Literally.
Rob Trenckmann, our country leader from Hungary, is in charge of this year's conference and has truly put in countless hours of work to oversee the theme, talks, content and flow of the week.
But Rob suffers from something called "Multiple Chemical Sensitivities" (incredibly explained on his blog HERE) which precludes him from being in the tent for most of the conference...that he's in charge of.
So we kept our coats on, turned the diesel generated heat off this morning, turned our chairs around and thus gained a new perspective this morning as Rob shared from the back of tent in our opening session.
It was a powerful opening session as he talked about two perspectives of ministry that people often lean towards: the factory or the forest method. You'll have to listen to his awesome talk when it's online to hear what the third, better, option is.
(Hint: it's all about 'organic matter'!)
After his session we packed into the lodge and Malenka to warm up with coffee and snacks.
Then came back into the tent for Dave's first session of the conference. Oh how happy he is to be back with the JV team!
There are some unsung heroes of the week who sacrifice their time and talents while Dave and others are speaking: these are the translators.
Imagine going to a conference that's in your second or third language! Over half of our JV team are nationals from the countries we serve in. Most of them speak English, but to varying degrees. So some countries bring translators to help out those who are not as advanced.
They translate simultaneously which is NO easy task as the talks are flying by!!
Two hundred and eighty people can seem pretty daunting when you walk into the tent - more like a crowd than a family.
For that reason every person is in the same small group for the whole week, getting a chance to process and talk about what they're learning. Dave broke up them up into their groups this morning and actually had them sit together for his whole session so they could discuss at different points along the way.
Suddenly the room got a lot smaller and more intimate!
Dave did a great job of making it more like a conversation or discussion as he taught, which hopefully made it easier to talk in small groups as well.
Dave likes to teach creatively and developmentally so does a lot of different things to make his talk "sticky", as he says. One of the things he did this morning was to bring Pavel, who serves on the iTeam, to the front to tell his story of coming to Jesus, and what happened after that.
He used five different chairs to sit Pavel in as he explained the concept of Jesus' theory of ministry: Come and See, Repent and Believe, Follow Me, Follow Me and Fish for Men, and I am Sending You.
This is the basis from which he is teaching this week on how Jesus did ministry.
While he and others are teaching, so many are behind the scenes doing work to make it all happen!
Kevin, Katka and Daniel are just three of those people who are tirelessly working all week to take care of details that no one else knows about!
So thankful for these people, and others on our iTeam, who are cheerfully and sacrificially making this week happen.
Don't forget to check out our FB page, as well as Twitter and Instagram to follow along as we get back to Jesus this week here at #JVFall14.
Connie!!! Thank you THANK YOU thank you for posting so quickly and with such detail!! It means so much to those of us watching and praying from a distance. =)
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting - this makes it so real and we love to see what is happening around the world with those we are praying for. Can't wait for the audio/video of the conference!
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