Urbana Video Recap - Swaziland

So this past year was almost entirely focused on Urbana for our family. Most notably, Matt traveled to New York and Swaziland to help produce the below videos.

Swaziland was the most intense project as Matt was gone almost two weeks and he and his team traveled all over the place not even sure if they'd get the story they came to get. The went to document World Vision care workers who have received medical kits from World Vision. These medical kits are fairly simple but extremely useful in places like rural Swaziland. One night at Urbana was completely devoted to building these medical kits (32,000 of them to be exact). The videos below were a part of that night.

The last one in particular is a favorite of mine. It's a testimony of one of the aid workers at Urbana. I actually had no idea she would be there and after hearing so much about Matt's trip and seeing so much work go into putting this night together, I was in tears when she walked out.


Join In - Caregiver from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.


Join In - Spinach from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.


Join In - Banquet from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

Shortie Khumalo from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

Life Update

It's about 25 days until Urbana (the triannual mission's conference InterVarsity holds), and for the first time, I'm not really all that stressed about it. And that's probably because for the first time in 12 years, I'm not going. So strange.

We finally made the decision about a month ago that I would stay behind with the little one. Between Matt's late nights, hectic day schedules, and confining a 6 month old to a hotel for 7 days, it just seemed like it would be less stressful for everyone involved if I stayed back.

I'm both happy and sad about that decision. Sad because Urbana is always so cool. And watching the live stream online just isn't the same. Sad because I'll miss seeing all the video's Matt's been working so hard on unveiled before a huge audience. Sad because I'll miss seeing a bunch of close friends. And sad because Urbana always provides a needed spiritual kick in the pants.

But in many other ways I'm happy. Happy not to have all the stress of preparing for and executing a major conference. Happy that my introverted self doesn't need to be around 16,000 people for 7 days. Happy that I get to spend New Years and Christmas with friends back in Madison.

So it's a mixed bag.

All that said, we're in crunch time and Matt and his team are working hard to finish up all their projects in the next three weeks. In some ways since so much attention is focused on that right now, Christmas still seems pretty distant. We did however manage to get the Christmas tree up and other various decorations. And we did our first round of Christmas shopping last weekend.

So Christmas and Urbana. That's pretty much the state of our life right now!

Need a new Book to read...

Any recommendations?