The Office Curmudgeon

Welcome to the new domain for the office curmudgeon, which is a slightly better named. This was a huge pain to accomplish, taking me about 6 hours of work, but it is completed exactly how I wanted.

If you are linking to this site, please update your links to http://officecurmudgeon.com/ when you can. The links will continue to work indefinitely, simply redirecting to the new domain.

Thanks all.

I wanted to provide a last post to lay down my thoughts about the trip and event as a whole. Without a doubt, I feel the mission was worth the time and money to visit the Navajo people and serve them, even if for a short time. Could we have done a lot more and been more efficient? Oh sure, hindsight is always 20/20. Would we have had the same cultural experience if we were more efficient … probably not. In all ways it was worth it, and I really hope I can return again some day.

Ironically, the Monday after I returned I found a post on a blog I casually read titled Are Short Term Missions a Waste of Money? In the post, Andrew addresses the Washing Post article, Churches Retool Mission Trips. I’d suggest taking a moment and reading those posts, they are both thought provoking.

I’m guessing this topic is an age old question that has been asked since missionary work was formed. I’m also guessing that people gave Paul a hard time about how far he traveled at such great expense of time and or money, only to get thrown out of a town on his butt. Is it a shame that Paul didn’t decide, “Hey, I can make a lot more impact at a lower cost of time and risk if I just focus on the local community?” In the Washing Post article, a Florida pastor was quoted in saying,

“It became too hard to justify the expense of flying the kids overseas”, Brinton said. “If you’re going to paint a church, you can do that in Florida as easily as you can in Mexico.”

Ouch. While I am sure it is easier to pant a church within a 5 mile drive of your house than one in Mexico, I think the cultural experience is going to be a bit different. The article sites some great examples of mismanaged mission efforts, and I agree that there are probably a decent number of trips that need to be canceled, heavily trimmed, or completely reorganized. But as a member of the race of broken people, I can’t see the brilliance in ignoring everyone outside of our comfortable range of influence and hoping that there is someone closer to do the job for us. Continue Reading »

Our last day at the school was Friday, July 11. One small project we had to complete was assembling a couple bookcases which were donated to the Nageezi chapter house. We assembled those in a quick evening and morning, and I helped drop them off. I had planned to help complete the assembly, put them in place, check out the community center, and catch a ride back to the school. Our ride left early, and I ended up sticking around to help out with the children’s activities. I didn’t mind, though it is not one of my strong skills. I am an only child with a small extended family, so I didn’t have siblings or cousins to care for, and I have not logged many hours interacting with children.

Laura, our senior pastor, group leader, ex-teacher, and leader of the childrens activities asked one of the young women in our group, “So, do you by chance know origami?” The woman laughed and said no. I smiled, and slowly raised my hand. Laura gasped, “Brian!? You know origami!? Well we’re learning a lot about you this trip.” Until she mentioned it, I had totally forgotten that I even knew it. Continue Reading »

On Thursday, July 10, we went on a field trip. It is funny how many parallels there are between missions and grade school. This was very special time though. John was taking us into the mountains to view Navajo petroglyphs created between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was fascinating to see this ancient cultures history carved in stone.

Some of the stories they told were pretty detailed, as John explained them. The image to the left tells of a time of plenty, followed by a time of scarcity. People arrived on horses, wielding weapons, and forced the people to travel. The travel was long and difficult, spanning at least five days or more. It was surreal listening to John interpret some of the symbols and bring to life the story they contained. Another story told of 5 people who tried to cross the great river, the Rio Grand, and none of them survived. Another told of a group of people, 7 women and 7 men, in which one of the women was lost after moving from one place to another. Not all of the petroglyphs in the valley are understood, and it is assumed there are many more than are yet to be found.

Continue Reading »

In my previous post I wrote about the playground equipment we were constructing. Something I left out was our process of selecting which piece to build. We started with a very large structure, that was going to require about 16 holes to be dug and posts set. That was quickly set aside, and we looked at the next size down. That was about 10-12 posts. Ok, next. 5 posts, and two large pieces. Yeah that’s doable. On July 9 we finished construction on our project, seen to the right here. The thing I learned most from this .. constructing playground equipment is insane! Oh my gosh. It is bulky, hard to handle, the quality of documentation is underwhelming, and you have to sink the stuff into 2 cubic feet of concrete!

It was satisfying to see the thing completed and in the ground. After it was done, I was happy to have been a part of the construction crew. In the beginning it seemed silly that we’d traveled all this way to do something so small. In the end, for one it wasn’t that small, but two it was a way of giving our time to a community in a way that was meaningful to that community. Within hours of completion, local children were playing on it. (Don’t worry, concrete sets very fast in New Mexico due to the incredibly dry ground.)

The work we did, identifying, organizing and assembling that equipment, would have been done by someone at the school, and now they can spend their time on other more important things.

It was a pleasure to be there and serve.