Hopp Schwiiz!

It was a lot of fun having the Swiss CEF team at Kilchzimmer the past few days. These workers, who are all from the Swiss-German speaking region, have a burden for the children of Switzerland. We hope they were encouraged and refreshed here on the mountain and can return to their ministry fired up! As I share this, would you please lift them up in prayer. Switzerland is a tough country to have ministry in. Humanism, materialism and apathy for things of Christ work against the reaching of children. All of these workers raise their own support, and even though Switzerland is a very wealthy country, it is very difficult raise funds. There are also three other regions in Switzerland that do not have a large active ministry – the French, Italian and Romantsch-speaking regions. Please pray for people of God's choosing to join the work to serve in these needy areas. Thanks!

Photo challenges and results

Sometimes we're faced with taking photos ourselves when the World Wide Web lets us down. I've joined a number of stock photo Web sites and regularly use photos that cost very little or are free. Sometimes, however, there just isn't a photo there that matches the idea I've got in my head. That's when we ask for volunteers from local families. The Künzli family has always been ready to help and since they have six children, there's always the age range I'm looking for. My project is for a Bible correspondence course starter lesson that will be distributed with Meet the King books. The design needs to have continuity between the two, but my general idea came from a fantastic flyer CEF Germany did.

I took two hundred photos of the children, but since I'm still not a very good photographer, there were problems with the files. I narrowed my selections down to two of the best. In these two photos the color temperature is different, something that I needed to fix. I also had nasty

looking shadowing on the boy's collar. I had to tone that down a bit, too. Had I used a diffuser, I could have taken care of that problem before the shoot.

In Bridge and Photoshop I did my color-correcting, masked them out and placed them in my InDesign document. Overall, not a bad product. I'm hoping and praying many children can learn of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ through the lessons!

Learning together

The past two weeks have been absolutely incredible. I had eight students, all CEF® workers, from Europe, Asia and the Middle East who took part in the Design Software Course. They were a great group, full of fun and laughter. We took a trip to a large print shop where they could see how products are printed. There were also a very inquisitive group, and I got a chance to learn alongside them. We had workers from Austria, France, Ireland, Jordan and a closed country. Sam Beck, a co-worker from Kilchzimmer and Andrea Weir, a volunteer with the Multimedia Department also joined in and were wonderful students. Because of safety issues for several of the students, I had to digitize their faces in the photos. Please pray for these students who will be having a huge impact for Christ among the children around the world!

Brent helping Ojini, from Jordan. Photos by Tim Shirey.

Planning, Preparations & Prayers

Whew, it's been a crazy week, and it's only going to get crazier. I'm in the middle of preparing for a new design software course, which starts on Sunday evening. The last time I taught one of these courses was two years ago. Back then, we focused entirely on the Adobe Creative Suite, CS. This time, I'll be teaching CS3, which includes InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat and includes seminars on the printing process, simple design techniques and working with a printer. My co-worker, Tim, will be teaching seminars on photography and Adobe Bridge. We'll also be visiting a print shop. Since changing software versions, there's a lot of changes and updates to the classes, handouts and exercises.

Tim and I would really appreciate your prayers for wisdom, strength, good health and endurance over the next two weeks. We still have lots of planning to do and many preparations to make. Please also pray for the eight students who, Lord-willing, will be attending. This has the potential to reach many more children with the Gospel!

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng/Majoros Attila.

December happenings

It's been a wild and crazy December, and there's still several more weeks to go! We said a sad farewell to the Van Eck family, who flew back to South Africa on December 3. Brent drove them to the airport and with tears in his eyes said goodbye. The Van Ecks became good friends over the past five years and we will sorely miss them.

We got our Christmas tree that next weekend and the kids had fun decorating it. Of course mommy and daddy had to fine-tune the placement of them, but it's a nice little tree.

A few days later we hosted a Christmas Club at our house. The local CEF® worker, Trudy Heininger, came to give the gospel story. Unfortunately, no children from our village of Holderbank came, but we did have two children from our church. We discussed it, and even though the results were disappointing, we're going to try again next year. It was certainly a learning experience for us. God isn't interested in our performance. He's interested in our obedience. All we can do is to keep on trying and praying.

Brent chaired his first meeting ever the next day at the Kilchzimmer workers' meeting. It was certainly harder than he thought and wasn't sure how well he did until he was unanimously chosen to lead the next one. (He still thinks it was because no one else wanted the job!)

Jen's been very busy too, baking Christmas cookies, sending out cards, wrapping presents and preparing for our Christmas open house, which is on the 22nd. Please pray for us as we have a chance to share the true meaning of Christmas with those who come. Merry Christmas!

It's here!

We praise the Lord that Brent's new computer arrived! It is such a blessing to have a machine like this after his old one died last month. Thank you to all of you who gave toward this project, and we especially want to thank the children of Schuylkill County who gave this summer!

We have a lot of new projects that have been waiting, and now we can jump right in with this new machine and create more materials that will spread the Gospel throughout Europe.

For all you techies: it's a 27" iMac with an Intel i5 processor, 8 gigs of Ram, 1TB Hard drive and a second monitor.

Presenting …

At work I often listen to R.C. Sproul's podcast Renewing your Mind. The last several days I've been "renewing a presentation" for the Literature Survey class for the Children's Ministry Leadership Course (CMLC). It has been such an enjoyable project, and am very thankful to help make the class better through better visuals. I was also very glad to hear it was very easy to use and I'm now working on a second presentation for the Ministries to Children class. It's through your prayers and gifts that these projects can get done! Thank you! Here's a few samples of the slides I've done.

Parade of lights

Earlier this month Amy had a chance to take part in the lantern parade in Holderbank. She made her lantern out of a large turnip (it's a different lantern in the photo) and placed a candle inside. The children gathered in three different locations and walked to the center of town, where they sang several songs to the crowd. It was a neat experience and we enjoyed the hot tea and "Nussgipfeli" at the end.

Hope for all

Please pray for our church in Switzerland this week and weekend as we have an evangelistic event, Hope for all. We've been busy designing flyers and posters and have seen them in several towns in the area. Our church, the Freie evangelische Gemeinde in Balsthal (Free Evangelical Church) has been struggling lately and we have been praying God would do some great things through us. We've become more active there, running sound, maintaining the Web site and designing materials for outreaches and events. There are so few believers in the area and it is difficult for us to break through the barriers of religion, tradition and apathy, but we know through prayer, that God can do amazing things!