On Saturday Naomi had a small yard sale. Ellie came up with the idea of selling some juice at the yard sale to earn some money of her own. She made her own “cash box”, decorated her sign, mixed up some juice and got her cups ready. She initially set her price at $1 per cup, but I told her that it was too high.
She even set the payment terms for the transaction as cash only. I guess credit cards were not acceptable.
Later on she remembered that she had a toy cash register, so she went in for that.
Ellie was very surprised that some people just dropped coins in while shopping! All told, she made $12 for her efforts. Good job Ellie!
Each year GoodSeed has a number of opportunities to meet the public and share with others about our books and videos that clearly and simply explain the most important message to man: God’s love and His plan of salvation. Because we are a small organization, we can’t do as many of these events as we would like to, but one that we are able to attend is a large home school convention in a nearby city.
As a home schooling parent, Naomi wanted to be involved in this event with GoodSeed, as she understands some of the challenges and needs of this community, and how GoodSeed’s evangelism resources can help parents. Here is her report:
Recently, I was able to represent GoodSeed at a provincial homeschool convention. While GoodSeed does not specifically cater to home educators, we have found that our evangelism tools are meeting a real need within that community. Many folks we spoke to expressed a real concern for their children:
How could they give their children a solid foundation in God’s Word?
How could they help their children understand God’s gift of salvation as their own, and not just their parents’ belief?
Some expressed concern over the worrying trend of churched children leaving the faith once they leave home. We were able to direct them to GoodSeed resources that would lay a strong framework of understanding on which kids could build everything else in life.
I found it quite thrilling to meet so many folks who deeply desired to obey God’s command of teaching their children about God and to be able to hand them easy-to-use tools to help them along in that goal.
Last week I was with two other staff members in Gillette, Wyoming to video the testimony of a gentleman who had been religious all his life, but had never understood the Gospel of God’s grace. It is a fantastic story, and we hope to have it edited and ready to share with you in a few weeks. The trip was a good time of fellowship with some new friends, and Ken and I had a good time driving the 2700+ km (1700 miles) through Alberta, Montana, and Wyoming.
I did occasionally make Ken pull the car over for an irresistible shot, and I have started to put a few of my photos from the trip online at www.facebook.com/troyjphoto or on my flickr account.
Right now I am seated at the back of one of our evangelism seminars, this time in Olds, Alberta. We have 20 individuals from across this region of Canada who have travelled to our small town to learn more about the Gospel and how to share it with others. Please pray for this seminar over the next three days as we are going through ‘The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus’.
Our biggest little girl turned 8 this past week! We are so thankful for her headstrong, deep-thinking, chattery, imaginative, bright little self. Her name means “light” and she is certainly a light in our lives. Happy Birthday, Ellie girl!
It has been slow going on the editing of video for By this Name – Interactive Edition. The Interactive Edition will be a specially formatted version of By this Name that will include short video clips on a DVD to help with the teaching of the material. As people read through the book, some sections will have a DVD icon, and they can view a video clip to help understand the message.
After finishing filming last year, I was involved in two long, overseas trips, as well as another week-long trip to Ontario. Throw in a week of staff conference, some vacation time, lots of meetings and other work unrelated to video and it slows you down. One particular frustration came when I returned from nearly three weeks in the UK and Ireland. I was in the office for a few days catching up on stuff and was just starting to gear my mind up for video work when my main computer crashed. I had to send it in a few times to get new parts. All told, it was out of commission for another 20 days – as long as my trip overseas was!
With the start of the New Year, and no big trips planned, I am hoping to get lots of editing time in. There are 66 video clips to be included in the finished book, and 52 of those are yet to be edited. Some of these will be quite complicated, others should be simple to do. I’m just guessing, but if I can average 1 clip every four days, then it should take about 42 weeks to finish editing.
We are quite pleased with how some of these clips are turning out. My brother-in-law is currently living and studying in Israel, and has been able to get us some incredible footage that we are incorporating into our By this Name – Interactive Edition. For example, we have one clip near the beginning of the book that mentions the Dead Sea and the area around Qumran, the location the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. His footage has really helped make this segment much more dynamic and interesting. Take a look for yourself:
Please pray for this project as I try to move it to completion.
