Monthly Archives: November 2011

Ministry Update :: November 29, 2011

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Being equipped with the right tools is very important to us here at GoodSeed. After all, we are making evangelism and discipleship tools to equip people to reach others for Christ. We do our best to make these tools high quality, be it the quality of the paper or binding of a book or the production value of a video. We do this so that they will last and not be rejected out-of-hand as cheap junk by someone investigating Christianity. I have personally seen a number of videos that have good content, but you have to be really interested to bear watching it because it is so poorly done.

A couple weeks ago we started video production for the By This Name interactive book. The first day was really just testing our ideas and equipment.

We did a morning of filming and then I started to edit it together to see how it was working. After reviewing it, we decided to purchase a shotgun mic just to test and determine if it provided better sound than our (really good) Lavalier mic. It is a big investment, but if we didn’t like the new mic we could always send it back. Here are the results of our testing:

After doing these comparison tests we decided to go with the shotgun mic as it seems to provide clearer audio. This will mean more work for us as one of our crew members must now become a boom mic operator (Steve’s arms will be tired!), but we think it will give us clearer audio for the rest of of the project.

Now that we are equipped with the right tools, we are diving back into our production schedule and are going to be doing more shooting this week. Please pray for our crew as we set aside our regular jobs and pick up cameras, slates, mics and other equipment.

Ministry Update :: November 15, 2011

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The office is buzzing a bit today as we get ourselves ready for a new video shoot starting tomorrow. We will be working on the video portion of an interactive version of By This Name. I’m pretty excited about this project! By This Name is one of our three main evangelism books for adults, but we currently only have a workbook for it. By comparison, our older book, The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, has quite a few derivative books and resources: an audio book (either CD or a free MP3 version), a full 12 hour video version, an interactive version, large print,  workbook, and soon will have a teachers guide.

By This Name is the book we now use in all our evangelism seminars and is the book we recommend most, so I am quite happy to get started on adding new resources built around it for people to use in their evangelism and discipleship Bible studies.

An interactive version of the book will feature a DVD in the back that can be viewed to help explain more difficult parts of the book.

A sample from The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus Interactive book.

When someone comes to one of the video sections in the book, an icon informs them that there is a video segment they can watch to help explain that section or provide supplemental information. Having an interactive version of By This Name will open up new opportunities for teachers and individuals using this book, and is also a vital component to eventually creating a Teachers Guide.

As we ramp up for the video shoot, we will be pulling staff from around our office out of their regular duties to help. We will be having camera operators, people recording time codes, someone operating the teleprompter, audio person, etc. This project could take a couple months as we shoot a bit of video each week. Please pray for our staff, and especially John Cross (who we will be taping), as we start this video project and move it forward to completion.

Thank you,

Troy & Naomi

A Sea of Cellulose

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After our first year in our 1960’s house, we have learned that it is a bit on the cold side in here during Alberta’s frigid winters and we want to start doing something about it.

One thing we discovered shortly after moving in was that the overhang on the front of the house had very little insulation in the floor. It looks like the floor was insulated with some asbestos-based insulation when the home was constructed 40+ years ago and it seems to have settled, leaving no insulation for parts of the overhang.


The old asbestos in the floor was doing nothing for retaining heat.

This helped make our living room, the kids’ bedrooms, and basement much cooler. This summer I tackled that with lots of spray insulation. I took down the aluminum soffit that was under the overhang and drilled many holes and insulated the overhang with expanding foam insulation to fill in the area and lock in the old asbestos.

The asbestos is fine as long as it is undisturbed and doesn’t get airborne. It is all now safely encased in foam and the extra insulation seems to be making a difference in the house!

 

We also took a look in our basement above the ceiling and discovered that the header is not insulated all the way around the house. So the basement and upstairs walls are insulated, but the space between the floors wasn’t.

No insulation here either…

Fixing that problem.

Getting the basement more comfortable is a priority this year as Naomi is spending more time down there homeschooling Ellie. We also have an uninsulated concrete wall in the laundry room we hope to address soon.

Recently Naomi and I had one of Canada’s EcoEnergy audits done on our house and we learned some more ways to keep the house warm. We already knew our attic was lacking insulation – about 10 inches less than there should be. All that was up there was 4 to 8 inches of 40 year old fibreglass batt insulation. We learned we could get a grant for insulating it properly, so we set out to learn about blowing in insulation. I’ve been up in the attic a lot getting it ready for insulating, including hooking up the bathroom exhaust fan so it vents outside and putting in insulation dams for the soffit vents.

 

 

Last week we filled up our attic with a sea of cellulose.

This is a two-man job, and Steve was sucker enough kind enough to offer to help out by loading the blower.

I don’t think I can move my legs anymore.

Thanks for the help Steve!

We have a number of other projects ahead of us to do as we can afford them, but the next step in our quest for heat is a wood insert for the living room to replace the drafty old  fireplace. Hopefully we will be able to get it installed in early December! We are thankful for the Lord’s provision for what we have been able to do so far and look forward to what we can improve here in the future.