Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finally, an update

Well, now that it’s been 6 months since I last wrote, it’s probably about time to update.

There’s been a lot going on over the past few months. Elsa and I are still meeting with Kai and Rainer once a week for an English Bible study, which has been going very well. They both seem to be interested in what we’re reading together in the Gospel of Mark and have been asking lots of great – but sometimes difficult! – questions.

I’m also still teaching the Sunday School class for the 3- to 5-year olds. I’ve really been enjoying this group. They love to do craft projects, and I have fun coming up with ideas for crafts that fit the story we’re learning. We’re working our way through the stories of the Old Testament and slowly memorizing the books of the New Testament.

I also continue to meet with Ludmilla and Jessica about once a week. Ludmilla will be going to the U.S. at the end of July to work for a year as an au pair. Please pray for her as she has her visa appointment at the U.S. embassy in Berlin today. Please also pray for Jessica as she’s been having some health problems and will have to have surgery in a few weeks. Please pray that God will work through me during this time to help her see the hope and love that He offers.

In mid-May we hosted a ladies’ tea, which went very well and was well-attended. We enjoyed cake, coffee, and tea with friends, neighbors, and other contacts, and Elsa spoke on the topic, “Woman: Exactly what was missing.” I guess it sounds like it could have been a feminist presentation, but she talked about God’s purpose in creating women and the struggles we have in accepting the qualities He’s given us and in using them for His glory. It was a very appropriate topic for the group, and Elsa did a great job in both preparing and presenting her thoughts. We held a similar ladies’ tea last year, and it seems as if it’s going to become an annual event.

Last week nine of us from Bremen attended the annual ladies’ retreat in Neckarzimmern, Germany. Neckarzimmern is a tiny town about 25 miles southeast of Heidelberg, and it’s in a beautiful region of the country. This year the retreat was attended by about 60 women from four congregations in Switzerland and at least nine congregations in Germany. The women from the Wuerzburg congregation did a fantastic job planning things this year, and it seemed to me that everyone had a very uplifting week. This is the third time I’ve attended this retreat, and each time it gets a little easier because I’m slowly getting to know many of the women who come year after year. And, as a bonus, I’m learning to understand Swiss German. :)

The first half of this year has been personally difficult for me. Right before Christmas my grandfather was diagnosed with leukemia, and the treatments they tried resulted in the leukemia coming back even stronger. In mid-January he was sent home on hospice care, and the doctors said he might live 3 days or as long as 3 weeks. He has astounded everyone, however, and is still alive. The doctors basically expected that he would get some sort of infection from which he wouldn’t be able to recover, but that just hasn’t happened. The leukemia is slowly taking over his body, leaving him unable to feel his legs at all, and he’s becoming weaker every day.

In early January, my mom’s step-mother, Mae, (other side of the family) was diagnosed with cancer in both her brain and spine. My grandmother died of cancer in 2000, so this was difficult for the whole family. Despite radiation treatments and much prayer, Mae succumbed to the cancer at the beginning of April, leaving my grandfather a widower for the second time.

Dealing with all of this from over 4,000 miles away has been one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do since coming to Bremen. How do you grieve with your family when you’re separated by an ocean?

Then, on the day of Mae’s funeral, someone stole mail out of my mailbox. My parents had sent me some mail that had arrived at their house for me, including some bank statements and information I needed for filing my taxes, and only one letter from the larger envelope was in my mailbox – opened and with no German address. The one positive out of the whole situation: I now know how to file a police report in Bremen. (Though I hope I never have to use that knowledge again!) Because of the content of the mail that was missing, I had to close my bank account, which led to many other hassles in getting billing information changed. Everything seems to have worked out okay, but it was all very frustrating.

Also in April I was blessed with the chance to go to the States. It had been about 16 months since my last visit, and with all that has been happening in my family, I felt a need to go. I also had been looking for an opportunity to report on the work in Bremen, so this was a good chance to do that as well. I really enjoyed the time with family, and I was able to give a presentation at my parents’ congregation about the work I’ve been doing. The missions committee at College church (my sponsoring congregation) also made time to meet with me, so I went to Searcy, Arkansas, for a whirlwind trip. It was so great to see so many friends and former co-workers! My meeting with the missions committee went well, too, and I appreciated the opportunity to thank them for their support and to show pictures and talk about all that God’s doing here.

The two weeks went by so fast, and I really wish I’d been able to visit with more people. This was the first time I’ve made a trip like this, and it really showed me the importance of planning annual (or at least biennial) trips for the purpose of reporting. Besides helping me fulfill my responsibility to report on my work here, it was a tremendous boost to my spirits. On the mission field there’s the danger of thinking that people have forgotten about you. This trip showed me, however, that people think about and pray for me regularly and that they are very interested in what I’m doing in Bremen. Thank you for that! Knowing that you care about me and my work here means the world to me. I also realize that I do not do a very good job of reporting regularly and that perhaps if I did I would not have the sense sometimes that I’ve been forgotten. I’m making an effort to change that.

There’s much more I’d like to say, but this post is already so long that it will have to wait for later. Topic of the next post: my plans for the future. Stay tuned. Thanks again for all of your thoughts and prayers and for continuing to check in on me. Gott mit euch!

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