Who orders a million books?

The phone rings today. I pick it up.

"Hello, GoodSeed. This is Chantal. Can I help you?"

A man with a strong Indian accent replies: "Yes. My name is Rasheed, and I want to order some books. Do you have paper to write it down?"

"Yes, go ahead."

"Listen carefully. I want to order one million and two books. That's one million and two."

"Uh..." Either I heard the guy wrong, or this is a joke. "One million?"

"No, it's one million and two. I called the Canadian office and they cannot fulfil my order; they told me to call the U.S. office. Don't tell me that you can't do it," he says with a hint of frustration.

Now I know for sure this is a joke of some sort, but I don't dare dismiss him because I'm on the phone with a potential customer. What if he was serious? I feel myself getting red in the face. "Um....uh......"

Finally, the jokester reveales his identity. "It's Jim," he says, laughing.

"Man, I knew it was you!" Jim, who works out of our Canadian office, is notorious for pulling foreign accents on people.

* * * * *

The folks at GoodSeed are funny people. There will never cease to be hilarious MSN conversations, crazy pranks (frequently involving food and/or pink things) and running jokes going around. I'll miss that.

I'll miss the wonderful love the GoodSeed folks have shown us, from making us feel like a part of team to inviting us frequently to their homes for meals and helping us out in so many practical ways. They have given us an example of what biblical hospitality is like, and we want to emulate that.

I'll miss the excellent biblical teaching we get at Bible camp, at TERM seminars, at intern events and even during lunchtime discussions. The folks at GoodSeed devote their lives to the Word of God, and they are thinking Christians who study difficult issues out for themselves. I'll miss the examples of godly character we see in our leaders and their families.

I'll also miss hearing first hand of all the testimonies that come back to us about people who have used our tools to share the Gospel and borne much fruit. Even though we don't sell a million books, the feedback we get is encouraging.

For example, this week, I interviewed a lady who had used our tabernacle model and its corresponding Sunday school lessons to teach her first- to fifth-graders. She had done a Google search on tabernacle lessons on the Internet, and "yours was the first and last site I looked at!" Derek had created this tabernacle site back in 2004; I had done the research and written the downloadable Sunday school lessons.

"You program was amazing! The material was excellent!" she said and proceeded to tell me all that the children had learned about Christ's redeeming work through studying the tabernacle. One little girl, in particular, didn't understood why so many innocent animals had to be slaughtered. Through the lessons, she learned that they pointed to Jesus, the pure Lamb of God who shed innocent blood to cover our sins. As understanding dawned, she said, "It is the blood of Jesus that covers my sin!" She was baptized not long afterward.

Words like this remind me that my work here was not in vain.

As we look forward to seminary, there is a lot to look back at and be thankful for. My two years here and Derek's three were a blessing from God and we give Him all the praise and thanks for His provision and grace.