We met in a park and had the first hour or so of fellowship and potluck brunch which was nice to just chat. I didn't have to feel too badly about being a few minutes late even. Then we had the service after that and some activities for the children after that.
I sent out Easter cards this year instead of Christmas cards, because I'd actually missed sending out Christmas cards for the last 3 years because of moving or health reasons, and I took a lot of time to write indivividualized letters to everyone, but most of them ended like this:
---
I would really appreciate your prayers about some of the
decisions I’m making that I’ve mentioned, about my health, and for my brothers
and nephews.
As we focus on Easter we think of Christ rising from the dead,
conquering death and hell, overcoming sin, making all things new.
When I look behind, when I look at all I just wrote, all I
experienced the past few years, what my family has gone through, I think I am
ready for something new, I am ready to experience anew the resurrection of
Christ.
God Bless You and Happy Easter!
Christ IS Risen!
Or, as they say in Russian…
Иисус Воскрес …. Воистину Воскресе!
(Indeed He is Risen!)
And here is another little dose of Easter: a Pysanka(plural Pysanki):
***
This next text is:
Farh, Jiing-Lih, Poksakoff, Philip, M, & Organ, Dennis W, (1990). Accounting for Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Leader Fairness and Task Scope versus Satisfaction. Journal of Management, 16(4), 705-721.
***
These citations are from the section "Leader fairness and OCB"
"A person apparently can tolerate some deviation from expected fairness in outcomes if the methods or procedures used to determine the outcomes are reasonable. A plausible explanation for this finding is that fair procedures provide a basis for trusting that occasional inequities will or can be rectified in the future, that the working contract is self-correcting and still worthy of commitment, and that present unfairness of outcomes is due to unusual circumstances." (p. 707)
The most glaring issues during my time with the Vienna mission are the revolving door job assignments. I don't see how you can see that there is any way under heaven that reasonable methods or procedures were used to determine my job assignments. It had absolutely nothing to do with, say, my attitude on the job, my punctuality or my reality, my ability to do the job, or anything like that. No. It was either that 1) they didn't really want me there in the first place because of my dad's work (he worked for star wars as a program manager); or 2) I wasn't becoming properly socialized (hadn't sold my soul to them).
***
"Rawls (1971) has argued that procedural fairness also procedural fairness also presumes a demonstrated respect for human dignity, for treatment of people in a 'humane' fashion." (p. 707)
I would just comment here that the Vienna mission, it might be noted, had no procedures of any kind, as far as I was aware of (that would have been taken seriously I mean, so forget the policy manual with its rights to study German and rights to take time off to spend time with visiting surpporters from back home - both of which the mission would not let me keep) that would be considered "procedural fairness" and the mission did not treat me, at any rate, in a way that "demonstrated respect for human dignity."
The last phrase requires a longer, more complex answer, which I'm not inclined to go into right now. I have to think of it in terms of myself and specifically in terms of them sending me back to the States and how that absolutely horrified me and I thought they were like the Soviets sending me to be brainwashed (like they did to Christians). I don't know about you, but my perspective on that is that it isn't exactly very humane.
***
Sorry this is a little late... I fell asleep at the computer last night! By the way, the pysanka (Ukrainian Easter egg, is my work - if you can call it that. After I worked for the Vienna mission I worked for my undergraduate alma mater and I took a 1-credit art class to learn to make these. I wouldn't say I'm exactly gifted; there were certainly others in the class who showed much more potential than I did, I think. But I tried as opportunity allowed to keep up at it. Unfortunately, opportunity has not allowed for quite a few years now, so I'm pretty rusty. But I think I picked up fairly quickly so that maybe next year I should be able to do better, especially if I start earlier. I only did 3, but the first one was really bad, the second one was damp and the wax slid off, so there was only one that was worth keeping. It reads "Christ is Risen 2012" on the edge in Russian. It'll be added to my small little collection. I'm not nearly as good as my great grandma, so I have a lot of practicing to do. But it's going to have to wait until next year, because I'm paking up my pysanky things because I have a lot of other things to do, like this blog.
