By the way, I love your accent...

University students (I think) are seriously some of the coolest and most interesting people you can meet, no matter where in the world you are. They all have their own stories from their past, most are in super-smart thinking mode, and they live more in the moment more than anyone other people group I know. Dave and I met a student yesterday from Spain and he was quite the character. Spaniards of course are quite different than the average German, but this one was to the extreme. I seriously don't know if I've met a happier person in all my life. As we approached him in the TU cafeteria, he had the biggest brightest eyes and a huge smile. He invited us to sit down and we chatted for quite a while. As he talked about his thoughts on the differences between Spanish, German and Americans cultures as well as his thoughts on spiritual things, out of nowhere, he pipes up and says to me, "By the way, I love your accent". I could hardly control my laughter.

The TU outreach we had on Thursday night went really well. About 80 people attended and we obtained a few contacts of students who are interested in learning more about the TU Christian groups or starting a discussion group about faith and science - really cool. Please pray for the students who heard the talk and that we'll have wisdom on figuring out what to do with this potential discussion group. Thanks!

Back from Spain

Mid-year in Nerja, Spain was sooo great! It was wonderful atmosphere to relax and get recharged for coming back to campus ministry. I had a lot of fun hanging out with my team and other STINTers from different locations and hearing their encouraging stories about how God is working in their cities. On our free day, I got to take a day trip to Gibralter. It was probably one of the most bizarre places I've ever been, but it was a really cool trip. We explored the Rock of Gilbrater's caves and tunnels and I even had a monkey (well, actually an ape) jump on my head. Crazy!

But anyway, we're back in Berlin now and ready to hit our universites strong until the end of the semester in February. Please pray for an outreach we're doing at the TU this Thursday, that many students will come and that they'll have interest in learning more about God and spiritual things.

about halfway through - really?

It's been nice to be back on campus since Christmas break and get back into the lives of students. I've been amazed as I met several students last week who are either interested in Campus or in meeting up again to talk about spiritual things. I guess I shouldn't be, but it's easy to start expecting little when that's what we often experience. But God's working and guiding and it encourages me to trust for even bigger things! Matt spoke at Fire-Abend last week and for the first time, we had two students involved in the meeting. One spoke about how the Silvester Conference went and the other translated for Matt - so that was very exciting. This week, my campus team and I are doing some planning for an outreach we're having at the TU at the end of Januray. A Christian professor from a different university will be speaking on why you can believe when it seems like science explains everything - perfect for our Technical University! Please pray that students will notice the flyers and come. Please also pray for Kurz Film & Keks this Thurs., that many students will come.

Time is flying by and I'll already be leaving for Spain this Saturday for our mid-year conference. All the STINTers in Europe, North Africa, Middle-east and Russia come here for a time of encouragement and refreshment. For the past five months I've heard nothing but good things about it from our second year STINTers on the team, so needless to say, I'm very excited. :)

alles Deutsch!

Classes resumed today so we're back on campus. For the first time, I had a conversation that was purely in German - for a whole hour! I was in the mensa and asked to sit down with a girl sitting alone. At first I asked her if she spoke English and when she said no, I was ready to throw in the towel for this conversation, but she was curious and very patient with me and we fought through what ended up being a really great conversation. For my poor German skills, this is a big deal and I felt it was worthy of recording here. :)

Silvester

We just got back to Berlin from Limbach for our Silvester Conference. And it was such a blast! There were about 42 students from the north/east of Germany including our one student from Berlin. It was so great to meet the students - they are so friendly, so much fun and so in love with God! I was so encouraged to see so many German students worshiping, growing in their faith and deepening their relationships with one another. Each university that was represented at the conference was given a chance to talk a little about the ministry on their campus and present a mascot symbolizing their movement. Our student held a tiny spider plant and explained how the Berlin ministry is like this plant, because it's very small, but it's alive and growing. And like spider plants, it will eventually reproduce itself so that new little buds can be planted on its own. I couldn't think of a better way to explain it. :)

We celebrated Silvester (New Year's) with games, a hilarious talent show, worship, reflection, walking through forest and fields with torches, and a dance party - awesome. I feel like our vision for Berlin was refreshed with real examples of thriving movements that are happening in other places in Germany.

In other news, today is probably the snowest day in Berlin this season, but sadly that only means about half an inch of snow on the ground. But as I went to Bauhaus this morning (equilivant to a Home Depot) I saw person after person buying sledes. And out on the streets, people were dragging their sledes along. And I don't mean those plastic disks that just barely might work on this amount of snow, but I mean those big wodden sledes that you didn't know actually existed, but only see in Christmas cards and decorations. Yes, people were buying them. There aren't even any hills in Berlin. What on earth?