What’s a VLOG?

We weren’t sure at first either but we’re going to try to make figure it out!  We are constantly challenged with trying to share what happens on a daily basis as missionaries in a foreign country.  Some things you can’t just write about or if you can, it just isn’t the same.  In another sense, there are things we think about as good ideas to tell you but then we forget.  So, we’re going to try this VLOG thing for a spin and see how it goes.

I guess a VLOG could be a video blog or video log.  It probably doesn’t matter where you think the word comes from as much as it does that you get something out of it.  Some people online make daily videos of what is going on in their lives kind of like a recorded journal of their lives.  Others do it to be more like reality tv.  We’re hoping this is a mix of the two.  We want to share with you not just words, but video, sound, and commentary what happens on a daily basis.

For now, we’re going to try to do a video once every week or two but keep it under 5 minutes.  Think of it as a quick news reel highlighting what we were up to…and remembered to grab on video.  It will take some time for us to get in the habit of doing this.  In the future, we might do shorter clips throughout the week or maybe not as many updates.

For those of you who enjoy reading our “longer” articles here on our blog, don’t worry, the videos won’t replace them.  We enjoy telling in-depth stories about what happens in ministry.  Rather, we hope to enhance the stories with a better context through the videos.  For now, since we won’t be putting out too many videos, we will probably share some here through our blog until we get more subscribers on our YouTube channel, where these videos will be posted.

We’re going to tag our VLOG with the term #missions4real because we believe it’s easy to “put on a show” and give a neat presentation in a church or put together a  (somewhat) polished video of things that we do in ministry.  This is meant to be more of a “raw behind the scenes” kind of project.  It’s hard to explain without making your eyes gloss over the countless hours we spend in the bank, doing paperwork, studying (Missy spends about 30 hours a week alone on school stuff!), and other seemingly boring yet integral details about what “a normal day in ministry” looks like.

As we continue making these, we hope to fine-tune the content so it is more relevant and hopefully entertaining. Until then, here’s our first episode!