



At first read, you may be wondering if this month's featured staff has been to one too many science fairs in his time. However, with delightful inserts from his adoring and vivacious wife, you'll discover that this techie guy actually has a huge level of depth, quite a love for people... and a bit of a cheeky edge as well! Join with us as we get to know Nick Verwymeren...
RTO: Where are you from Nick?
NV: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
RTO: What's interesting about Winnipeg?
NV: Actually, its a pretty ordinary place. Well, they shoot lots of movies there. Brad Pitt was just there for the movie about Jesse James.
RTO: See! Its an exciting place!
NV: (Laughs and says sarcastically) Yeah! its awesome
RTO: Favourite Colour:
NV: Probably blue.
RTO: Music?
NV: Pretty much anything but country.
RTO: What do you do in your spare time?
NV: Camping. We don’t get to do much of that these days. I really like gardening too.
RTO: What are you harvesting right now?
NV: Carrots and tomatoes, thyme, basil… doing poorly. Rosemary oregano strawberries and sage…
RTO: So, what’s unique about you?
NV: (sarcastically) I'm unusually good looking and smart.
Nick's wife Sara pipes in with the aforementioned adoration: He's so SMART! And, he can speak a language fluently and its called HTML.
RTO: True. Nick, where did your passion for technology, creativity, and media start?
NV: When I was young. My dad is an appliance repairman. (Sara pipes in again from the background – NICK CAN FIX ANYTHING!) I started being interested in taking things apart. When I was young my parents would buy me toys and I could take them apart. It all started from there. I liked finding complicated things and learning how they work.
RTO: Did you have any unsuccessful attempts?
NV: You know this little viewer toys that you can click through with pictures. I had one that played those disks and projected to the wall. I took it apart but it never went back together. There were too many springs. It was very sad.
My dad would bring home old microwaves all the time and I with one, I took the entire thing apart and put screws into different buckets to save the parts. It had strong magnets and I saved those. My room like someone chucked a bomb in a mircowave!
RTO: What's your giggest techie accomplishment
NV: I built a robot in grade 10 & 11. It was basically these 9” x9” square sumo wrestlers who had to push each other out of the ring but you controlled it yourself. The next year I wanted to build something that does everything on its own. I built one of those. It took me 2 years to make. I had to teach myself everything. It totally worked and everything but then the group took it to Calgary without me. It didn’t work in the competition because a sensor was broken.
RTO: Okay... your "group?" Be honest. Were you in science club?
NV: (Laughing) No. We had an electronic class as an elective and we could enter the contest.
RTO: So why did you come to Reef to Outback for a DTS?
NV: I did a DTS because I went travelling after high school for six months in South east Asia & Nepal. From there, I had a desire to travel and had a desire to grow in my relationship with God because I wasn’t the strongest at that time. My uncle is Alan Lim [an Intl YWAM leader] who was living in Singapore at the time. Because RTO had the technical schools like the School of Design and School of Digital Communication, I decided it might be good to go there… and because of the camping!
RTO: Did you have a funny or embarassing DTS moment?
NV: Well, my friend Cliff & I pretended like we were really good at singing. We entered a talent show and put the same CD on in our headphones and sang out loud for everyone. It was horrible. A few people in the back were snickering but everyone else was really stunned, not knowing if we were serious or not. It was more embarrassing for everyone else than for us!
RTO: Did you break any rules on your DTS?
NV: Well, I told Sara I liked her. During DTS you're asked to not necessarily start relationships. We decided not to do anything about it until afterward though, which was really good for us.
RTO: So you and Sara ended up getting married & you’ve been married for a year now. What’s your favourite thing about her?
NV: She’s just the best wife you could ask for. There are so many things. I wrote them all down once. I can always tell when she’s coming to the door because of the way she shuffles her feet. I love that. I would listen for the sound coming up to my flat before we were married.
RTO: Why are you here at RTO now? What are you passionate about? Why do you do what you do?
NV: I love learning and growing in what I enjoy. I enjoy computers, technology and coding. I definitely have a platform to grow in that here. But also, being able to see that what I do makes a difference. I like the fact that I get to help market something that is a worthy cause. Its for God. Its not just doing it for the sake of it. I love using our gifts to get people involved in something that has the potential to change their lives.
Also, I get to be involved in Youth Street as well. Even though its only one evening a week, its totally different but at the same time its accomplishing the same thing. Its very tangible and direct. In the office, we have a large impact but its less tangible. At Youth Street we are directly talking to kids and inputting into their lives and seeing them changed.
RTO: Okay. Last question. What are you reading?
NV: Online manuals! (laughing) And I’m reading through Acts with Sara. We’re up to Acts 16 today. We were reading Jeremiah but maybe it’s a bit doom and gloom for morning reading so we switched!
Read more about Nick on his website or at www.reeftooutback.com... (which is just one of the websites that he helped to create!)De School voor Bijbelse Studies heeft in het eerste semester meteen vier open weken. Ze staan open voor iedereen die belangstellend is en zich meer wil verdiepen in Gods Woord.
Darlene Cunningham, als ‘de vrouw van’ mede-oprichter van Jeugd met een Opdracht, spreekt op vrijdagavond 24 oktober in Epe.
De eerstvolgende ReLoaded is van vrijdag 17 tot en met zondag 19 oktober aanstaande.
Well folks, it’s been an adventurous two weeks since our last newsletter. We spent a week in Santo Domingo, the capital, broadening our view of the DR. Then we just spent this week in Neyba, running a children’s bible school. Ok, so Santo Domingo, well we began with some sightseeing at Los Tres Ojos—”the three eyes”. They are underground lakes with beautiful turquoise water. One lake had a raft where a man pulled you across in the dark so you could view another lake. As for accommodation… We were told we were staying in a vacant house the church had bough, but it wasn’t a house it was a mansion with 24/7 armed guard and copious amounts of fruit trees. If this is missionary life, we’ll take it. Raul’s mum, Carmen, cooked for us for the week and really blessed us with delicious food! First job of the week was to clean sand and rubbish out of the second story of a house in a poor city suburb whilst trying to avoid biting ants and spiders. A pair of trousers was even turned into a rubble carrier. ‘Resourceful’ was the name of the game. We got to experience crazy Dominican driving…no lanes, (cars 4 wide in a 2 lane road) no rules! We returned to the neighborhood in the evening and ran a street service. The people there were so incredibly hospitable and friendly. Many of the youth from the church spoke English, and we had a great week socializing and working with them. A highlight day for us was when we went to La Virgen “the virgin”, a small village on the outskirts of the city. We ran a children’s program in this church building that was about 8m x 4m and packed full of kids. Britt debuted as Bartholomew, the little man and successfully made 3 kids cry with his expressions and machete handling. HILARIOUS! That evening we ran a street service .

by Toralvur a Steig (noreply@blogger.com) at August 26, 2008 02:56 PM
Well once again we have had a busy two weeks. Last week we held a street service in another part of town with the AOG church and had quite a different vibe to the area we have been working in and a slightly nicer area. It was also a lot cooler which was a nice reprieve. The laughing point for us was that a
group of women were sitting on chairs in the road all ready for the service complete with sound system
and everything. Then this big bus come down the road and can’t get past….well these ladies refuse to move and just wave him off and tell him to reverse and go another way. There continued to be a number of vehicles pass through, until Raul said “time to get aggressive” and proceeded to move the van to completely block the road so that no-one could get through. We couldn’t believe it, but then had to remind ourselves –welcome to the DR. The Summer Bible School was the big event of the week. It had never been done before so we got to pioneer it. We had a couple of workshops beforehand where we teamed up with the youth to organize it. This was an experience not only in communication but
learning about how they do things and how to work with them. The theme was Sailing With Jesus so
the church got decorated with seaweed, fish etc. Tash’s artistic flare definitely got put to good use.
The fishing boat complete with sail and anchor was a feature and 400 name tags were a consuming task.
Meanwhile, the guys were out the back, working like mad to get the roof finished and the floor concreted so that we could hold a class out there. The church guys manually shoveled and mixed concrete in the intense heat, impressing us all. So Thursday afternoon, 3pm we turned up thinking we might have 400 kids……the entire church was packed like sardines—550 kids!! Over the 4 days the entertainment team brought out the little man, (more…)