The Ort Family

Today was definitely adventure-filled!  The day started with me leaving my jacket up in the hotel room, not knowing that the weather warranted bundling up.  Unfortunately, two sets of keys were left in the pockets of my jacket as well.  We ate breakfast at Brueggers, a coffeeshop that specializes in bagels.  We were blessed by God’s provision in the form of their day-old bagel sale – a bag of 6 bagels on sale for $1.99!  As we sat at the table, a glance out the window surprised me.  Snow was falling!  It was brief, as we didn’t see any on our walk from Brueggers to the parking garage.

As I alluded to, we unloaded the display items from the van in the parking garage and headed to the Duke Energy Center to set up.  We found booth 915, and didn’t need long to get everything on the table.  Everything went smoothly until…we couldn’t find the International Literacy Training Institute (ILTI) brochures.  In spite of prolonged searching, they didn’t show up.  Paul Stefan had gone back to the hotel to pick up some things, including my coat and the forgotten keys, when I phoned the cell phone he was carrying to ask for my CD case as well.  I needed to give Peter the CD of LEI photos so he could quickly create a new brochure.  Peter diligently worked for probably two hours to create a brochure with the same information as the ones that had not made it into the bags.  Meanwhile, we tried for a long time to get Daddy’s workshop slideshow into a printable format and finally discovered that the process was actually quite simple ☺.  

Peter creatively continued working on the brochure, and didn’t stop until it was ready for a sample printing.  Daddy and I headed off to get the documents printed.  We eventually found the business center of the convention, but the staff person had stepped out for a few moments, and all we saw were copy machines that most likely would not use a flashdrive.  Daddy and I then went back to the hotel, but were deterred by the price of using the business center there and the large line of people waiting to check in.  We went back to the convention business center, where we met the primary organizer of the convention.  He offered loaning us his room key to print the documents on his printer.  This was so generous of him, but we declined in preference of going to Kinkos.  

After lunch with the rest of the family, Daddy and I endured the cold wind in walking to Kinkos where we were finally successful in getting some things printed.  However, when the staff tried to print one particular version of the brochure – double-sided – their printer wouldn’t work.  The result of this was that they chose not to charge us for everything.  We thought our bill would be very high, since copies were supposedly 49 cents each.  Instead, the bill was less than $2.  This was another evidence of God’s gracious provision during this trip.  

On the way back to the convention, we stopped in Churchill’s Tea Room to discuss the brochure business and get out of the cold.  Churchill’s is one (seemingly) authentic English tearoom!  The decorating style looked to me like what I saw in Britain when we were there in 2005.  I must admit, we even checked if the china was made in China and discovered “Made in England”!☺  The silverware was made in Japan, though☺.  Our waitress asked if we were here for the NMC, and listed off the cities she had been to for the NMC – most of which we had been to as well.  Daddy invited her to our booth, and she promised to stop by sometime.  We enjoyed a pot of Vanilla Chai Tea and the classical music playing in the background while examining Peter’s brochure.  Peter had done a very thorough job of including all the important information.  It is almost 9pm, and I still have to get the brochures copied at the business center.  Speaking of which, I’ll finish this post later!

_________________

Well, the business center is closed for the night, so copying, trimming, and compiling the brochures is on the schedule for tomorrow morning! On the way to dinner, Paul Stefan ended up holding the door for a couple who recognized him.  When we glanced back, he was walking between two people and talking with them, which somewhat puzzled us, as we didn’t recognize them.  They were Mr. and Mrs. Nickerson, part of an organization that provides websites for missionaries, and Paul Stefan did some work for them awhile ago.  

We enjoyed visiting with David and Dorma Finch, who attended ILTI a few months ago.  Two years ago, when we were representing LEI in Atlanta, GA, David and Dorma heard about literacy ministry and as a result decided to take the training.  In addition to the Finchs, a man who took the English as a Second Language (ESL) training in 1999 came by the booth to tell us about the impact of using a Bible-based curriculum in Indianapolis.  It is encouraging to hear new stories of how God is using the ministry.  
                     
Special breakfast deal!                    Setting up the booth      

             
Peter working on the brochure              Enjoying the English Tearoom 

                   
Using spare moments                         Done setting up!                                                                         to work on the LEI website 

___________

Related posts:

Networking

Booths

Workshop

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Family life, Missions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.