Assorted busyness

Now that I've spent about four days trying to get this post finished, here it is. :)

Life continues to be busy.

Elsa left last Thursday for the U.S. On Friday she's speaking at the Pepperdine University lectureship on planting churches in Europe. If you happen to be going to the lectureship, please sit in on her presentation. She's gained a lot of wisdom throughout 35 years of mission work, and she has some things to share that I think can benefit those involved with foreign missions as well as those simply trying to stay the Christian course. Plus, she has the idea in her head that she's not interesting enough for people to come to hear her speak, and I'd like to prove her wrong. :) Please also pray for her nerves to settle and for her to stay healthy. When she left she was battling a sore throat and was worried she might lose her voice. Not good when you have to speak in front of a group.

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I spent a couple days last week helping Elsa get ready to leave and working more on Jim's library. There are around 8,000 books, and Jim had assigned numbers to a little over half of them and entered them into a database. Another 2,000 or so had been given partial numbers (based on the classification system Jim designed) and are not in the computer. So far I've been working to assign partial numbers to the other 2,000 or so books. I've got about 80 left, and I've come up with a game plan for how things should proceed:

1) Finish assigning partial numbers.

2) Help Elsa choose books to keep for herself and to use with counseling clients.

3) Set aside books for a small collection at the church building.

4) Create a very basic database of partially cataloged books.

5) Send databases to other missionaries in Germany (possibly throughout Europe?) and ask which books they'd like to have.

As for whatever is left after that:

6) Take them to a used book store OR

7) Pull a large Dumpster up to Elsa's house.

A couple of times already I've actually had to talk Elsa out of going ahead with step 7.

I don't know how long all of that is going to take, but I'm happy to have a plan and to know what I'm working toward. We're also at a point where other people are able to use the books, which makes my heart glad. Rüdiger came over recently to get a few books of sample sermons, and Elsa let one of her neighbors borrow a few books last week. We're also sending a Hebrew Bible to Larry Sullivan in Chemnitz. I know Jim enjoyed using his books regularly, and I'm thrilled to now be able to help others make use of them as well.

One of the continuing challenges for me with the books is dealing with multiple copies. I regularly stumble upon a book I know I've seen before, and sure enough, I find its twin on a shelf in another room. I think sometimes Jim either really, really liked a book and bought several copies to give to others or he just plain forgot that he already owned it. I think the latter is probably the more likely answer.

There are also many books that Jim owned both in English and in German, and I try to put those together when I find them, though it's more complicated than matching identical copies. Many books translated from English into German are given completely different titles, and unless you do some investigating you'd never know from the cover that they were the same book. For example, Jim owned Joshua Harris' book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and I finally figured out one day that Unkissed But Still Not a Frog is its German counterpart. The sequel in English is called Boy Meets Girl and in German it's Frog Meets Princess. Does all of that say something about the German language and culture? I don't know.

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Last weekend I went to the European Singles' Retreat in Gemünden, Germany (yes, the same place I went for the ETM intensive week). There were about 30 of us there, and while we all currently live in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, or the Netherlands, the nationalities also included Syrian, Russian, American (several besides me), and even one woman from Curacao. Just like with ETM, I really enjoyed meeting other Christians from so many other places. I think it reminds me how truly global God's family is and should be.

The whole weekend was in English since the participants come from so many different places. While I did speak some German with people who struggle a bit with English, it was nice to speak in English for a while. One of the big highlights of the weekend for me was getting to sing in English. Saturday evening a group of us sang for over two hours, one song after the other. Many of the songs I remember learning around the campfire at Fort Hill Christian Youth Camp during summers growing up or in chapel services at Harding. While I've learned to enjoy singing in German and find it uplifting, there's just something about singing in your native language with other Christians that can make your heart smile.

Another highlight of the weekend: s'mores! We weren't able to make them over a campfire because it had rained all day, but they turned out pretty well in the oven. I asked one of the retreat organizers where she found graham crackers, and she said she got them in the commissary on one of the military bases in the Frankfurt area. She even sent a leftover box home with me. I never cease to be surprised at the weird things I suddenly miss from the U.S.

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Another BIG project I've been working on lately has been responding to the calls about the ads for the English Bible studies with the campaigners who are coming next month. I spent almost the whole day last Monday on the phone returning calls from the weekend and fielding new calls. So far, though, we only have 9 people committed to meeting with the students and a couple others who aren't sure yet. I don't think it's helped that the 2 newspapers in which we advertise didn't get published last Wednesday due to a fire in the print shop. I have gotten calls, though, from people who have seen posters we've hung around town, so that's been good. PLEASE PRAY that God will open people's hearts and will send us the people we need to be meeting with.

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Today I spent the afternoon visiting Julia. She and her husband, Herbert, both met with the campaigners who were here in 2004, and I met her in 2005 in Searcy when she came to visit Mark and Karen (she'd met them while they were also in Bremen in 2004). The last time I saw her was the day before Jim's funeral in October when her son, Marcel, was just under four weeks old, so when she called me last week to ask an English question, we decided I was overdue for a visit to her house. Marcel is now seven months old and, needless to say, looks just a bit different than the last time I saw him. Julia works as a translator between Russian, German, and English, and I helped her this afternoon with some English grammar and translation.

We also had an interesting conversation about faith. She talked about how religion was forbidden while she was growing up in Russia, so faith is basically nothing more to her than a tradition that some people practice. I explained to her that even though my parents are Christians and I grew up going to church, I was the one who had to decide for myself if my faith was my own rather than just something I inherited as a tradition from my parents. I've made my faith my own and am trying to live it in my daily life. I don't know if she understood what I was trying to say or not, but Herbert later told me that he and Julia wanted to know if I would meet with Julia's daughter, Vladislava, to help her with English and to "teach her about religion and what her life means." I told him that I should be able to do that after the campaigners leave in June. It should be interesting to see what comes from all of it.

Thanks for checking in on me and life in Bremen and for your prayers. Please continue to lift me, the Bremen congregation, and the upcoming campaign up to the Father. Gott mit Euch!