There's an App for that ?

The image above may not obviously fit with this story but hopefully you'll understand when it's told.

I'm learning, seeing more and more that God's ways are truely not our ways. I recently developed an App for Debriefing, but that story only covers about a month. The "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey (Old radio reference) used to say began a few years ago with my running across a therapy game called "UnPack That" billed as "Therapy in a Box." A card game proposed to be for individuals, couples, families, to learn about each other and strengthen their relationships. I purchased a deck and read through the categories and many of the questions and thought, what a unique tool for people to use to enhance their awareness of each other and themselves. It also occurred to me then, that the makers of this card game might be interested in developing another niche addition for those working cross-culturally, but specific to transitions or debriefing. Well my search for the makers of the game ran into several dead ends, one of which indicated that the trademark for the game had expired, so I figured they stopped making it. Then after what seemed like a couple of years later as I revisited my search, I found them ! But they said the idea was a good one, but not scalable to a sufficient number of sales that would interest them.

I had over the years also run across John Gottman's Card Deck app, that essentially offered the same process for enhancing relationships but in a card deck app format. Having hit a barrier with the physical card deck idea, I started looking into developing an app for debriefing similar in function to the Gottman Card Deck. The next barrier was $. The cheapest app development price I could find was $5000. Then there was the learning curve. I didn't know and still don't, know anything about apps. I had heard someone mention that they used a developer from Fiverr to help them with an app, so I inquired the best I could at the time. A start and stop with trial and error, $ refunded, with Fiverr, and I then found the Fiverr Pro and vetted provider that gave me what I had been looking for for several years.

Now I have a "web app" that is available on any computer, ipad, laptop, phone that uses a web browser. I can offer the app to those working cross-culturally at no cost to them, and hopefully help facilitate their working through issues / challenges of transition individually, with their spouse, teams, or others, until they can access formal debriefing. Even this short re-telling of the process seems to miss the mark of where and how God was always at work in this seemingly small process over the years, but he kept bringing it back to my awareness over and over again, until here it is ! So thankful for His persistence, faithfulness in affirming this path and working this out. This again is just one way that I continue to see God's ways which may seem like a long winding road at times, but they always prove much better than ours.

Check out the tab in this website, "Crossing Cultures" and try out the app. Let me know what you think.