Cru Digital Ministry

Canadian Ops Secrets

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In this short video, you can get feel for how the Canadian campus staff do their operations training.

Russ Martin – director of campus operations in Canada – talks about some very simple habits his staff have developed:

  • For a team to function well, there must be smooth, well defined modes of communication.
  • Sharing ideas – even sharing failures – is a must for collaboration.
  • One team can learn so much from other teams.  Ideas should not be hidden.  Wheels should not be re-invented.
  • A threaded conversation (such as a message board or Facebook wall posts) is often most effective for sharing ideas.
  • Russ trains his staff to use a threaded conversation rather than email in most cases.
  • Canadian teams have common resource pools online where they can all share documents.
  • Using online documents such as Google Docs provides a great solution for saving meeting notes.
  • Rather than emailing a document as an attachment, the Canadians upload the document to a common resource pool and then share the link.  Subtle but powerful difference.

All these practices tend to reduce email inbox overload and promote the highest level of interactivity and sharing. Can all this help increase capacity of field teams to reach more people for Christ?  You bet!  It’s happening even now in Canada.

All of the Canadian teams use Google Docs.  If anything, this has been their “killer app” – the tool which has been the most helpful to enhance team communications.  Google Apps for Non Profits has also been a huge boost for them.  These tools are free, easy to deploy, easy to use and allow ultra fast sharing of critical resources.

Here’s the direct link to the video.

Cru Digital Ministry

What do we really do at CCC HQ?

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Here at the international headquarters for Campus Cruasde, we’re two of about 900 staff who serve in a wide variety of administrative capacities.  Our team is the Global Technology Office – helping ministry teams integrate technology into their mission.  Here’s a quick video we made showing the 25 staff on our team, our vision for ministry and the people we serve:

Here’s the direct link to the video on YouTube.

You make our outreach and service through the GTO possible!  Thank you!

To learn more …

Family

Learn Diabetes from a 6 Yr Old

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Toby is one of about 3 Million Americans who have Type 1 Diabetes. Last week we took the whole family to a two day conference here in town sponsored by Children with Diabetes.  It was an excellent education event geared towards helping families learn about Diabetes together and grow in confidence in dealing with it.

Shannon and I left with our heads chock full of new information.  The kids seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  I think they all learned a lot just by being around other diabetic kids – watching them stop periodically to do their own blood sugar checks.  A couple days after the conference Toby, without fanfare, just started doing his own blood checks – it’s done via a finger prick and electronic meter device.  He does it like a pro now.

Even though we heard very good medical descriptions of what Diabetes is and how to manage it, this video below is by far the best explanation we’ve come across yet for Type 1.   Several common misconceptions are dispelled.  This is a very cute six year old girl explaining Diabetes in plain English!
Would you take 2 minutes to watch this?  It’ll make you smile and you’ll know a little more of how to pray for Toby:

Here’s the direct link to the video on YouTube.

Family

Can you spell endocrinologist?

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We’ve got an appointment with Toby’s pediatric endocrinologist this morning.  It’s been four days since he came home from the hospital and actually he’s doing fantastic.  The shots are still … well, shots but Toby seems to be tolerating them like a man at this point.

Please pray that the doctor keeps him on the same schedule for shots and that his glucose levels have been acceptable.  Pray too that we can learn as much as possible about how to care for Toby.

Photo of our world of shots and monitoring

Photo:   Our new world of syringes, glucose monitoring, log book, and meal planning. We’re learning about stuff that we couldn’t even spell last week! 🙂 God’s good though. Nice that we don’t have to learn it all in one day.