A movie, a speaker, and family activities are on the agenda this weekend starting tonight at 6:30 p.m. as Pastor Ted Goossen, and his wife, Mary, with their Thompson Christian Centre Fellowship, hosts its annual family enrichment weekend. The centre is located at 328 Thompson Drive North.
The weekend kicks off Friday night with a banquet dinner featuring guest speaker Pastor Gareth J. Goossen, a younger brother of Pastor Ted Goossen, who lives in Breslau, Ont. The Goossens grew up in Manitou, about 20 miles west of Morden, in south-central Manitoba.
Gareth Goossen is an author, worship leader, and inspirational speaker who provides training for the Canadian Mennonite University and Manitoba Missions Trek and the Outtatown Discipleship School where students learn by experience, instruction and example, living and travelling in various physical settings, from wilderness to inner city, from church basements to summer camps to upscale hotels, in Guatemala and South Africa.
He has authored the book Worship Walk: Where Worship and Life Intersect, which is a look at the practice of worship.
Past speakers at the annual family enrichment weekend have included Winnipeg authors Paul Boge last year and Tricia Kell in 2009.
Boge, a native of Winnipeg, is an award-winning author and has written The Urban Saint: The Harry Lehotsky Story, The Chicago Healer, The Cities of Fortune and Father to the Fatherless: The Charles Mulli Story. Boge won Word Guild's best Canadian author award in 2003 for his first book, Chicago Healer.
Boge came back to Thompson for three days in February 2010 to renew old friendships and talk about his then recently published book, The Urban Saint: The Harry Lehotsky Story, which explores the life of old west end Winnipeg inner city pastor Harry Lehotsky, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2006 at age 49.
In addition to being an author, Boge, 37, is a capital costs consulting mining engineer and no stranger to Thompson. He lived and worked here for nine months in 2003, five months in 2005 and for another 10 months in 2007, while working on three separate surface projects for Vale, and doing much of his writing in his apartment at night.
The Urban Saint: The Harry Lehotsky Story was launched Nov. 5, 2009 at the Ellice Cafe and Theatre, which Lehotsky founded. Boge also made the 2006 movie Among Thieves through FireGate Films, an independent Winnipeg company he started. He is a member of North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren Church in Winnipeg.
Tricia Kell, who spoke in 2009, is the author of two books, one of which is Chain of Miracles, the 2004 story of how she says the "power and love of God can change a chain of tragedies into a chain of miraculous victories."
The book describes how "God walked her through the abusive relationship and tragic death of her first husband to the accidents that left two of her children both physically and mentally challenged - to another horrifying incident that nearly killed her current husband."
Kell was born in Halifax and raised as a Roman Catholic. A self-described "air force brat," she lived in both Europe and Canada growing up. Later, she says she "developed, owned and managed a successful clothing design company along with other companies."
She describes in Chain of Miracles how her first husband, Jeffrey, with a gun in the vehicle and their three-month-old son, J.J., threw from a car into a ditch between Ponton and Thompson.
Kell, and her current husband, Gord, live in Winnipeg with their three adult children.
Her second book, Attitude Determines Altitude, is a humorous book, she says, "still based on my everyday life but tells how I beat my fear of flying." It was published in 2008.
Goossen says that he'll be focusing on themes from his book - which he's also put into practice as the minister of makeusholy, a church in Breslau, which he has pastored since May 15, 1994. These themes primarily focus around the idea of Christian worship through music, and about maximizing music in worship services to fit the needs of the congregation and enhance its relationship with God, rather than just using music in church because it's expected.
Saturday begins with a brunch for ages 12 and up, followed by a worship-jamming hour in the afternoon. At night, there will be a family bowling session at Crossroad Lanes.
Outdoor activities including hockey and broomball are lined up for Sunday afternoon, followed by a free chili supper and screening of the movie Faith Like Potatoes, a 2006 drama based on the book of the same name, about the life of South African evangelist Angus Buchan.
Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and publisher and editor-in-chief of Movieguide, said in April 2009, Faith Like Potatoes was "like Fireproof on steroids." Fireproof stars well-known Hollywood actor Kirk Cameron, who also starred as a television journalist in three Left Behind movies, but in Fireproof traded in his microphone for a fire helmet to save his marriage. From 1985 to 1992 Cameron starred on the ABC sitcom Growing Pains where he received two Golden Globe nominations.
Faith Like Potatoes is directed by Regardt van den Bergh. It is based on a book written by farmer Angus Buchan of the same title, which was published in 1988. It follows from the true story of Buchan and his family.
Set in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands province in South Africa, Faith Like Potatoes is the story of a Buchan, a white farmer of Scottish descent, who leaves his farm in Zambia in the midst of political unrest and racially-charged land claims issues and travels south with his family to start a new life in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, which border Swaziland and Mozambique in the northeast.
With nothing more than a caravan on a patch of land, and help from his foreman, Simeon Benghu, the Buchan family struggled to settle in the new country in 1978.
Faced with ever mounting challenges, hardships and personal turmoil, Buchan quickly spiralled down into a life consumed by anger, fear and destruction and clashed regularly with his farm workers, especially Benghu, at Shalom, where they nicknamed him "Nkosaan Italiaan" because they said he looked and behaved like a mad Italian.
The change in him came, Buchan said, when he gave his life and farm to Jesus during a church service at the Greytown Methodist Church on Feb. 18, 1979. Soon, with the same fiery passion with which he farms, Buchan began to tell people how God had changed his life.
The phrase "faith like potatoes" came from an American lecturer who used to tell his students that they needed faith like potatoes, meaning their that their faith needed to have flesh and needed substance, as in Hebrews 11:1 where faith is described as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen."
During an El Nino-spawned drought, Buchan invited 35,000 people in a stadium in Durban, South Africa to join him in prayer for rain: "To hell with El Nino! We are going to plant this year! And we are going to plant potatoes," Buchan said.
Scientists had warned the farmers not to plant that season unless they had irrigation and Buchan knew he didn't have the necessary irrigation so planting potatoes would be a large risk. Traditionally he was a maize and cattle farmer. Nevertheless he prayed and planted potatoes. The rains came.
Since opening 4 1/2 years ago in October 2006, Faith Like Potatoes has played at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, Australian International Film Festival, and was awarded the audience choice award at the 2006 Sabaoth International Film Festival in Milan, Italy, as well as winning best feature at the 2006 Mumbai International Federation International Cinema Television Sportifs (FICTS) festival in India.
Monday evening, Goossen will hold a youth pizza supper at which he will share information about Canadian Mennonite University and Manitoba Missions programs and lead in worship.
Some of the events are free while others have a cost attached, weekend packages can also be purchased.
Thompson Christian Centre Fellowship has been a member of the Manitoba Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches since 1980. The name Mennonite comes from Menno Simons, a Dutch Roman Catholic priest who broke with the church a few years after his ordination to join with the Anabaptists. Although he was not the founder, his preaching and influence were such that many of the Dutch Anabaptists adopted his name, and thereafter were known as Mennonites. Anabaptists are Protestant Christians of the Radical Reformation tradition of the 16th-century. Other Anabaptists include the Amish and Hutterites. Anabaptists were often persecuted for their beliefs, which include pacifism and a refusal to take oaths, along with a belief civil government belongs to the world and they are in the world, but not of the world, especially in their early years, by both other Protestant groups and Roman Catholics.
The Thompson Christian Centre Fellowship began services in 1972, and formally organized in 1981. After using rental space for a number of years, the congregation acquired their own building in 1984 and renovated it for congregational use. Gary Sawatzky was the founding leader of the group. Other leaders and pastors besides Goossen have included Will Feldbusch, Ron Dyck, George Baerg and Jake Enns.
