Friday, January 30, 2009

Outreach Seminar in Georgetown CRC

On Friday, January 23rd James, Jodi, Annet, Joanne, Shawn, Ron K (not me but the Pastor at Living Hope CRC) and myself piled into my van and headed for Georgetown to attend a Home Missions Evangelism Conference. As you can see from the picture below, my van's back seat is made for people with slightly narrower hips. I think James is hoping he won't be back there the whole trip. In actual fact, everyone rotated so all got to experience the "coziness" of the back {except for Jodi who is pregnant and I wouldn't let her go back there, nor was she going to anyway.) : ) We enjoyed great fellowship together. Talking and looking out the window. Talking and listening to three grown men in the back seat talk about the strangest things. We took a pit stop to sleep at my parent's home in Whitby, arriving at about 10:30 pm. Seven cramped and stiff people rumbling into my parents home was a sight to see. We put some of us in our basement, some in our large room, and I of course, got my old bed. We awoke at 6:30 am. A quick wash of the face, brushing of the teeth, and out into the VERY cold, but clear morning. Breakfast and coffee was on everyone's mind, and since I'm such a nice guy, I stopped at McDonald's AND Tim's. Below you see Joanne ordering. James and Jodi are the coupon wizards. They had all sorts of coupon's for McDonald's. We then went to Tim's, but no breakfast Sandwiches. Eggs were still being made. So it was just coffee and a bagel. Then about an hour's drive to Georgetown CRC and we began our Conference adventure. Below you see Sheila and others helping us to register. This is the third Conference and it keep growing in size. I've been to all three, and was pleased to be able to bring some from Calvin this time. Below is our worship time just before we heard from our main speaker. Dwanye Cline was our main speaker. A good reformed Baptist preacher who is living out his missional calling in the world. A powerful, uncomfortable, and energizing time for all of us. I got a copy of his talk, so if you'd like to hear it sometime, drop me a line. After Dwayne's talk it was time for snack, and then we fanned out to take in several different workshops. Some we took in were: Prayer walking - learning by doing Youth and Young Adults From stranger to neighbor Evangelism 101: Missional Lifestyle Rhythms Then it was time for lunch. We enjoyed a great meal. I got to meet some people from my Sarnia days, and from my home church in Whitby. Here Ron K and Shawn enjoy a time of relaxing after, well, relaxing in a seminar. I think Shawn took a long walk to work off the calories. It was then back to another set of workshops. I took one on Getting to know your community. A very good seminar on how to figure out the needs of the community you find your church in. Below are the two speakers who led that workshop. Here is the group that was in that workshop. Other workshops were attended by the rest of the group and will be writing down our findings and then meeting together soon to talk about things we learned, and any next steps. Then it was time to close things out and by 3:30 pm we were back in the van and headed for home. Below Shawn and Annet enjoy the evening meal. (Annet it thinking right now that it would be nice if RON would let someone else have the camera so HE would be in a picture. NOT) : ) James is REALLY enjoying his. I didn't think they made hamburgers THAT big. Just kidding James. : ) We arrived home around 9:30 pm and parted ways. We had lots of fun together. Great fellowship and got to know each other better through our times of sharing. I'm thankful we all could go. I'm thankful so many other churches were present at this Conference. I noticed a lot of seniors this time around. Nice to know that they don't feel like they are finished with spreading the good news to all nations. We now take what we've learned and will process it. You will probably hear more about it in the coming months, so stay tuned. : )

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