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.

:)

Thanksgiving Party

So the Thanksgiving Party yesterday was just so fabulous that I had to let you all know right away. Including the STINT team, there was about 50 people there! That's about 35 students! And it was really a blast. I think the German students really enjoyed it - even the cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, which they thought was so bizarre. But many of them brought store-bought or homemade German desserts so it was a wonderful blend of German and American food. And it was just really awesome to have the friends I have made so far meet each other and also meet other students from other universities. It was really special and definitely evidence that God is doing a lot this year in Berlin. But I know I'm not just speaking for myself when I say that we're all running on very little sleep and are physically and relationally exhausted from the party (think of 7 solid hours of conversing and being social - enough to make the biggest extrovert tired). Not to mention all the setting up, cooking and cleaning up that it took to accomplish the party. So please pray just for some good rest for us this week. Also, our second Fire-Abend is on Thursday - please pray it will be just as successful (if not more) as last month's. Danke sehr!

Happy Thanksgiving

While the rest of Berlin carried on with their lives, us American celebrated a very traditional American Thanksgiving. Luckily we had some visitors bring us very American necessities, like cranberry sauce, canned pumpkin, corn syrup, cream of mushroom soup and other things from an American military base here in Germany. So we cooked up a storm yesterday morning and then carried our wrapped dishes on the U-bahn (quite the sight to see) to go eat at the Sfura's. We ate and ate and ate, played with the kids, watched movies - it was nice.

Tomorrow is our Thanksgiving party for students. We're expecting a lot of people - around 40 to 50 including us, which is super exciting. And once again, there will be much cooking (and eating) happening. :)

First Snowfall

It's funny how the snow today made me feel more at home here. I guess four years of Syracuse weather will do that to you. But it does really bother me that it is currently 4:25 pm and it's pitch black outside...

Getting Cultural

So, it's been a pretty busy month so far. Our first Fire-Abend was really awesome - 15 students came! We definitely have high hopes for the next one. We had Cultural Training in the beginning of this week, which was certainly a learning experience for all of us. We talked about the difference in American values vs. German values and the differences in how we converse. It certainly stirred up a lot in us, but I think we can take what we learned and really use it practically as we develop relationships with the German students. We also had our second Kurz Film and Keks this past Thurs. We had 8 students show up and the topic was 'exclusivity'. The cool thing about these discussion times is that students will hang out and talk with us after the event is over and stay pretty late.

I'm starting to develope some good friendships with a few TU girls, which is really exciting. As a TU team, we're trying to decide if we could start a TU Bible study or some sort of 'Christianity Explored' sort of gathering. Please pray that we'll have wisdom to figure out the best thing to do and also that we'll meet more interested students and also continue to grow the friendships that have already started.