Difficult week

After a big weekend during which I helped bring off a couple of big events, I faced a stressful serious of events/decisions this week. Nearly a year after I first recommended that the Toastmasters club that I've worked hard to keep going fold, the other officers and I met to discuss our future. After four of us had visited a neighboring Toastmasters club and talked with Toastmasters leaders about folding our club into that club, one officer who had not made the visit pushed us to keep going. Plus our one officer from outside the building came in with new ideas. I came into the meeting nervous and with mixed feelings, wistful about our Toastmasters colleagues and good programs but also tired of sometimes carrying the ball for the club. Part of me is very excited that we have a new lease on life, but it remains to be seen whether the payoff for the club will be worth the time we and I put into it. (Pictured above is our outgoing club president at the last meeting of our entire club, last week.)

The next night I faced a similarly nerve-wracking meeting. I helped lead our church's Guatemala mission trip a year ago. I had blown hot and cold about following up on this meeting and had done a poor job of helping generate enthusiasm about this follow-up. Recent our pastor has led the charge on two efforts I've been involved in: thinking about possible church building renovation and thinking up extending/following up on Guatemala mission. The pastor and I talked about this, and she looked to me to help lead the charge at metings of the Outreach Council and the congregation session (board) considering endorsing the formation of a Guatemala mission task force that would pursue partnership possibilities with the evangelical Presbyterian congregations north of Guatemala's Lake Izabal with whom we visited last summer. In both meetings I was very quiet and did only so little, when we barely squeeked out endorsements from the two groups (I'm part of both). After I left the last Guatemala working group (task force to be?) meeting earlier this month, the group talked about Stephanie and a man who helped organize orientation before the mission trip, but did not actually go with it. I have occasionally frankly been jealous of this man - a Southern Baptist preacher at one point, quite young - and we have jockeyed for influence over the mission effort. He'd missed our last meeting and last night he irritated me while ostensibly supporting the proposal continuing to push for partnership with congregations in the Dominican Republic (where he has more connections), instead of in Guatemala, and with a single congregation, instead of the group of congregations we'd established ties with already. I know that we need the support of this man, who the pastor really respects and who is fluent in Spanish (which not all of us are). We can't really pursue this unless we're prepared to send 2-3 people - including some fluent Spanish speakers - and yet I felt like this man kind of betrayed us by arguing against two core elements of the working group's vision for the mission effort. (Pictured below is the join part of the church Council meetings two weeks ago, prior to the Outreach Council only meeting in the same room.)

This afternoon I faced a similar level of stress. More often than not, my work products encounter a sea of red ink in that my managers suggest a large number of revisions to the surveys, reports, proposals, and focus group scripts that I develop. Sugges is not really the right word - Historically, the top two managers are not interested in hearing any arguments about this. I've learned lots this way - and we've avoided long (democratic?) debates. But I've look forward to improving my work and gaining more respect for my work products. This afternoon I encountered two newer work products with suggestions that I really don't agree with and that - as is regularly the case - put me in the middle between my clients and my managers (as they occasionally now do between my managers). I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to confront this tomorrow morning. These are both projects that we need to make progress with quickly, and so by tomorrow morning I'll need to figure out how to raise these issues with my managers, which makes me nervous. Our office is in some ways less hierarchical before some of those in management turned over. And yet I continue to have only a modest amount of control over my projects and continue to be caught sometimes between more powerful forces in the office.

Pray for wisdom, patience, and leadership development for me.

-- Perry