Monday, May 17, 2010

CEF European Conference 2010

(click on image to enlarge)
As I write this we are nearing the end of another exciting CEF European Regional Conference with 350+ workers attending from around Europe, Russia, and Central Asia [picture 1.].  Nearly all the rooms were filled.  The conference comes every three years and was held this year in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany.  This is a big event that comes every three years and lasts for a week.  There are also other meetings and courses tagged on the end of the conference.  I will stay until Tuesday evening to teach a seminar course in the Instructors of Preschoolers course.

The conference week was full of meetings, seminar classes, fellowship time, Bible teaching by Dr. Rev. Stafford Carson, messages from the president of CEF - Reese Kauffman, and much more.! This is also an important and valuable time to "Network" with workers and country leaders we would not normally get to meet otherwise, organizing and discussing projects for their country.

[picture 2.] This is the main meeting room.  We had excellent facilities at the Schönblick Christian conference center.

[picture 3.] One of the big events of the conference was the passing on of the baton, when the leadership of Europe (European Regional Director) was passed from Roy Harrison to Gerd-Walter Buskies.  Here Roy and Ruth are standing next to a painting presented to them, painted by Aapo Pukk – a respected portrait painter from Estonia who has painted heads of state and leaders in Europe & US.
G.W. Buskies is holding the mic.  There were all kinds of surprises throughout the day bringing laughter and tears.

[picture 4.] Our Multimedia department was busy for several months leading up to the conference completing projects to introduce to the workers for their ministry.

[picture 5.] From here Brent Hautle (the graphic designer at Kilchzimmer) operates the lights located in every corner and sets up the presentations for projecting on the wall.  Brent gave an excellent seminar on giving effective presentations.  You can view/download this from the Conference website at ustream.tv.  If you want to view any of the services, drop me an email and I'll give you the URL and password to watch any of the recorded services and messages.

[picture 6.] Markus (CEF Austria) was responsible for the sound system.  They had an amazing sound system and Markus felt right at home with all the mics, knobs and sliders.

[picture 7.] One of my responsibilities during the conference was to control the video cameras and projector.  Also, off to the side I had my laptop set up to control the video stream for viewing LIVE over the Internet.  Getting this to work with the video console is a story in itself.  There were quite a few people around the world watching the services live and another 400+ people watching the services later.  Even though this kept us busy operating the console it was quite exciting (and fun!). :-)