I'm sure everything will come in to place by that time. If you're reading this and haven't joined in on supporting, I'd like to encourage you to at least consider chipping in $5 towards this missions endeavor. $5 is about the cost of an ice cream at your local froyo or a Starbucks drink (ok, maybe a large, er, venti, drink). $5 might not seem like much, but when you consider that said $5 is going towards saving souls for eternity, it really can go a long way and do a lot more than a froyo dessert! How cool is it that you can be involved with countries around the world from the comfort of your own living room? I talked a lot about benefits of joining my support team in my last blog post. Will you help support reaching out to the Pnong people group of Cambodia by helping send me to work in that country? If so, the easiest way is by giving online. If you'd like to talk to me more about what I'll be doing and why missions is important first (I'll talk to you even if you don't want to donate -- I enjoy talking with people!), please contact me!
No matter what, please pray for me as I continue to build a support group for my time in Cambodia! I need all the prayers I can get, and they do help!
Music
The last few months have been fairly ridiculous, to say the least. Towards the end of Southern Adventist University's winter semester, I was involved in six different ensembles (that is not an exaggeration) doing both vocal and instrumental music as well as one or two miscellaneous groups, one of which included the brass group that played for graduation. I enjoyed it, though! Fun story: one of the very first pieces I played with a Southern Adventist University music ensemble was way back my junior year of high school (2008-2009), when I had the opportunity to play with Southern's Wind Symphony as they traveled through the Ohio area. One of the pieces we played was Crown Imperial. For the very final orchestra concert that I participated in during the month of April, we played Crown Imperial! What are the odds that such a piece would bookend my music "career" with Southern?! God certainly has an interesting way of working!
I'm planning to take a trombone to Cambodia. This will be great fun!
Work
I'm doing my best to wrap up my full-time job at Southern Adventist University as the lead programmer/analyst for CIRC, which is essentially a subcontracting company within the School of Computing. I've been able to help with finishing up some really awesome projects recently, one of which I'd love to say more about, but I can't yet! It's out in app stores for iOS and Android already, though, so if you look hard enough and guess just right...I'm hoping to be able to announce more on that soon-ish.
CIRC is currently still looking for a full-time replacement for my position. (If you know any skilled programmers, send them my way!) Since we haven't found anyone yet, I'm staying on as an almost-full-time worker for 30-ish hours a week to help keep projects moving and to write up more documentation for my replacement. Things are going well, and I'm making good progress on a project that's nearly had 3 years of development time thus far. The good news about staying on for work, though, is twofold:
- I can keep getting a paycheck! This is helpful for obvious reasons.
- I will continue to have full health insurance (including dental and optical) through the end of my work just before training starts. Then, because Southern is awesome, they are letting me pay a bit more money to keep my health insurance through the middle of September! This will be extremely helpful during my transition between "SAU insurance" and "AFM insurance," the latter of which doesn't start until the day I leave. Not having health insurance would have been particularly stressful in case something did happen, so it's nice to know I'll be covered if something comes up.
It's been interesting to see God leading at work, too. I've had several clients come "out of the woodwork" so to speak to have minor things done on projects we haven't touched in quite some time. Not to say my replacement wouldn't be able to handle this, but it would definitely be harder for anyone to jump into something familiar than someone who knows all the code already! It's been very good to be able to help out in this regard in a timely and efficient manner. My student workers have been extremely gracious regarding the unknowns surrounding the transition, too, which is a real blessing.
Things to Pray About
I'll probably keep a prayer section in each of my posts similar to what I wrote in my my last post.
- Time management is going to be huge over the next two months. My TODO list has only grown!
- A replacement for me at work would be really nice to have ASAP -- not just for me in terms of relief on everything I'm working on, but also so that I can help train the replacement in!
- Support team building (aka fundraising aka friend-raising). Making good progress in this regard, but still a long way to go!
Links
Less missions links this time, but that's fine!
- I recently gave my final tech lunch presentation for the School of Computing entitled "Unambiguous Programmatic Information Found on the Infrastructure of Communication Between Multiple Parties". Confused as to what that's about? So was everyone else! (I took my normal title and looked up synonyms for words to make my title less boring!) If you'd like to watch it, you can see that here.
- Beethoven's 5th Symphony played with a Marker
- Who's your best friend?! -- this is a dog video
- A song about little potatoes
Fin
So long, and thanks for all the fish!