60 attendees on Saturday. 32 attendees on Sunday. Some new students. Mostly current students. Topic: The Life of Jesus. Presenters: Bro Don and Bro Jonathan. 6 Study Sessions and 2 Workshop/Discussion Group Sessions. Boat trip on the River! Lessons learned: Have more speakers if you want to do a two-day seminar / Make sure discussion groups are about really simple topics / Don’t organize a seminar when you only have a short time to handover to new fieldworkers.
(can you tell I’m exhausted and have no inspiration but really want to let you know that we had a good seminar that seemed to go well and gave a good opportunity for irregular students to do some Bible Study…)
Okay, it’s a few days after I wrote that paragraph, and although I only have 23 hours until my plane leaves L I really feel that I should be showing more excitement about the seminar… so here goes…………
After days of preparation – making powerpoints, booking venues, ordering food, organizing welcome packs, organizing people, advertising, photocopying, organizing translation, etc – the seminar actually pulled together pretty well.
We had a huge group on the first day (60 attendees – can you imagine that in Australia?) which filled the room beyond capacity. The group was really interesting this time – very different to the July seminar. In July we have a balance of current and new contacts, and a lot of the new contacts were drawn from the Newspaper ad. But this time we had mostly current contacts… and most of the new contacts were friends of current contacts. (So, for example, Loy brought along about 6 of her uni friends, Oliver brought along 2 friends, etc.) So we didn’t really get the “when was God born?” questions …
The studies on the first day included: “Jesus: birth to baptism”, “Jesus, Son of Man” and “Jesus, Son of God”. Immediately after lunch we broke into small groups and worked through some of Jesus’ teachings from Luke 6. This seemed to work pretty well in most groups, with some of our regular contacts leading the others through the worksheets while we sat silently, waiting for someone to translate their ideas into English or ask us a question. After 30 minutes, we got back together and one person from each group shared their point from Jesus’ teachings.
So with three studies and a discussion group everyone was exhausted by the end of the first day… so we did the traditional boat trip on the river, which helped everyone to relax, eat, and enjoy each others company. Well, most of us relaxed… some of us went to the place we were meant to go and found out that the boat owner had changed his mind and wanted to meet us somewhere else… and then we had to convince the boat owner that we’d booked for 5pm (not 4pm as he incorrectly insisted) – but that kind of stuff is just part of Cambodia J
We had less students on the Sunday as many of our students either went to church or to an information day for Emigrants. In a way, this was really nice, because there was more leg-room in the room and less people to squeeze between, so it had a more relaxed feel to it.
The studies on the second day included: “Jesus’ Sacrifice”, “Jesus’ Resurrection”, and “What Jesus Means for Us”. Once again we had small study groups after lunch. We tried to work through Psalm 22, connecting it with the record in Matthew. For our regular students this was reasonably simple. However, the new students and not-so-regular students really struggled with some of the concepts – like linking quotes, summarizing verses, etc. So this discussion group was a learning curve for students and teachers alike – we learned to make things very simple at seminars J
Thanks to Bro Don and Sis Una, Sis Sara-Rose, Sis Naomi, Sis Loy, and Bro Him for their help with bringing the seminar together
(can you tell I’m exhausted and have no inspiration but really want to let you know that we had a good seminar that seemed to go well and gave a good opportunity for irregular students to do some Bible Study…)
Okay, it’s a few days after I wrote that paragraph, and although I only have 23 hours until my plane leaves L I really feel that I should be showing more excitement about the seminar… so here goes…………
After days of preparation – making powerpoints, booking venues, ordering food, organizing welcome packs, organizing people, advertising, photocopying, organizing translation, etc – the seminar actually pulled together pretty well.
We had a huge group on the first day (60 attendees – can you imagine that in Australia?) which filled the room beyond capacity. The group was really interesting this time – very different to the July seminar. In July we have a balance of current and new contacts, and a lot of the new contacts were drawn from the Newspaper ad. But this time we had mostly current contacts… and most of the new contacts were friends of current contacts. (So, for example, Loy brought along about 6 of her uni friends, Oliver brought along 2 friends, etc.) So we didn’t really get the “when was God born?” questions …
The studies on the first day included: “Jesus: birth to baptism”, “Jesus, Son of Man” and “Jesus, Son of God”. Immediately after lunch we broke into small groups and worked through some of Jesus’ teachings from Luke 6. This seemed to work pretty well in most groups, with some of our regular contacts leading the others through the worksheets while we sat silently, waiting for someone to translate their ideas into English or ask us a question. After 30 minutes, we got back together and one person from each group shared their point from Jesus’ teachings.
So with three studies and a discussion group everyone was exhausted by the end of the first day… so we did the traditional boat trip on the river, which helped everyone to relax, eat, and enjoy each others company. Well, most of us relaxed… some of us went to the place we were meant to go and found out that the boat owner had changed his mind and wanted to meet us somewhere else… and then we had to convince the boat owner that we’d booked for 5pm (not 4pm as he incorrectly insisted) – but that kind of stuff is just part of Cambodia J
We had less students on the Sunday as many of our students either went to church or to an information day for Emigrants. In a way, this was really nice, because there was more leg-room in the room and less people to squeeze between, so it had a more relaxed feel to it.
The studies on the second day included: “Jesus’ Sacrifice”, “Jesus’ Resurrection”, and “What Jesus Means for Us”. Once again we had small study groups after lunch. We tried to work through Psalm 22, connecting it with the record in Matthew. For our regular students this was reasonably simple. However, the new students and not-so-regular students really struggled with some of the concepts – like linking quotes, summarizing verses, etc. So this discussion group was a learning curve for students and teachers alike – we learned to make things very simple at seminars J
Thanks to Bro Don and Sis Una, Sis Sara-Rose, Sis Naomi, Sis Loy, and Bro Him for their help with bringing the seminar together
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