Roasted insects on a night market in Thailand
Tasty Bugs!
You may or may not have known it, but many cultures around the world indulge in the practice of roasting insects and eating them. On my trip to Thailand in March, this was brought to my (Rodney’s) attention in a graphic way whilst meandering innocently through a night market, as I stumbled upon several vendors selling tasty, roasted insects. I didn’t taste any, in case you’re wondering.
Thailand
The meetings were very multicultural.
As we shared in our last update, I, Rodney went to Thailand for an International Communication Team meeting to meet with the other leaders of YWAM’s Regional Communication teams.
There were people present from AspaCom (Fiji, Taiwan, Singapore), SpiceCom (India, Nepal), AfriCom (Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria), LatinCom, EuroCom(Czech Republic, Netherlands) and the International Communication Network in Colorado Springs who were the ones organizing the event.
We had a good time sharing together about what has been going on in our regions communication-wise and praying for each other. We also broke up into small working-groups to discuss important issues facing us all.
I came mostly for the leaders meeting, but I was able to catch the last day of the Communication, Research and IT (CRIT) consultation that was held the week before. There I met Tely and another Indonesian lady (who wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons) whom Heidebeek sponsored to attend. It was the fruition of an idea that I had had almost a year earlier to help sponsor one or two Indonesian ladies to attend.
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| Rodney with Tely from Indonesia. Heidebeek helped sponsor her to attend CRIT. | Rodney was able to bless Pam from Africa with a 160GB mobile hard drive. |
Missions Service
On April 11th, Jolanda and I organized a missions service in her home church here in The Netherlands. I preached a missions sermon and Jolanda and I gave a presentation of our work and showed a DVD about missions in general. Many people shared with us after the service that they were touched by our presentation and sermon.
We hope that many people caught a broader vision for what missions is and that some people will be inspired to partner with us. We also hope that a few will be inspired to think about going into missions themselves whether short or long term.
15:16 Equip / Central Europe 50th
Rodney teaching at the Equip in Romania
In April, EuroCom had the honor of teaching a module at the 15:16 Equip leadership training seminar in Timisoara, Romania. We taught three sessions of about 2 hours each and had 12 participants (the average for all the modules offered was 10).
The Equip ended and Central Europe’s 50-year celebration began the next day in the same place (as we mentioned in our previous email, YWAM is celebrating its 50 year anniversary this year). We also had an impromptu meeting of communication staff from the region. We met together with about 7 people who expressed a desire to network together and be involved more with what is happening on a regional level.
It’s these kinds of contacts that are the lifeblood of what we are trying to accomplish in EuroCom. No matter how good our technologies are at helping us to communicate across long distances, relationships and these face-to-face meetings remain an important part of strenghtening communication in Europe.
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| YWAM Central Europe’s 50th Anniversary celebration. | An impromptu “Starbucks” meeting with communicators from the region. |
Community Events
Jolanda is busy again with organizing another community event this coming Wednesday. It will be a picnic style pot-”blessing” and focus on the kids this time. To give you an idea of who all is coming, at the moment we have around 95 staff and 33 kids here at Heidebeek.
Spring DTS
Jolanda is again mentoring someone in the Spring DTS with a focus on families that is running right now. Sarah is also enjoying this DTS, since while the moms and dads are in class, the kids sometimes come out of the nursery to play in the playground.
The families and singles in that DTS will soon be going on outreach to Indonesia, Kosovo and Czech Republic.
Jolanda
