USA Promotional Tour – Summer 2023

CFU – USA Promo Tour – Summer 2023

By Rick Lyon

We want to thank our Urantia family and friends of the Urantia Book Fellowship for giving us the opportunity to share for giving us the opportunity to share our CFU projects with their guests! They gave us a two-hour workshop and a booth in the bookstore. The Fellowship has been very supportive of us in the form of a Second-miler grant and several societies have donated financially and provided opportunities for us to present to their groups by Zoom.

Gabriel and Sandra came from Israel for this event and the Parliament of World Religions and for several meetings with local groups.

On the first full day of IC23, our very own Sandra Rymberg opened the event with a worship service as she did every morning. Later that morning, Gabriel led our workshop called "Let’s Go Fishing! How the Center for Unity Engages Young Truth Seekers."  We had 20 people in our workshop even though we were sharing the time slot with some heavy hitters in the Urantia presentation world. At the end of the workshop several people came up and checked out the Discover Jesus app and the chatbot on Gabriel's laptop. The reactions were very positive and a
couple of people from the workshop became donors after the event.  

Our booth at IC23 had a computer monitor set up to allow visitors to actually use and experience the Discover Jesus app and the experimental AskJesus chatbot. Both were a big hit with everyone. We gave out a stack of brochures and business cards and bookmarks. Thanks to Gary Tonge designing the backdrop for the booth and our handouts, we presented a very professional image. Mike Robinson helped get people started with the app but most everyone found it easy to navigate and figure out. This is a credit to Lisa Tao and Frazier Gory who create the user interface and functionality of the app.

We shared Cinematic Jesus and The Jesus Experience with many people too. Steven got to share about Cinematic Jesus and having large pictures of the museum made this project real for everyone.

I think it makes a huge difference when we can get people to experience the app and the chatbot first hand as we did in the booth and the workshop. Getting to meet the CFU team in person is certainly a big plus as people see that we are an enthusiastic team of people who have reputations for getting things done. More than one person at IC23 called us a team of action. They see the teamwork and fellowship we have among ourselves and that goes a long way to earning their confidence and respect for what we are doing. A special "thank you" to all the team who were there to help with this event. News of the Parliament of the World's Religions and Gabriel's visits to several groups of Urantia Book students between these events will appear in the next newsletter.