Ministry Update :: October 8, 2015

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Troy

“This book is amazing!”
A couple weeks ago I was in Ontario at the Word of Life Bible Institute, team teaching with John Cross using the book By This Name. We have been teaching this book to Bible school students there since 2002, helping give them a framework to understand the rest of their studies during their school year.

This year was a bit different for us as teachers as we were using two new evangelism tools. First, the students were reading from the new interactive edition of By This Name, which I have been working on for a few years. The video component is finally complete and the book is getting out into the hands of people who are seeking to reach others with the Gospel message. This was the first time we have taught using this book, and it was fitting that it was at WOLBI, as this is also the very first place that we tested a manuscript of the original By This Name book years ago.

The other new thing for us was that this was the very first time using our new leader’s guide for By This Name and all the accompanying videos. We will share more about these new resources in the near future. Stay tuned!

Here is some of the feedback we heard from the students:

“This book is amazing! I previously had no idea that all of these Old Testament stories were all part of a much larger story, all pointing to Jesus and what he did for me. It has greatly increased my confidence in the Lord and His promises. Thank you.”

“This study took the information I knew about the Bible (and some things I did not know as well) and put it in a way that was clear and logical. It made it easier to sort it out in my mind.”

“Everything I was confused about suddenly clicked into place and I now understand why Jesus died for us.I learned that God truly loves us though we are helpless sinners and he just wants us to believe and trust him.”

“I found it very comforting to go over this material.”

“I am now more aware of others world views and appropriate ways I can reach out to them.”

“I have learned many object lessons and outlines that I will use in the future to better explain the gospel.”

While in Ontario, I got to meet with family and friends, and visited two supporting churches. John and I gave an update to a small group who came out to hear what is happening in GoodSeed and with us. It was really nice to reconnect with these people and meet some new friends.

Ethan turns 7 in a couple weeks. Now in grade 2, he is 36 kg (89 lbs) – the biggest in his class and a few classes above him, too, I think.

Adelaine is 8.5 years old. She is in grade 4 and the smallest in her class, and a few grades below her too.

Ellie is turning into a little lady right before our eyes. Ten years old and in a hurry to be a teenager, she is in grade 5 this year.

Watermelons

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Troy

This year we are growing some watermelons in our greenhouse. The seeds took a long time to germinate, but once they started growing, they grew very fast. Each day I would go to the greenhouse and you could see how much they had grown, with the vines reaching higher every day and we would have to detangle them from the other plants. I decided to take a time lapse to see the growth and motion of these plants. This was done in the greenhouse with the door closed and no fans, so there isn’t any wind blowing things around in there. I expected the vine’s tendrils to move around as they search for something to grip onto, but not for the whole thing to move this much. This was shot over 4 hours, with one picture every 60 seconds.

A watermelon blossom.

The first melon on July 14th.

The melons themselves also grew very fast, sometimes up to 4 or 5 cm a day! These photos were from July 18 and 19.

August 27th.

We had heard that you can tell when a watermelon is ripe when the little tendril immediately above it starts to dry up.

So here is our first watermelon in late August. It was 57.5 cm in diameter, and weighed 3.25 kg (7 lbs, 2.4 oz).

It wasn’t quite as red as we expected it to be on the inside, and we maybe could have left it on the vine for another week or so. However, it was still delicious!

Foodscaping

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Troy

Most people like a yard with nice landscaping. Trees, shrubs, etc.

I like foodscaping – landscaping with food.

As we can afford to, we have been working to make our property more productive, while trying to maintain the nice looks of the yard. Our yard came with an abundance of cottoneaster (a.k.a. catoni aster) shrubs. Three of the corners of our house have these large plants which can make a nice, shape-able hedge. There are two more in the front garden, and two complete hedges along the back and one side of our backyard. I would love to replace the hedge across the back with something that would give us edible berries, but that would take quite a bit of work to dig them up, and we would have to do without the privacy for a few years until something else grew into the spot.

This spring we ripped out the one on the front corner of the house and planted two saskatoon berries. The saskatoons are native to this area and can grow to be quite large and have a small berry that looks like a blueberry, but not quite as flavourful. I plan to replace a few more of these around the house this summer.

useless hedge plants – the big one in the corner has been replaced by saskatoons

Saskatoons from last year

Saskatoons

Speaking of blueberries, last year we planted four bushes and they survived our relatively mild winter this past year and we will be getting some berries in a few weeks. Probably only a handful this year, but as the plants get established there will be more.

Since moving in to this house we have planted three apple trees (one just last summer), and after a few years of them getting established, we are going to get some apples this year. We have Goodland, Parkland, and Battleford varieties, but only the Goodland looks like it is going to produce this year. Unfortunately, the tree has dropped a good percentage of its apples, so I need to do some research to find out what is going on.

This year our two haskap (a.k.a. blue honeysuckle) were producing. The bushes are still small so here isn’t a lot of them, but they taste great! They are ripe by around mid June and were the first things outside the garden we could eat. I think we could have had some last year, but the birds got them first. I hope to plant a few other varieties of haskap soon.

We also have around 35 strawberry plants in the gardens and a few other spots on property, so we will be enjoying quite a few of these this summer. First strawberry of the year was June 29, and now we can get a small bowl full every second day.

Nanking and Carmine Jewel cherries are growing nicely and we plan to plant more of these in the yard soon.

The raspberries are producing lots.

Carmine jewel cherries, strawberries, and raspberries from the foodscaped yard.

Looks like we will have some red and black currents too.

We will also have choke cherries, but those taste awful. They can be added to jams and such though, but with lots of sugar.

Our grape vines are doing well, and looks like we will have a good crop this year. We are having a bit of a problem with some grape rust moths though.

Last year’s grape harvest looked like this!

Foodscaping is an investment that sometimes takes years before you start to see a payoff. But when it comes, it is a sweet and tasty payoff.

Ministry Update :: August 13, 2015

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Troy

Video Project Almost Complete

The By this Name video project that I have been doing on and off for the last couple years is coming to completion. I am in the process of finishing the subtitles for the video and getting them on the DVD. Subtitles are a very tedious job, and thankfully, I’ve had quite a bit of help with them. Some of my co-workers drafted their three teenage boys to come in and over three days they pushed through most of the text entry. This usually involves watching a video clip over and over and over and over and… you get the picture. The video is watched repeatedly in four second increments as you type in the words said, then move on to the next four seconds. Then the text must be cleaned up, with better breaks in text so it can be comfortably read on screen and correctly timed to match what is being said. The screen shot above shows the DVD authoring software with a menu, as well as the subtitle program.

One day as we were working through this task (did I mention it was tedious?), a gentleman from Africa came through our office on a tour. When we showed him what we were doing he pleaded that we do it accurately because it really helps him when he watches videos. We know this to be the case with many others as well, so keep pushing on with the job. Not only can these subtitles be helpful in English, but they can be the basis for future translations and subtitling.

There have been quite a few technical challenges to overcome recently. For example, during this stage of putting the DVD together, we realized that my video monitors were not showing me some problems with the video. A few people were testing the DVD on their HD TVs at home, so I had to go back in and fix quite a few videos.

As I write this, my main video editing computer is once again giving fits. It is an older machine, and always seems to have problems right when I am at a critical stage in production. Please pray that I can complete this job without any further delays or distractions. I am already past the deadline we had set for getting these matched up with the books which are being printed.

Here is a sample from the upcoming book (Complete with subtitles!):

“By this Name” – Chapter 8-A Self-Righteous from GoodSeed on Vimeo.

It’s Summer

This summer seems to be busier than usual, but we are trying to get out and enjoy it too. We have had many bike rides, a camping trip with family in Banff National Park, a trip to Fernie, BC, a new splash park in town, hiking, and a lots of food growing in the greenhouse. Here are a few pics of the fun.