Honduras - Day 4

This time, I only woke up when I was supposed to. The AC was off and I was a little sticky, but I felt good.

There was a lot of stuff that we had to talk about, so we went downstairs to the cafeteria for breakfast. I had this egg, bean, and cheese borrito like thing. It was a little too salty, but that whatever.

During breakfast, we read Matthew 15, the verse about the farmer and the seeds. As this was a fairly well studied passage about the parable, I found myself focusing on the reason why Jesus spoke in parables. It was interesting to think about and I didn't really get that far.

After breakfast, I headed off to the bookstore and started to work. I sat down with donaldo and the two of us went through the database files to try and figure out what all the tables did and what all the fields were. The two of us actually made a lot of headway. With the help of my english to spanish dictionary, we were able to figure out most of it or at least had a good idea about what the files did.

We got to a place where we were both satisfied and went to run some errands. While we walked, I made more of an effort to try and get to know Donaldo and just talk. Still, my spanish is really poor and we can't get past the first few simple questions.

Yesterday, I had changed some money with the bookstore and I started buying trinkets and what not for people. It's an interesting dynamic to pay so little for food, spending on the average of 2$ for a whole meal, and spending the same amount of money on trinkets. I picked up a card, and it cost the same as a meal.

We got most of the stuff we were looking for and headed back to the bookstore. I showed Donaldo a bit of the PHP I was working on the manipulate the data we had collected and format it for Quickbooks. I also showed him a few of the GBA games I had on my laptop.

I didn't get much work done before lunch called. We went back to the place where we had dinner. We had more refried beans and a burrito. All very tasty. Linshuang wanted to get an idea of what we were doing at the bookstore, so I took her over there and showed her a bit of the POS that we were working with. We didn't have a lot of time, so I gave her a very quick overview.

Then it was back to work. In the morning, while we were fooling around with the database stuff, I found that the inventory had disappeared. Even though we had the file the information was contained in, we couldn't see it in the POS. Despite that, I decided to start working on the PHP script to do the translation. The programmer was supposed to come by around 2 PM, but he called and said that he wouldn't be in until like 3:30 PM.

I sat down to hack and found that I needed the PHP docs to look up some of the functions that I needed. I was able to get online at the bookstore but with only a 33.6. I hadn't used modem in ages and was surprised at how slow it was. It took about half an hour to download a 1.8 MB file. For some reason, the 2.5 MB file that I downloaded afterwards only took like 20 minutes.

The files were finally finished and I got to work. Not long after, the childrens' crew came back. Linshuang was very eager to help, so I did my best to find her something that she could do. A little after that, the programmer arrived. By now, this was around 4:30 PM.

We sat down with the programmer and picked his brain a bit. We might have been a little hard on him. Apparently, the people from the bookstore had misrepresented the abilities of the POS a bit. It wasn't as encouraging as it could've been because the program was obviously a hack. The programmer couldn't even find one of the very important tables of information.

Towards the end of the meeting, something just kind of clicked with me. I became really disconnected and pretty much shut down for a bit. I didn't know why, but I felt like I needed to escape. I went to the back room and just kind of sat there. Even though Linshuang was chatting away with Donaldo, I just sat in my own little world, paying attention to nothing.

When we left for dinner, it was the same thing. I kind of sat there and stared out in to space, thinking and mulling over my disconnection. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was beginning to take issue with Ernesto's management style. It wasn't any one thing nor was it anything major. Some of it was the way he said things. Some of it was the way he did things. Not that I had any real criticisms of his methods, but it definately wouldn't be the way I would've run things.

I think the thing that was really getting to me was the way that Ernesto would say certain things. I knew that it was most likely something with his personality and nothing that I should really be alarmed about. At the same time, considering how short of a period we've been together made me wonder about the next weeks. This was someone I was going to be working with for the next week and a half. This was also my team lead.

Part of this feeling came from seeing Ernesto interact with his wife and children. Since I'm not married nor do I have children, it's not really my place to correct them. At the same time, I can't help but feel put off by some of it. Granted, I don't know all the details and the specifics so I'll do my best to not pass judgement.

The evenings tend to be when we really get to know each other more. Linshuang and I talked a fair amount over dinner. A lot of random things, like food, wine, to ministry and being an Asian-american. It was good and is progressing at a good pace.

I had been planning to go to the internet cafe to blog and check my mail, but dinner ended kind of late and it was still raining, so I decided against it. I'm not so desperately in need of internet that I can't wait a day or two to do my thing. What I couldn't wait to do was go back to my room, put on some trance, and blog.

We were supposed to have our debrief meeting, but there were some people in our normal meeting place so we put it off a bit. Eventually, we did meet and went over some of the stuff that would need to be done in the next week. Linshuang and I started preparing our materials for the training the next day. I'm sort of used to and sort of not used to preparing materials this late. If I had my way, I would've had this stuff prepared a whiles ago. I understand that some of it couldn't because we didn't really know what the needs of the people were in terms of training, but it was still something that we could've gotten a head start on. Instead, we were up 'til close to 11 PM pulling it together. Even when we were done, we only had a high level view of what we would be doing.

It's hard to say how I feel about the day. On one side, a lot of good happened in the day. The childrens' ministry stuff went fine. After one day, they've really become a well oiled machine and have gotten a lot of positive feedback.

On the technical side, I'm very glad that the programmer was able to come in, but part of me wonders if this is the right solution. It would be a shame for the bookstore to have spent all this money on a system and have to trash it just because some gringos said so. At the same time, I believe it is our responsibility to take all the information and give them the best advice that we can about the situation. Let them know what the options are, what we think, and ultimately, let them make the final decision.

Just as the GPL is about freedom, I believe knowledge is empowerment and empowerment is freedom. If we can try and cover all the various options and explain what the reasons are for each, that would be huge steps towards empowering Scripture Union to do great things.

This issue kind of came up a little when Linshuang was talking about our training curriculum. We were talking about toolbars and how to add and remove buttons from the bar. Ernesto commented that this may not be wise to teach them because the potential for some sort of mishap was high. Just like any sort of empowerment, the chance for mishap is always high. This is why education is so important. If we can teach them how to add and remove buttons, it will, hopefully, be less likely for them to do it accidentally and freak out about it.

Again, the idea that you are given the power to make a choice, given power to effect change, and to have the responsibility to use those things for good, is inherent in the Gospel message. Just as Paul said that we are "free", that freedom is not a license for us to sin. Just as grace is not a license for us to sin. At the same time, we are free, as in liberty, to choose to sin or not. As opposed to our life before, where we were slaves to our sin.

No matter what software ideological differences Ernesto and I have or his little stabs at OSS, I will do my best to work in gentleness and to choose my battles. These sort of things aren't worth fighting over. Especially out here in the field, where a lot of these ideological issues don't matter that much. Ultimately, we all have the same goals. To empower Scripture Union to do ministry more effectively. No matter how much I dislike Microsoft, their products will work. And I will submit to the authority that God has placed over me.

These next few days are going to be dificult because our schedules had to be shifted around because Ernesto didn't organize our schedule until this morning. There were some errors in his scheduling which left me very uncomfortable and confused at what was going on for the remaining time. But just as Abram was called to step in faith, I will do my best to step.

Until tomorrow. Keep us in your prayers.