Missions, marketing and 3 things I will change after my trip to Africa

I am writing this post from the airplane.

Perhaps not significantly noteworthy since much of today’s content is created on the fly (on a mobile device or literally in the air).  What makes this post unique is that I am writing as I return from a 11-day mission trip to Africa (yes, the picture above is from my window seat at some point in my international flight).  You can learn a lot about yourself in 11 days.

Admittedly I do not like to be away from social media for that long. I miss posting useful school marketing tips on our website’s blog. I did not peek into Facebook for over a week (I do confess to have scheduled a number of school marketing updates via our Facebook page because I do not believe that just because I am away does not mean our followers are). And yes, I did make a conscious effort to advance schedule daily tweets so I could keep my Twitter audience fed with practical school marketing content even during my hiatus (I hope you found it helpful!) As many social junkies do, I confess that as soon as I had access to WiFi, I was “all-in”, opening multiple apps open on my iPhone in order to reconnect (email, texting, Facebook and Twitter at a minimum).  I think my flurry of social frenzy is also evidence of a bigger problem and perhaps yours, too.

We all have too many apps open, more than enough irons in our social media fire, and way too many tabs open. I am not talking about how we behave on our mobile devices or 13″ desktop computers. I am convicted that this is just a pervasive problem in our lives in general. Metaphorically, our batteries are draining.

Perhaps I will write more another time about what I did on my mission trip to Benin, West Africa (it’s not my first trip there – my family actually worked as missionaries for almost 10 years in that country). I already recorded an audio memo on my phone in my Africa hotel room that I hope to soon share via our school marketing podcast. But similar to New Year’s resolutions, as many of you do, I look for vacations, sabbaticals and mission trips to refocus, renew and restart.

As the new school year launches, I join you in looking for ways to trim off the excess in our lives, eliminate the incessant “busy” excuse, and to pour more into the lives of others. Here are 3 ways I commit to doing this in my life: (more…)