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?

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.

:)