Thanksgiving … and Harvest Home

It felt like July was last week and last Christmas was only a month away. On Thursday, we'll be as busy as ever … doing our daily routine. Thanksgiving Day is an American holiday, but we're not in America! We celebrated Harvest Home back in October at the ingathering service at Basel Christian Fellowship. Jehovah Jirah was praised as the one who supplies all our needs. We indeed were blessed as everyone was asked to bring a main dish or a dessert, but quite a few (including us) brought both. What a feast! Imagine having a smorgasbord with choices from more than 3 dozen countries across the globe … Singapore, Scotland, Argentina, Ireland, Mexico, Japan, Romania, Nigeria, Korea … the list goes on! That's one aspect of BCF we enjoy and appreciate–the diversity of believers from many cultures. The other thing that strikes us is the diversity of occupations represented. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, businessmen … some of the top minds in their field. When I read or hear of someone mocking believers in Christ Jesus as being mindless fools, just one look around at the congregation blows their ignorance out of the water.

We trust you have a blessed Thanksgiving day. Remember to thank our heavenly Father for His mighty gifts!

Amy's first photo shoot

It's been a busy week. The Multimedia department was given an assignment of creating three complete custom PowerPoint presentations in a week-and-a-half. We had to create slides from scratch, using imagery that wasn't already provided. So what did we do? We had multiple photo shoots! The presentations, all of which are promotional tools, focused on the book Meet the King!, Wondersurf.com and multimedia items. We needed a photo of a grandmother sharing Meet the King! with her granddaughter, so we used Amy and her Swiss Godmother, Liz. Tim Shirey did the photography, using just his flash and the white walls and ceiling to bounce. He also masked out the color on the entire image except for the book they're looking at. We're all very happy with the result.

You may ask "why do we do promotional materials? Aren't you focused on creating materials for children?" We're creating these so more churches can know what Child Evangelism Fellowship® can do to help them reach children in their community. It also explains the various projects in case someone would like to pray and give. We're hoping these presentations can be used in a mighty way to expand the work of CEF®!

Life of Christ 1

I sometimes feel like the Energizer Bunny, things just keep on going with these Good News Club® resource packs! I'm in the middle (actually hopefully near the end) of the pack for the CEF® lesson Life of Christ 1. This lesson begins with annunciation and finishes with the Lord Jesus calling his disciples. It's been a lot of fun, but there's always room for improvement. As a lover of maps, I really enjoyed researching for the maps included in the pack. Although simple, hopefully they'll help teacher better show where events took place. These packs have taken the lion's share of my time the last few weeks, but Lord-willing, it will help boys and girls know more about our Savior!

NEW! Car project update

We weren't planning on updating this so quickly, but we praise the Lord for our sending church which has pledged $3,000 toward our vehicle. We're not far from our goal! Please rejoice with us! Please also pray we can quickly raise the remaining amount.

Car project update

Just wanted to keep everyone updated on our latest numbers. As of Oct. 13, we've raised nearly two-thirds of the funds needed for our car.

We're continuing to pray for the remaining $5,530 to come in, especially by the end of November, as our current vehicle will not pass inspection without major repairs.

Would you please pray with us in this project? If you would like to give, you may send your gift to:

Child Evangelism Fellowship

PO Box 348

Warrenton, MO 63383-0348

Please designate the gift "Hautle vehicle E000 4119 035"

Thank you!

Zivilschutz

This past week Brent had his annual Zivilschutz duty (military replacement civil service). He's part of the cultural preservation wing (KGS), and helps to maintain cultural places and items in the Kanton (state) of Solothurn. While we were supposed to go to a tiny mountain chapel named Mieschegg, our plans changed to the village ofWelschenrohr where, incidentally, Brent's grandfather was stationed in the military during WWII. Brent waschosen to be the photographer for the week, since it's a part of his work at Kilchzimmer. Tasked with photographing the items of the church, which is undergoing renovations, he took pictures of wooden carvings, candle stands, figures, goblets, garments, flags and other items associated with the catholic church. Each item had to be photographed with an over, under and regular exposure and had to be cataloged, measured and journaled. In order to obtain the most detail, the stain-glassed windows were photographed with as many as seven different exposures. At first, I was using an older Canon 12 megapixel camera with a 24-40mm zoom. Then on Thursday, the KGS commander for the Solothurn brought me the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III (22 Megapixel) with a 28-300mm zoom lens. It was a little pricier and heavier than the Nikon D70s he uses at Kilchzimmer! He worked with several studio lights, an infrared trigger, a photo box and good ol' Styrofoam. With each photo we needed to have a ruler, color balance chart and catalog numbering sheet.

Brent's already been tapped for next year's service, doing similar work for a week and will also be taking part in a training day, which of course will help his photography skills with CEF®.

One down …

For the last several months I've been busily working on the Good News Club® resource packet for the lesson Beginnings. It's been a huge undertaking, working on word strips, Bible verse visuals, tokens, worksheets, maps and other assorted materials for a Good News Club. It was certainly challenging when trying to figure out how to illustrate concepts or Bible verses like Romans 5:12. It was a fun project to work on, but this is just the beginning of a five-year cycle!Three daughters of students taking the three-monthChildren's Ministry Leadership Course helped by testing all the worksheets, and Andrea Weir was a huge help, looking for art, proofreading and doing a lot of leg work. We've already started working on The Life of Christ 1, and still have many more lessons to do! Please pray for us as we needslots of creativity, sensitivity to those doing the layout in other translations and of course, that it would all be true to the Word of God!

Remembering Gabi

Yesterday morning, the Lord took our dear friend and co-worker, Gabi Bienen, home to be with Him. Gabi's life touched a lot of people. Letters from around the world continue to pour in offering condolences, attesting to the impact she had. Gabi was a worker. She made sure her job was done right. She usually sang while cleaning and was always laughing at my lame jokes during coffee break. She loved pulling practical jokes on Henry Berry, the national leader for CEF® in Ireland, sometimes filling his room with flowers or cleaning supplies or talking about "Bernhard," her imaginary boyfriend.

Yesterday, Jen was explaining to Amy that we wouldn't see Gabi anymore. She said "Gabi did something very special today … Jesus came and took her home." Amy immediately asked, "Did he hold her?" Jen, fighting back the tears replied, "All the way home."

Please pray for us at this time. It's tough. It was sudden and unexpected. She died peacefully in her sleep, at a mere 49 years old. We rejoice she is in the loving arms of the Savior, but we miss her.

Getting together

We've had the wonderful opportunity to have my father and nephew Jon with us the past two weeks. We've been able to see a lot of beautiful sights and go all over the country, but the highlight of the trip was traveling to Eastern Switzerland to get together with family. We first went to dad's birthplace, the Schäfli, to have a day-long get together with his late brother, Kurt's family. While there, dad was surprised by a quick visit with a childhood friend.

The next day we celebrated my twin uncle's 75 birthday and had a get together with the other half of the family. It was great seeing cousins I hadn't seen for more than 20 years. As a special treat, we all went up to the original Hautle homestead in Eggerstanden, Appenzell for a group photo. I'm thankful to have gotten together with my extended family, and am especially grateful to have dad and Jon here.