We’re starting a video shoot today!

I’m on a camera that moves all over the place… and Tim’s going to be taking turns running a different camera. Today has been going kind of slow since it’s the first day of shooting and there are always things to work out in the beginning.

Pray for a good rest of the shoot! We’ll be continuing through till next week sometime.

• We received the printed copies of the Communicate today!! That was fast! Now we’ll be working on getting a date organized to have a “stuffing party” and get them all stuffed away into the already-addressed envelopes before being sent to their respective recipients.
• The CVS (Communication Video Shorts) logo was finally finished last week and made into an animated version for the first public (ie: MMC) showing of one of the episodes. It seems that everyone enjoyed it, and I’ve had a few requests and suggestions for other episodes that could fit in nicely with the idea.
• Jaren - a student at John Brown University - arrived last week to help out with photography for a recruitment brochure. We’ve worked on getting a few concepts together, and she’s out taking photos to make the concepts a reality. Saturday afternoon we plan on driving to the countryside (only about 10 minutes away by car) to get some more photos for one of the ideas.
• Tim’s been working hard on getting a networked “stock library” set up, to eventually hold stock video footage and stock photos. We currently have about 20,000 stock photos in an existing network-accessible format, but they could also be incorporated into his design when it is completed. We still need to go through the rest of the video studio’s footage tapes to decide which footage is worth keeping in a stock library.
• Another big accomplishment — Tim is finally registered to take the next available written driver’s test!! It took a lot of paperwork and trips downtown, but his name is on the list and his 109 euros are paid. The test will be on the 26th, which is a week from Monday. Please pray that he can pass the test the FIRST time he takes it, and not have to pay even more to take it again. Because of a new law that was enacted, he will be unable to drive at all, beginning next Tuesday when his “six months of Spanish residency” are up. We’re praying that he will be able to quickly get through the practical driving test as well and acquire his Spanish driver’s license.

• Returned from our trip to Madrid
• Set up our new Ikea furniture and worked on the house
• Began set construction for the upcoming video shoot

Chicken wire for the walls of the set. Next they were paper mache’d.

The outside of our new house. It is the lower level of a two-story house.

A new way to walk to work - it feels like you’re in a forest!

• We’re heading to Madrid tomorrow! For our first “real” vacation in Spain, we’ve planned to see Madrid, Toledo, Salamanca, and Segovia, as well as visit a friend in a small town outside Madrid. We’re already exhausted and we haven’t even left yet! (or finished packing..)
• The reason we’re exhausted is because we’ve spent the past few days MOVING! Today we took the last load things over to the new house, and started arranging everything. (That’s the part I like better than painting.
  :))
• Dan (the MMC director) and Gayle returned from home assignment on Tuesday. A huge group of us went to the airport to greet them, with all sorts of fun hand-made signs. Wednesday we had a lunch together in honor of their return. Coincidentally, they’re also in the process of moving to another apartment! We’ve had fun taking turns using the MMC van to move our things back and forth.
• We’ve had a lot of meetings this week about the upcoming shoot, as well as some of the Arabic video programs we’re working on. I’ll be in charge of making the intro/outtro/transitions, etc for the new program we’re putting together. This is a separate series than the one we’ll be shooting the end of May — for that series, we’re in the process of putting together a set and getting things prepared on our end.

Well that’s all for this week!