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!