GoodSeed UK and Europe Trip
As I write this I am finishing up a two-week trip to the United Kingdom and Germany. Sitting in our GoodSeed Europe office in Detmold, Germany, we have had many opportunities to fellowship with believers and introduce people to the evangelism resources that GoodSeed produces.
The trip for me began May 15 with a flight from Calgary to London, then starting the harrowing adventure of driving on the left/wrong side of the road for three hours by hiring a car to get to Cardiff, Wales. There, I joined John and Janice Cross, as well as our UK and Ireland representative, Merv, who joined GoodSeed several months before. In Cardiff, we were doing the last of six TERM seminars that had been going on for weeks across Ireland and Northern Ireland.
We left Cardiff and I drove my rental car back to Heathrow airport, hopped on the London tube, and met the others at the very large and modern ExCel exhibition centre in southeast London. This is such a large venue that the tube has two stops, one at each end of the building. We had four days there as exhibitors at the Christian Resource Exposition, representing GoodSeed. Most people that we talked to had never heard of GoodSeed before, and I found it exciting talking to so many people, introducing them to our evangelism resources, and seeing their growing interest and excitement about the opportunities. We gave away many copies of the little booklet, The Story that Matters, one to anyone who would take a moment to talk to us. We were able to connect up with a number of other organizations that work in evangelism and share our tools with them. Usually there were at least two or three of us at the booth at all times and we were almost constantly speaking to someone. Each day, our voices were almost hoarse from all the talking! We hope and pray that many new opportunities will arise from those four busy days.
After London, I again hired a car and we went to Colchester for a few days, filming some teaching material (coming soon!) and for some meetings to discuss the future plans for GoodSeed UK and Ireland with Merv. We spent one evening seeing the sights in the beautiful Constable Country (named after a famous British painter, John Constable, 1776-1837). We even had lunch in a restaurant whose building dates back to 1465.
From Colechester, I drove to the Stansted airport, where I was very relieved to drop off my second rental car of the trip. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun driving these little cars on the windy British roads, but I never knew if I was going to lose a mirror. We flew the infamous Ryanair to Germany for meetings with our GoodSeed Europe coworkers, which I also sit on the board for. This office has been running for two years and we are excited about the opportunities that we see here. There is such a huge need for translators and translation coordinators for our books for the many languages that can be represented in just one church, yet alone across all these borders. As we sat discussing and making plans for the future, I was excited by the opportunities and answered prayers we see here.
We also took a 3.5 hour road trip on the autobahn to visit with some representatives of a church here in Germany who are considering doing a translation of our upcoming musical, No Ordinary Story. It was a good meeting, and I hope we can proceed with this and see this evangelistic performance done in many churches here in Germany.
Thank you for your prayers for Naomi and myself in our ministry with GoodSeed. It is a privilege to travel and see old friends and meet new ones as we fellowship together and rejoice in our shared relationship with God.
On May 29th we fly home to be with my family again after being away for two weeks. John and Janice have been away since late April.
It will be good to be home.
Troy
