Mittwoch II, und Donnerstag

Mini German lesson of the day

Donnerstag = Thursday. 

Es ist sehr heiß heute.= It is very hot today. 

Das ist alles. 

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Hello again

Last time I kind of left you hanging. Sorry about that! After the bible study we were chatting with a young woman named Julia that we had met on Sunday. She is from Kyrgyzstan and speaks almost perfect English. She is a delightful, adventurous lady who may join us for some of our independent travel at the end of our time here. She offered to take us to the park. 

Nice and very green :) 

Let me tell you, this was not like any park I've ever been to at home. For one thing it is huge. Much bigger than anything other than our national parks. 

It has at least three ponds, one of which you can paddle boat in, paths to meander through on foot or bike, plenty of grassy places to set up a blanket and soak up the sun in, and un Bier Garten. I could happily spend hours and hours there. It is very beautiful and we plan to go back. 

Someone tell me what this is? I'm curious.

Apparently, it also has species of waterfowl that I am unfamiliar with. This guy looks mostly like a mallard to me, but with very long legs.

And I think these might be the babies of the long-legged fowl.

So cute, so fluffy! 

Everything we did after this is fairly uninteresting. Dinner, balance the budget, etc. 

So no we come to Donnerstag. Mom had two readers today and I had one. I can't speak much to her experiences, but I had a wonderful one. 
Today I met with a lady named Dagmar. She is a member of the church and has been reading with LST here for TWELVE YEARS. Needless to say, she has read all of the books and we spent our time getting to know each other and reading out of the Bible. We read some of her favorite Psalms today, and funny enough the first one we opened to is also my favorite! It is a popular verse, and maybe you already know it, but I'm going to share it anyway. 

                                    Psalm 23
                                                        A psalm of David

1
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 
2
He makes me lie down in green pastures, 
he leads me beside quiet waters, 
3
he refeshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name's sake. 
4
Even though I walk 
through the darkest valley, 
I will fear no evil, 
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, 
they comfort me.
5
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies
You anoint my head with oil; 
my cup overflows.
6
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life, 
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever. 

Before we started reading she openly admitted to me that she struggles with depression, and today was a harder one. She said she has not always had it, but it has been a problem the last few years. German's seem to have a better grasp on the concept that mental illness is just that: an illness, and that it can and will affect you physically and make it hard to go out, just like any other illness can. She also told me that she is very glad she decided to come anyway. I believe that she chose to start out with the 23rd Psalm because she finds it a calming reminder that God is there, and he has our backs.

The other passage that we read was this:

Psalm 71

of Solomon.

Endow the king with your justice, O God,

    the royal son with your righteousness.

2 May he judge your people in righteousness,

    your afflicted ones with justice.

3 May the mountains bring prosperity to the people,

    the hills the fruit of righteousness.

4 May he defend the afflicted among the people

    and save the children of the needy;

    may he crush the oppressor.

5 May he endure[a] as long as the sun,

    as long as the moon, through all generations.

6 May he be like rain falling on a mown field,

    like showers watering the earth.

7 In his days may the righteous flourish

    and prosperity abound till the moon is no more.

8 May he rule from sea to sea

    and from the River[b] to the ends of the earth.

9 May the desert tribes bow before him

    and his enemies lick the dust.

10 May the kings of Tarshish and of distant shores

    bring tribute to him.

May the kings of Sheba and Seba

    present him gifts.

11 May all kings bow down to him

    and all nations serve him.

12 For he will deliver the needy who cry out,

    the afflicted who have no one to help.

13 e will take pity on the weak and the needy

    and save the needy from death.

14 He will rescue them from oppression and violence,

    for precious is their blood in his sight.

15 Long may he live!

    May gold from Sheba be given him.

May people ever pray for him

    and bless him all day long.

16 May grain abound throughout the land;

    on the tops of the hills may it sway.

May the crops flourish like Lebanon

    and thrive[c] like the grass of the field.

17 May his name endure forever;

    may it continue as long as the sun.

Then all nations will be blessed through him,[d]

    and they will call him blessed.

18 Praise be to the Lord God, the God of Israel,

    who alone does marvelous deeds.

19 Praise be to his glorious name forever;

    may the whole earth be filled with his glory.

Amen and Amen.

20 This concludes the prayers of David son of Jesse.

We spent a lot more time on this passage. It had many words that were unclear to her and though she seems very familiar with the German, I believe that her understanding of the English translation was much improved by the end of our time together. We prayed the last few minutes. We prayed for each other, our families, and many other things.She is a very sweet woman and I hope to continue to read and converse with her, if only once a week. My prayer for her, and for her sister who suffers from more severe depression and anxiety, are that they may both find the perfect peace surpassing understanding that only God can provide.

I know that the primary directive for us coming here is to teach English through the sharing of the Gospel with others, but I also believe that in the process we are meant to connect with these wonderful individuals as much as possible and learn from them. We are meant to share and love, to emotionally touch and be touched by them. I was so impressed by this ladies' faith that it nearly brought me to tears. From what I can tell she struggles most days with depression, and today her response to it was to go read and discuss uplifting scripture, to connect with another person through Gods word and across language barriers when it would have been seemingly easier to stay at home. Holding her hands and praying with and for her was just as important as the rest of it. She is such a sweet soul and I feel so blessed to have met her.

At the end of our time together she thanked me and said "My heart is lighter now then it was earlier, I am so glad that I came!" Then we hugged before she left. All in all, that singular experience has made  the entire day worth it.

Tomorrow we have to move to our new apartment, which means this evening we will have to pack. This is going to complicate so things for us, but make other things a bit better. Our hope is that it all goes very smoothly and that we don't get confused about how to use the streetcar to get from point A to point B!

Right now Mom is sending emails and texts to former readers as we still only have 6 between us. Please continue pray that we find more people to read with. There are 1 million people in this city, surely we can find 10 so more.

Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and support of our during this project. We appreciate it more than you know!

bis später!

Mittwoch

Mini German lesson of the day

Hallo auf Deutschland!

Es ist Die Mitte der Woche heir, und das ist warum sie "Wednesday" nennen "Mittwoch".

Translation: Hello from Germany! It is the middle of the week here, and that is why they call Wednesay "Mittwoch".


Our first week is well underway now, half over in fact. So far we have met with three readers total. Tomorrow I will meet for the first time with a lady from the church named Dagmar, and on Friday I have another reading session with a young man named Jonas. We are still waiting to hear back from four potential readers, and are very surprised that three of those three have not responded to us yet as all seemed very enthused initially. Please keep them and whatever their situations are in your prayers, perhaps God will bring them to us next week.

So far we've had two people come in off of the street and ask about practicing their English with us. Samuel seemed very excited about getting started but did not actually schedule an appointment.  He talked to mom when he came in. He had a card with him advertising Let's Start Talking. He said "I need help. Someone gave me this card, but I can't read English so I don't know what it says." So mom read it to him. He said "I need to learn English, and I know that I can do that here. But I also need God so I can have a better life, and I know that I can find him here." We are a little disheartened that he did not make an appointment then. Please pray that God continues to work on his heart and that he comes to church Sunday so we can catch up with him. Dana is the other one. She came in because 20 years ago (I'm not kidding) she read with the gentleman that used to preach here. She remembered doing that and wanted to see if the program still existed or not. She will be reading with Mom on Monday.

It is very exciting and encouraging to have people just show up this way, without any prompting.

This is the Church building

My new friend Pascal, who I started reading with on Tuesday has already come twice and will be back on Friday. He does not live near the church, but he likes to come and read whenever he can. Yesterday he came just to get started, today he read with me just before an English bible study. His religious background is mostly Catholic. He is quite disenchanted with Catholicism and in my opinion the concept of church as an organization on the whole. He likes the feel of the congregation here, but is hesitant to become too personally attached or invested. I don't think he frequents Sunday services, but he does make a point to come to the bible studies and smaller gatherings. He is definitely searching and trying to figure out what is true and what is right for himself. He has also been looking for work for several years now. He is well qualified and seems easy enough to get along with, but competition is fierce in the current market. He just had a job interview today and feels it went quite well. He has asked for prayers concerning this situation. Please pray that this interview leads to actual employment for him, and that God will work through me and other Christians in his life to help him on his journey.

Apart from meeting with readers today, we were able to take advantage of some other opportunities that came our way. First, there was a German class meeting in the building at the same time we were having lunch. Initially we kept to the office downstairs so as not to bother them too much, but at the end of their class time they invited us to pray with them.  We met three wonderful, warm, inviting ladies that were more than happy to have us join and get to know them. We ended up talking for about 30 minutes before the actual prayer time. These ladies prayed for many things; all of our families, this LST mission, the people that we encounter in our daily lives, the world as a whole, and they expressed an immense amount of gratitude for the things they have in life. After the prayer time they told us we are welcome to join them for their class anytime that they are there and we don't have readers. They have planned an outside class for us next week and said that we will have ice cream then. Later in the day we joined a small English bible study and spent about an hour discussing 1 Peter chapter 2.

I was going to update you about the rest of our day as well, but it's getting late and I don't have WiFi in the apartment, so tomorrow will be Mittwoch part 2, and  recap of the day.

Until next time....

LST in Cologne, Germany

Hey all,

So we are back in Germany for another round of LST. This time in Cologne! I'm trying the blogging thing again, maybe I'll be more consistent this year! We've been here a few days already and
I haven't really gotten around to taking many pictures, but here's a lovely image from travelogx.com of a bridge I haven't seen yet.

We landed in Frankfurt at 9am on Saturday morning after 9.5 hours in the air. The plane ride was long, but otherwise as good as one could hope these days. Lufthansa is a good airline and if you asked me I would recommend it. (Though Delta still has my heart, if I'm honest).

After we picked up our luggage and I realized the handle on my suitcase had been bent in transit and is now permanently stuck in the extended position, we headed to the next leg of our journey. The journey from Frankfurt to Köln meant another 1.5 or so hours on a train to Cologne. Once on board, we traveled down most of the length of the train, luggage in tow with another American and her daughter, searching for "reserved seats" on a car that didn't exist. Eventually a German lady took pity on me and told me we could just sit anywhere because the train was different than the one originally scheduled to pick us up, and so I did.
Once we got to the Bahnhof in Cologne, we realized that we didn't know where to meet our hosts, Uli and Barbara. As it turns out, we had strolled right past them, but they did eventually catch up with us. We took our stuff to the car and then were privy to a tour of the immediate area, which including walking all around and briefly stepping inside the magnificent Dome right outside of the Bahnhof.

This is not my photo, thanks Pinterest! 

It's taller in person and bigger on the inside :) 

We were treated to lunch at an open air cafe outside of an art museum that I am dying to go back to and tour. Afterwards we walked around a bit more and went out onto the original love locks bridge (it didn't start in France after all). At this point I was dead on my feet. I hadn't slept more than 45 minutes on the plane. I hadn't slept much the night before we left, either, so I had no idea what energy stores I was running on anymore. We finally made our way back to the car and were taken to the site, with one stop off at a 300s era church that has mostly been rebuilt but still maintains part of the original Roman architecture. 

Lunch with Barbara and Uli (Uli was the photographer)

Yum!

A garden with a Fairytale behind it. I'll have to tell you it once I remember it myself. 

We dropped off our stuff at the apartment, which is almost completely dedicated to LST teams. Then we got a tour of church, which is right next door, and went grocery shopping. We would have loved to put off the shopping until the next day, but we couldn't. In Germany the shops are closed on Sunday's. In fact, almost everything except restaurants are closed on Sunday. So it had to be Saturday. We got that done and finally came back to the apartment. It was about 3pm at this point. 

We spent the remainder of the day resting. "Resting" may have also included an impromptu 5 hour nap and then around 4-5 hours of wakefulness before finally going back to bed. This consequently led to sleeping in the next morning and getting to church in the nick of time for service. 

It was a German service but we did end up with a translator for the sermon, which I appreciated. I also greatly enjoyed experiencing their prayer service at the beginning, and singing with them was wonderful. I got chills. After church their was Kuchen und Kaffee (cake and coffee) and conversation. I was able to sign up two readers during that time. I will be meeting with both of them later in the week! We went out to lunch after services with two ladies from the church, and then spent the rest of our day trying to adjust to the time change. Jetlag is annoying. 

This brings us to present day. We slept in this morning, which was probably not in our best interest, but it's ok. After we got up and around we came to the church building, had some lunch, and started to prepare for our readers. It's a slow start and currently we only have three people scheduled. Mom is reading with one of them, a lady named Brigit, right now. I will most likely be reading with her sister later in the week. This evening we will call former Readers and find out who is interested in continuing with the program. For now, I'm just reviewing some of the materials that we work with and adding in some questions I have for my readers as we look at the texts. 

We want to just say once more that we are so very thankful to everyone that helped us get here! You're support is the only reason all of this is even possible. Now that we are here, please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Pray for us as we move through this first week, and beyond. Pray that people will be open to continuing and that our schedules fill up a bit more. Pray that the Readers we are already having conversation sessions with are getting what they need out of this service; pray that we are able to connect and build relationships with them in a way that allows this experience to positively impact our lives and theirs. 

Thank you and God bless, 

That's all for now. 

Bye-bye!  

I start talking

Day 4 - First new reader

Thanks to my slow day yesterday, I had hardly any paperwork to do, with the exception of an info sheet for my first reader, and a couple items to track in the budget. Yay!!!

I had two readers today. I meant to ask if I could take pictures of both of them, just for the memories, but then I didn't, so I'll have to try again later. I know two is not many but interest seems to be low here, so we are excited about anyone that does decide to come. Mom met with three, so we had five for the day. My first reader came in at 10am. She is a delightful woman, originally an English teacher from the Ukraine, she came to LST to work on the English she feels she has lost in the process of learning German, and to study the Bible. We started by getting to know each other, I shared a few things from home with her, including some candies, and we discovered a mutual love of cooking. She said maybe she would bring me something next time we meet! Then we dove into the actual material.

 Everything moved rather quickly and I realized just as quickly that I need to revamp my material a little. For the most part, I can probably go deeper with most of my readers, asking them and talking to them about more complex subjects, with more varied vocabulary than I could at some of the other LST sites. At the end of the lesson she said she was leaving to visit her family next week but wanted to schedule two more lessons so she could get some more time in before that. I was excited!

I didn't meet with my next reader until 6pm. So I had plenty of time to go to the store, update the budget tracker, work on my material for my next lesson, and visit the bakery which was nice.

Let me introduce you to heaven in a cake. 

Angel-food cake. Raspberry whip. Whipped cream. A touch of chocolate. 

It was so delicious. Almost everything here is delicious. 

American's need to stop being cheap and make good food.

In reality I don't feel like I did much at all during that time, yet it went fast. I think that's going to be the theme of this project.

My next reader was a young lady, still in her last year of what we call high school. She is a fascinating, well-traveled individual that I really enjoy working with. We talked a lot about both the lesson and things apart from the lessons just to practice conversational English and while sometimes we had a hard time finding a topic, we were both eager to learn more about the other person and each others cultures.

If you ever decide to come to Germany for an LST project you need to know one thing: you will not get many, if any, beginning readers. Most German's do speak some English. They will read and speak faster than you are led to believe in training. They have excellent critical thinking skills and once they understand all the words they grasp the main idea of the lessons quickly. You need to understand that your American education is not on par with their education. You need to come prepared with deeper questions then "tell me this story in your own words", as that probably won't take long. I have found a good way to supplement is to read up on the history of any people or places mentioned in the text. For example, I knew that my second reader and I would be talking about the Pharisees, so I brushed up on my knowledge of the Pharisees and the Sadducees so that I could give her some background, which she seemed to appreciate.

Not as many pictures today, but we're going into downtown tomorrow, so more to come!!

P.S. We're biking downtown tomorrow, and my bike is so tall that I can't touch the ground. I haven't ridden any decent distance on a bike since I was a teenager. So please pray for me. I'm stressed. Once I get up and get going I'm fine, but starting back up after stopping (like at a stop light) is a different story. 

Let's Start Talking!

Day 3 - First readers

Our training manual and workbooks

Today, we are excited, nervous and prayerful. We started reading today. Unfortunately the first team that was here had about half of their readers drop out or decide to not be put on the schedule yet. So mom met with two readers, and I didn't have any. But I spent my time setting up our office space, balancing the budget, making a call list so we could contact 4 possibly returning readers, and one new reader, familiarizing myself with the readers we do have, and the readers we hope will return, and praying for previous and hopefully future readers. We did get calls back from the new reader and one of our continuing readers and got them on my schedule, so that was a blessing because it means I get to start actually reading tomorrow!!

At least Pigwidgeon seems excited about the paperwork...

I also completely crashed in the late afternoon. I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. This time zone thing is hard.

Late in the evening we packed up most of our stuff and had it moved to our new sleeping quarters, a house a few minutes walk down the street. We followed later that night. Our hosts seem really nice, and I think I might sleep better tonight than I have been, I've woken up a lot the last two nights. We stayed up and talked with them for awhile and decided to turn in around 10pm.
Suddenly I'm rather awake. I guess I'll read for awhile.
I'm really excited about tomorrow!!

Church, and Adventures in Celle

Day 2 - Sunday

We were so tired last night. The people and the food were both excellent, but we were both so happy to go to bed. Thankfully church didn't start until 10:30am. I slept for a solid 12 hours and am still exhausted. I can't even remember the last time that happened. We were lucky enough to have our first church service be an English service, where everything is in both English and German. The church here is very small, 20 people is a good day. But today there were closer to 40 with guests. That was really nice. I really enjoyed getting to sing in German too, my diction lessons really paid off today. After church we met and talked to a couple people before being whisked away on our first adventure to a very nearby town called Celle. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the house of the people that were hosting us that day.

A river runs through it.

You have to cross here to reach the town :) 

I wish I had moved quickly enough to get the massive swans in this picture. 

We were given two options for getting to the actual town from the house, walk or drive. I chose to walk with one of our host families and the other team, Matt and Michael, they will be leaving Monday and I wanted to get to know them a little before that happens, and see if they have any advice for me. It was about a 15 minute walk into the town and it was completely flat the whole way there. I have noticed that this whole area is flat. It's nice because it makes it ideal for walking and biking. I found that it was very easy to talk to Matt and Michael and they said the only real difficulty they had on the trip was the language barrier. I think I'm going to miss them when they go. It's too bad we only have a couple days of crossover.

This gives you an idea of German streets and buildings.
The red brick indicates bike lanes and crossing areas.

Open fields are really common in this part of Germany.

Most shops and some restaurants are closed on Sunday's in Germany, so we just got a walking tour of the town. It was really cute and looked like there were a lot of things to do. I was surprised by how much English and Italian stuff I saw. It really is very culturally diverse here. 

German on the left, Italian on the right.

We saw the oldest building in Celle...

I think it's an apartment on top, and a shop on bottom.

We also saw horses,

a really cool water feature,

and some other things you just don't really see in the states...

This is Matt on one of the toys we found in the middle of town.

and another one...

There is a huge gnome back there.

Don't ask me why.

We also saw a palace

Inside there is an outdoor theater and a museum. 

At the palace we discussed the difference between a palace and a castle. We decided that Palaces are where royalty live, and castles are fortified for battle and more for the knights. This palace has apparently housed several dukes throughout it's time. 

I don't know what this building is, I just really liked the steeple.

This was probably my favorite find though... 

Me, Matt, and David

The story behind this is they used to put that ring around the necks of men who were caught cheating on their spouses so that they could be publicly shamed. Sounds like a good system to me! 

On the way back I noticed they have a bridge with locks all over it, like the one that just came down in France, but smaller. 

So many locks!

We thought this one was cool because it's really big and looks really old. 

There's a lock in there, if you look hard. 

Love lost?

There are beautiful gardens and areas all over too. 

                Tunnel of trees                                                                           A lovely garden.

All in all it was a beautiful, wonderful day. After we got back we had a meeting with David, Matt, and Michael - the first for us and the last for Matt and Michael. Then we all went to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. Since none of us speak German very well it was quite an experience. The food was good though, as was the company. 

After dinner David went home and Matt and Michael walked us back to the church. They hung out for a little while and we talked before saying goodnight and goodbye. 

I am sad to see them go, I think it would be awesome if we had more overlap. But there isn't really enough work here for four people right now. They had an amazing time and I'm sure that we will too. I hope we meet again one day, until then there is always facebook! :) 

Until next time...

Washington state to Peine, Germany - Getting there.

Guten Tag!
So this first post is going to catch you up on how the process of "getting here" happened,  how we decided to even be here this time and this year in the first place, and where a stuffed owl named "Pigwidgeon" fits into all of this.

March, 2015
We have started communicating with Leslee, our team developer. We know that we have a lot of work and fundraising to do in order to get ready for our 2016 mission, including nailing down who exactly is going to be on our team. Will it be a team of 5, or 2? But at least we are starting plenty early. So time is on our side. We are really excited about the opportunities that await us!

April 7th, 2015
Today we received an email from Leslee asking if we, Denise and Marissa, wanted to do an LST project THIS year, in June! That's really soon. We aren't sure what to do, but we're going to pray about it and give her an answer in the next couple days. We just aren't sure about raising $7,000 in less than 3 months!

April 12th, 2015
We're going to go for it! Let the fund raising and training begin.

April 17th, 2015
We raised our first $1,000!!! This might actually work!

April 27th, 2015
We raised our first $2,000, in 15 days. That's incredible! Things seem to be slowing down a bit but we remain positive, hopeful, and prayerful. :)

April 30th, 2015
Now we're at $3,100, we're up to our elbows in training, and we're getting really excited!! We made it nearly halfway in less than one month. That is nothing short of miraculous.

May 22nd, 2015
Fundraising has slowed way down at this point. We have $3,730 of our $7,000. But that doesn't mean it's over. We're going to keep fundraising, training, and praying. Even if it doesn't work out this year, at least any funds raised will go to next years project!

May 23rd, 2015
Ok, things are picking up again, and looking up. Now we're at $4,780 thanks to some very generous donations. It's pretty incredible if you think about it. That is a lot of money in a very short amount of time.

May 28th, 2015
Thanks to an incredibly generous donation, we are FULLY FUNDED! This is happening! We are going to Germany next month! Hallelujah!

Between May 28th and June 24th we continued to train, pray, and prepare ourselves as best we could. This proved a little tricky as work decided this would be a great time to move me into full time status with some overtime, too. So a little extra challenge, but a welcome one.


June 25th, 2015
I had to work in the morning, 8am-1pm. Then I went home, triple-checked my bags, loaded up the car, and we drove down to my Grandma's house in Washougal. That night we spent time with my Grandma and sisters, and maxed out the sleeping capacity of my Grandma's tiny single-wide.

June 26th, 2015
We got up in the morning, had breakfast, went shopping for some last minute things - which turned into a bit of it's own adventure - decided we would have to live without 3 of the items on our list, and headed off to the Portland International airport!

This is my sister's send-off picture.

Always a character.

At the airport....
Let me begin by saying I am a high stress person.
When we got to the airport with less than 3 hours to spare, I was not happy. I wanted to have 3 hours because I'm weird and I would rather spend extra time hanging out at my gate than I would running to it. Thankfully, my stress was misguided. Once we finished having our passports scanned the process of checking baggage, going through security, and finding our gate happened relatively quickly. I always forget that Portland International Airport is smaller than Seattle. We ended up with extra time as it was. When we boarded our plane we were feeling excited, but nervous. It was really the first time nerves had set in. This was real, it was happening, and we were going to be away from home for almost a month.

Normally I drive a Taurus, 

but my other ride is a T.A.R.D.I.S

It's a shame the Doctor was busy that day...

I was also kind of dreading the 9.5 hour flight with an additional hour at the end. I know it's by far the fastest, most reasonable mode of transportation when traveling across the pond, but I don't like to sit still much. That's just too long to be stuck on a plane.

Pigwidgeon is ready for takeoff!

This is the part when Pigwidgeon comes in. Before we left, we had decided to bring a small stuffed animal, Curious George, as our version of the "roaming gnome". Well, I wanted to get a picture of him before we left, but I couldn't find him. So we went into a little store and found a bunch of different little stuffed animals. I was torn for awhile between an owl and a dragon, but the owl won. Now he's my little traveling companion.

By the time we reached Amsterdam I was excited - not only to be in Amsterdam for the first time, but to get up and move around. There were people on our flight who never moved once, but I was not one of them. Since I also only slept for half an hour I was very thankful for the free movies on the plane. I watched Jupiter Rising before I found the "kids section", which I got way too excited about, and watched Frozen and How to Train Your Dragon.

We made it to Schipol!

When we were planning the travel portion of this project, I had visions of being tired but so excited to be in a new country that I would explore the Amsterdam airport, which I hear has many interesting features, during our 4 hour layover. But after standing and walking around for awhile, exhaustion overcame me and I proceeded to lay flat on the floor for a few hours instead. It may not sound very comfortable, but it was rather warm in the airport and the cool floor felt wonderful, plus I managed to pop my back.

By the time we got on our last flight I was completely over sitting. Thankfully I slept, and it was over all too soon. I knew that I would have to do a lot sitting after that too. It was still a 20-30 minute drive to Peine. That feeling of wanting to do anything but sit did not leave me until today, 4 days later.

Germany at last!

The preacher at the church we are working with, Randy, picked us up at the airport and drove us to Peine. I was surprised to learn that he is originally from the the states, though he and his wife have been here for over 30 years. We spent the rest of the day meeting people, such as the local missionary David, and the team that came before us, we also a wonderful chicken salad dinner, our first introduction German cuisine. The rest was mainly trying to learn names and phrases, and settling in.

Our "home away from home" office and sometimes bedroom.

That's it, that's the story of how we ended up in Germany this year. 

More to come later....