Life in Lockdown

May 2020 Newsletter


Dear Friend,

Our lives transformed overnight when the W.H.O. declared COVID-19 a pandemic just a week after we sent out our previous newsletter, and again when the UK government put the country into lockdown on 23 March to slow the spread of the coronavirus. I’m sure many of you are staying home to “flatten the curve” in the past several weeks. We’ve settled into our lockdown-normal now and staying home a lot more than we are used to. The children miss their friends. Asher told me he is looking forward to attending home education meets again once the government slowly lift lockdown restrictions.

We rely on technology now more than ever. Social distancing means we meet with our friends and attend church, small group and prayer meetings via video conferencing. There’s a wealth of resources available to keep ourselves busy while we’re in lockdown—virtual choir, art lessons, dance classes, P.E. classes, and many more choices. We celebrated Asher and Eva Joy’s birthdays differently from what we’ve done in the past. Asher camped in our back garden with his new camping tarp, while we celebrated Eva Joy’s birthday on a video party with our church small group.

This year we’d planned on travelling to the U.S. for home assignment. Obviously, with the pandemic and current travel restrictions, we’re unable to travel now. We still need to maintain if not increase our financial support, so we’re re-thinking the way home assignment happens. We’d like to set aside Sundays and Thursdays to chat with you about our ministry. We will do this either in a video conferencing app called Microsoft Teams or on Facebook Live. Please get in touch if you’d like to catch up with us. We will also start contacting people in the coming weeks to set up meetings.

The UK government and OM consider Leon a key worker. Those that work in infrastructure (which includes IT) are essential to keeping OM operational. The entire organisation has realised how impossible any ministry would continue during a world-wide lockdown without IT. When the lockdown initially occurred our IT team scrambled to analyse what we needed to do to provide the best service for those now working from home and trying to continue ministry.

A key part of the IT work my team is doing involves setting up collaborative work spaces online and educating people about secure virtual conferencing. I realise that many use Zoom, but they have also been very much in the news for their insecurity! OM uses Microsoft Office 365 for many of our IT solutions. The MS solution for video conferencing is Microsoft Teams and does not have the same security issues as Zoom. The helpdesk requests for Teams groups skyrocketed when we went into lockdown.

Our entire team in Carlisle is now working from home. As a leadership team we expected that we would go into lockdown and put in place a few measures to support those that would work from home for an extended period. We continue to monitor as best we can from a distance the moral and mental health of the team. It is more difficult for us all to be working from home.

One of the helpful things I have found is that the IT team that I lead is a virtual team. I now use the skills I have learned from leading that team to help the Carlisle team move into a virtual working setup.

I work from home most of the time, but my home office is under the stairs in a dusty cold closet. I can only take it for so long before I feel like I am losing my mind. With 4 children in the house there is really no other place to work from at the house. After 4 weeks of working from home 100% I am now working a few hours as the lone person at OM’s Carlisle office. Current social distancing restrictions allow this since I am a key worker and I really can’t do some of my work from home.

All my research for virtual conferencing has also lent itself to assist our local church in getting online for their church. I am now involved in putting together the Sunday morning order of service and broadcasting that for the congregations. We also have set up virtual meeting rooms for prayer and church small groups. The prayer meetings in church and in OM have all moved online. It has been a wonderful experience to join with many hundreds of others in prayer.

Chrysti and I feel we were ahead of the curve since our entire courtship experience was through video conferencing. We can always learn something new, though. What you have been learning about video conferencing? Let us know your tips.

Prayer Points

1. We're almost finished with our home-improvement project of removing wallpaper and plastering walls, which we started in January. Please pray for us as we finish in the next couple months. It has a big impact on our family dynamics, as Leon does most of the labour.
2. Pray that the IT team I lead stay focused on the right work and not getting distracted. It is hard for us all to be working from home with all the kids around. We are normally a virtual team, but the lockdown has made it more difficult to be as efficient in our work.
3. Praise God we’ve been healthy so far and pray that our family will continue to stay healthy. One of our colleagues had COVID-19. We're not worried on that front, but pray that our mental health stays the course.