Fröhliche Weihnachten!

Here's a picture of the team by the Brandenburg Gate.

We had our Christmas cookie party outreach on Thurs. It was a lot of fun and we made a TON of cookies. Apparently decorating cookies is a very relaxing and therapeutic activity - who knew.

Classes are now over for Christmas break and as a team we're getting ready to enjoy a few days off, have a lovely Christmas together and then head off Limbach for our student conference (similar to a Crusade Christmas/winter conference in the states). It's called Silverster Conference and it's for all students in north and east Germany. We have one student from our ministry here in Berlin coming (which is super exciting!) and she's bringing three friends! I think these next couple of weeks will be a good time to rest, reflect on what God has done and get energized about heading back to campus come January.

Thank you so much for your prayers. Have a very merry Christmas!

Christmas in Berlin

So if any country knows how to do Christmas right, it's Germany. It's pretty much everything you would picture Germany to be like during Christmas: Christmas trees in every room (REAL ones), lights everywhere, handmade nutcrackers, beautiful ornaments, gorgeous Christmas cards, all kinds of chocolate and candy, Christmas kuchen and other amazing foods at the Christmas markets. It's really just incredible. My roommates and I bought a little Christmas tree for our apartment and it's such a pretty little tree - definitely makes it feel like Christmas. The weird thing is though, that this 3 foot tree comes in a hefty pot - yeah, it's still growing. Katie and Bryce individually carried it all the way from the shop to our apartment (probably a bit less than a mile), which was hilarious to see. Katie described it as carrying a very difficult child that keep pulling at her hair.

We have had many student events in the past few weeks and it's really cool to see all the friends we're making. Our last event before Christmas break is a cookie decorating party. This was the most successful party for the team last year and we're definitely looking forward to it this year.

Fish and Pipes

I've never personally owned fish before and after some recent crazy events, I'm not sure that I will. Emily got four of them a couple of months ago and diligently and lovingly took care of them better than some people take care of their children. YET about 3 weeks ago, we came home one night to a dead fish on the floor! It obviously had jumped out from the lidless tank.

Fish suicide - unbelievable.

Even funnier is that we named the fish after the guys on our team: Dave, Bryce, Andy and Jon (and now, Dan, the algae eater). It was Fish Jon who jumped. Emily got a replacement and (since he was much smaller) we promptly named him Little Jon. And unfortunatley, that's not the end of it. Today we came home to Fish Bryce dry and dead on the floor. What in the world?! It's an epidemic. Who knew fish could be so depressed? Emily just now covered the tank with aluminum foil. Oi...

In other bizarre news that only happens on STINT, we are still having apartment troubles. Our apartments are great - they really are - but different issues keep rising. Only one of our showers works at the moment, because the other's hot water heater broke and the tub is waiting to be replaced. It has been this way for about a month now. Also, the kitchen sink's pipes got blocked for a bit, which also affects our washing machine. Basically bad smelling water from the washer flooded onto our kitchen floor. And this is after discovering a large area of mold growing on Amanda and Katie's bedroom wall. We think this is probably from a pipe leak in the wall. And because this is Germany, there are several steps it takes to get things done. We've been laughing it off, but oh how we would love to have these things taken care of.

:)