It’s been a good couple of days and it was a nice weekend as well.
Our BnB guests from the US found a place to stay in Jinja and we helped them get settled into their new place. Our house is a bit too quiet now. :-)
We received an unexpected gift from Tim in the US: a pair of power supply testers! Cool!
I spent a good six hours working on a laptop for Anthony who is teaching our upcoming design course. He was using a borrowed laptop so I tried to resurrect my old 15″ MacBook Pro. It’s served me well and made dozens of stage appearances over the years but it’s been sitting in storage too long and it’s time to put it back into service for a good cause. Unfortunately the charge controller looks to be bad, but it’s still a good machine.
We got a lot done in The leather workshop and I’m glad to say we have a lot of inventory now. We also worked on a “utility” (weapon) belt which is a birthday gift for Declan’s friend Austin. It was Jen’s idea and we worked on it together. It turned out pretty slick.
I had a breakthrough in the workshop. After months of failures, I finally figured out how to make a right-angled mitre joint. Leather geeks will understand why this is a big deal, but for the uninitiated, it’s a right-angle stitched leather joint which when done properly doesn’t show any stitches on the inside. This is hard to do, but once mastered it opens up all sorts of things from leather boxes to high end leather cases. I was pretty excited at this little thing. It was a technique I had decided I would never figure out because of all the impossible angles and variables. Even on paper it looks like it shouldn’t work.
I spent an entire day getting books ready for a Bible study we are doing for the Keep employees on Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Christ. Printing and copying is so expensive so I took the time to figure out how to print booklet-style. It took quite a lot of work (and math) but the result was worth it. Now we have books for the staff and I even figured out a way to do antique-style books like the one shown. This is my “antique” copy of The Case for Christ, complete with a leather cover, tea stained pages and antique font. I hadThe guys in the shop put it together for me since it was similar to the journals we make. The result is, I have to say, STUNNING. This book feels old and awesome. I think there are a bunch more coming in the future.
We also had a videographer visit from the US to get some footage of Jonah, one of our leather artists. The cameraman had a CDC shirt on. Not THAT CDC. And not the other one.
I had a meeting with Ruthie at SHIM. They are looking for educational material and laptops for their school on Lingira island. From their website:
Shepherd’s Heart International Ministry (SHIM) is a multi-national ministry started by Ugandan Pastors and Christian Leaders and Karina Smith, and is located on Lingira Island in the Buvuma Island chain of Lake Victoria, Uganda. The nearest mainland city is Jinja, 15 miles away by boat. Jinja is the location of the long-sought source of the Nile River, and is quite near the equator. The temperature, however, is surprisingly mild due to the elevation (about 3,000 feet) and the proximity to the largest fresh-water lake in Africa.
We’ve supported SHIM for years and I know for a fact that they squeeze every ounce of use out of their donated laptops. So we are going to donate some of the old laptops from our CTC to help them out, each loaded with RACHEL AND GCF material. They so have a chromebook that thy didn’t know what to do with so were loading that puppy up to make it one of our Loaded Chromebooks. Ruthie was so excited about all the equipment and educational material were are setting them up with and I have to say her excitement makes my really happy. This kind of connection is rare but when it happens I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be doing exactly what needs to be done.
