A week ago it happened again. Opening my iPad as I stood at the back of the sanctuary about to walk forward, I wanted to check how I planned to welcome everyone to worship. I see the pop-up message, "This document has been deleted on another device."
My stomach clenched. It had happened two weeks ago (on Palm Sunday) but I had just opened a copy of the document in another app. So I switched and began worship since I didn't have time to deal with it. I couldn't find the document anywhere and figured it was a fluke. But now, I was faced with no prayers, no notes on announcements, no planned 'words of welcome' and no planned words of transition.
Fortunately I was worship leader, not preacher that day. Relying on years of creating worship, and my memory of what I had planned, I 'winged it' with only a bulletin. I did have a moment to jot down my memory of the 3 (yes, Jeff) specifics I'd planned to invite people to pray over so I wouldn't forget them when the prayer time arrived.
As soon as I got home that afternoon, I put in a call to Apple.
I was quickly moved up the line to a wonderful guy who really knew his stuff. Still, he had no idea what was happening. We decided to rest my iCloud documents, which took a week between error messages and my travel and the IOS not letting me into iCloud in a browser, only access to the app. Now, two weeks later, and MAYBE a reset (it says it didn't reset but appears to have done so) I await another disaster.
Precautions:
I am backing up everything to dropbox, or Google Drive, or opening in another app, at every change. I am also not leaving the iPad open on a document but returning to the list of docs whenever I finish. (Which causes a save to iCloud.) I guess this is living in the tension.
