25 September 2011 - Wonderful Weekend

We continue to be blessed with incredible weather - God has been incredibly good to us!  The forecast for this week is for more of the same - sunshine and 70's all week.  Thank you, Lord! 

After viewing another apartment on Friday, Carol and I visited a beautiful palace in Darmstadt.  The Orangerie was built in 1719.  It was the en vogue thing in those days for royalty to have a tropical garden, with things like Oranges (hence the name) - even in non-tropical climates.    Yes, those are ORANGE TREES & PALM TREES in Germany!  They actually take the trees indoors for the winter.  It was a beautiful spot, and close to one of the apartments we are considering.

The weekend was great - lots of work around the home of the Maxwell's where we are living in these early days.  Saturday was spent cutting down a tree in the back yard, trimming shrubs, small trees, rose bushes and removing and replacing an old fence along the back edge of the property.  It was lots of good, hard, sweaty, dirty work.  Just the kind of day we enjoyed back on our farm in Wisconsin - We loved it!









This morning we attended Bethel International Baptist Church in Frankfurt, where we shared our vision for Darmstadt and passion for church planting.  The service was followed by an informal time of fellowship, and then we were invited to join a group from the church for lunch.  There's a group that goes out each Sunday for a meal together - every other week they combine the time with a short Bible study.

We met lots of wonderful people - and gentleman and his wife from Zimbabwe; a graduate student from Indiana; a teacher at the International School from Canada.  There were several people who were visiting the church for the first time - a young man who works at the US Consulate from Pennsylvania, and a gentleman from Toronto, Canada, who has just been transfered to Beijing, China, and is in Frankfurt for training.  International Churches are so much fun!  It was such a joy to invite the consulate worker to join us for lunch, give him a ride to the restaurant, and encourage him to connect with the body of Christ! 

On the way home, Carol made a short "Dash-cam" video as we drove through our current "home town."  If you'd like to see it on our You-Tube page:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTlW__OpZe8&feature=channel_video_title

We also stopped to put gas in the car. Purchasing fuel here is a sobering experience.  The car we have has a 10 gallon tank.  Filling it from near empty cost over $85.00 in US dollars...needless to say, we will be doing lots of walking, biking and riding trams!  That is a major factor is our search for an apartment. 

On that front, we have found some really good options, and are seeing two more Monday evening.  We are going to try to have our decision made by mid week.  That will allow us to get an address to the moving company that is holding our boxes in New Orleans.  It takes about 6-8 weeks for delivery - which will put us at late November / early December for delivery - which will include our warm weather clothes!  As we close in on our decision, we are confident of God's leading.  We know that He will lead us to the place He knows will give us the greatest ministry effect.  Proverbs 3:5&6 tells us that as we trust in the Lord with all our hearts, and lean not on our own understanding, and trust Him in all our ways, that He will direct our paths...will you pray with us as we obey that verse - trusting Him and seeking His will?  Thank you!