Project Update (Justin)

I had 2 crucial meetings with Vasile in the past week, as there has been much concern about the website not being completed on time. First, the basic skeleton is near completion. The page has at least one cool feature that will differentiate it from other commerce sites here in Moldova. It will be very user-friendly.

Meeting with Vasile in the office can be frustrating, because I'm trying to explain and understand things in Russian and English, which gets really hard when talking about technical stuff.
When Ghena joins the conversation I have to have him translate their Romanian dialogue to me, which is frustrating for all parties. Yesterday, Vasile called and said "Why don't we just Skype rather than go to the office to talk?" This ingenious idea saves us both 2 hours on the minibus and allows him to spend more time programming. I also discovered his typed English is quite decent, which saves me a whole lot of stress.

So, here's where we're at:
1. The front page will be completed by December 1.
2. The 4 major sub-pages will look just like the front page, so hopefully those will only take a few hours to write.
3. The behind-the-scenes administration stuff will be completed by Dec. 23.
Dima and Sasha are still working on all of this at home, and Vasile just has to get them together occasionally to combine code. All of them are working in their spare time, around school and other for-pay projects.

We're still on track to have the first version posted by the time we leave.

Thanks for your continued prayers for their efforts! Pray for free time and creativity for them, and smooth communication along the way. Thanks!

Web-design team!

HUGE breakthrough on our website project this week-- it's being created! Last week, I spoke with Vasily about getting the ball rolling. He finally had some free time to devote to the site and wanted to bring in a couple other programmers to help. The more the merrier! I searched through hundreds of templates for a homepage like we wanted, I wrote out step-by-step requirements for the designer, and now all we need is someone to build it.

Yesterday, the team began work in the CAMED office. I lent Vasily my computer to use, so we have 3 guys working at one time. I took some pictures today. They didn't really want to pose for them, and they aren't patient enough to wait for my camera to recharge the flash. So, here is what they look like most of the time.

Vasily is our chief architect. He programs and teaches programming for a living. He's in his early 20's and is a Believer. We've been talking with him about this from Day 1. Notice the cup of coffee with separate cup of sugar. Every programmer needs his coffee.

This is Dima and Sasha (notice the cool faux-hawk). They are 17, and are not yet known believers. I don't know much about them, they don't seem to speak much Russian, only Romanian and a wide English vocabulary of programming terms. I know that Vasily is their teacher and mentor. I suggested that we come up with a team name, but Vasily told me they already have one and it's secret until they build the site good enough to publicly put their name on it.

I'm very thankful for the work they're volunteering to do. Please pray for them! Pray that this site would glorify God, and that they'd come to know Christ personally!