We had a very full weekend! If you have been watching the news you may have seen that Europe is in a bit of a cold snap. We have had a week of sunshine and relatively cold temperatures - though not as cold as we are used to from Wisconsin and the Dakotas!
On Friday, Bob met with Andy Cauble, a new friend who is here to minister to Turkish immigrants in the Frankfurt area - including Darmstadt. Andy located a small group of Turkish believers here, and has been serving as their pastor for the past several months. Bob and Andy met downstairs at the Layla Pizza/Gyros/Schnitzel restaurant that owned by our Turkish friend, Orhan, to work on Andy's new Facebook page. It was a great time sharing and planning and connecting.
That evening, we drove over to Ramstein for prayer meeting with our "sister" church there. The people of Ramstein have been such an encouragement to us, and the prayer meeting was no different. Bob got to play drums with the praise team, and we got to share prayer requests and praise reports with them. They took time to have their elders and people from the congregation pray over us. In addition, we heard great testimonies from future medical missionaries being sent out by the church next year, and from a young high school student who definitely set the standard for passion for the lost!
Saturday's highlights included an early morning meeting for Bob with one of the men of the Darmstadt church. It was a great time of encouragement and learning. We took a walk in the bright, cold sunshine, and later had dinner in Frankfurt with friends from the church in Oberursel. A wonderful evening!
Sunday morning we attended church at the German Baptist church that is just a few blocks from our home. Though the entire service was in German, so we were not able to understand all of it, we really enjoyed it. Till Kööp, the minister to young adults, was the speaker, and the youth did much of the service. The worship leader introduced us to the congregation, explaining that we are in Darmstadt to begin a new International church in the city.
After the service, we had a small group of people who came to talk to us, including two young couples who are very excited to join our group. The two men are brothers, whose father is from Chicago. Their wives are sisters from Romania. When they asked us where we were from, they lit up at our answer of "Wisconsin." They had worked with some short term missions teams from Blackhawk Church in Madison - a church that both our sons, Andrew and John, had attended! We are very excited to welcome them to the team.
This morning, we began our "Deutsch Intensivtageskurse". We will be in German language class from 9-1 each day for the next month. While it is a little intimidating, we are very excited to learn. The class today had people from Spain, Afghanistan, Czech Republic, Russia, China, Slovakia, Portugal and the United States. An International Church Planters dream! We were able to reconnect with the young woman from China we met a few week ago, and we are very encouraged to continue to develop that friendship. We had two young women back to our place for a visit - one in the Darmstadt team, and one not (yet!).
This afternoon we spent our first day at the fitness center that we have joined. Not only is it a good opportunity for us to get into shape - it is a really good place to meet people and develop relationships. The coach we had to day was named Gasper - he spoke very good English (he lived in England for 4 years), and we had a lot of fun with him as he showed us the machines, and helped us with our initial training regimen.
This week our LIFE groups will meet together as one, rather than in two small groups. This monthly "large group" time is important to keep the connections and relationship close, and to introduce new people to the rest of the team. We will be meeting on Thursday evening - please keep these meetings in your prayers - for both growth in the lives of the believers, and in growth in the outreach to new people and unbelievers.
Thanks for your continued prayerful support of our mission - YOU are part of this team, and we appreciate you!
