Some pictures from a great week in Budapest!

Off to Budapest!

We leave for Budapest today for the European Conference! We are BEYOND excited to get the opportunity to be there with our friends from around the world! God answered many prayers to get us there. We will be gone until this Sunday. God bless!

Russian Weekend... A Great Success!

Thank you all for your prayers for this Russian weekend, it was a great time together with the Russian visitors, and a great time to see the Russian speaking people in our church get together. Friday night we had a great night of food, fellowship, music & a message. The Russian girls in our church did an amazing job cooking & preparing the meal. Together, they made two huge pots of Russian borcht and pergmeni's (sort of like tortellini but filled with Russian pork). Everything in Russia is served with heavy sour cream, so on top of the soup goes sour cream, and on top of the pergmeni they put sauteed onions and MORE sour cream (this is after, of course, the pergmeni is soaked in butter). We also served a Russian drink called Zvas. I don't know the whole process, but traditionally it is made from the bread making process. It smells like beer and tastes like seltzer. The Russians were the first to say that Russians traditionally drink alcohol with every meal, so if they're not drinking something alcoholic, at least it smells like it.  We had a total of about 20 Russian speaking visitors. The church was a combination of Russian, German, English and even some French, Hungarian and Afghani languages that night! The group of people gathered together was like none other. People from all around the world in one church building in Berlin, eating together and talking. 

Pastor Pavel later shared a great message on the love of God. How I can not do anything good on my own, I will always fall short of the glory of God. But God loves us so much that even though we cannot ever attain His righteousness, He sent his Son for us so that we can still be with Him in heaven for eternity. The full chapel listened in silence to his message. It was an amazing time together. 

Russian Weekend

Please keep in prayer the Russian weekend we are having right now. We have Pastor Pavel & his wife Marina and about 5 others from Siberia visiting. For the past few weeks we have been handing out invitations, even advertising in the newspaper to get Russian speaking people out to the church this weekend. Tonight we will serve a traditional Russian meal for whoever is coming! Pray for souls, pray for a full church and pray for enough food! ... or as Pastor Gary prayed last night, pray for NOT enough food... that there are so many people that we run out of food!

Heidelberg Trip & Other updates...

This past weekend we took the trip to Heidelberg again. We rode there by train, which takes about 5 hours. It's an absolutely gorgeous train ride, covering a lot of Germany's countryside. We arrived in rainy Heidelberg around 3:00 and got a chance to spend some time alone together before the Bible study that night. Even though it was raining, we walked on the walking street (which is the longest walking street in Europe) and treated ourselves to splitting a coffee at a small cafe. Heidelberg is totally picturesque. A small European city surrounded by hills with a castle on one side, seperated by a river and a long walking street with lots of shops, restaurants, and cafes.

That night we met at the girls apartment (Verena, Daniella, and Claudia) for a Bible study. It was the girls, their friend Petra and Daniel. Matt spoke from II Corinthians about the light inside of our earthly vessel that the world

 needs to see. The next day, we went back to the girls house for breakfast and then spent the day with Verena. Later we met up with Petra for coffee and are excited that these two girls decided then to come visit Berlin this weekend for our Russian outreach weekend.

Saturday night we met with Frau Uhse. She and her husband have been meeting with the group in Heidelberg and she recently has been staying in the hospital. We went to visit her in the hospital and we were all so e

ncouraged by her spirit. She was happy to see all of us, and told us all how God is for her. It was great to see her in such good spirits. Afterwards, we met one of the girls contacts in Heidelberg at a local church called "Calvery Chapel". This church has this huge facility right in the middle of Hiedelberg that was just given to them. Getting a small apartment in Heidelberg is very difficult, but this church has more rooms then they know what to do with and it was literally just given to them. We had a prayer meeting in the church there and went out soulwinning that night. The woman on the right is from Calvery Chapel, and this is a picture of her soulwinning to some teens right by one of the major bus stops.

We had breakfast the next morning at the home we were staying at. We stayed at Juliane Kayser's home. Her sister Nikola lives in Baltimore and when they were both younger, living in Germany they would pray for someone to come here and start a church... years later, here we all are!

OTHER UPDATES...

This Tuesday we went to our appointment at the Auslanderbehorde (Foreigner's office). We had a 7:00 am appointment, the office is one hour by train away... which meant we woke up at 5:00 am to take the 6:01 train! The Wollenberg's, the family that we live with, were afraid that something had happened to us or that we had left early for Budapest because we're never out of the house by 6:00! Our appointment went OKAY. The woman gave us a little bit of a hard time because we make such little money she was afraid that we were going to try to live off the government, or worse end up on the streets! She was also a little hesitant about our church because the country of Germany is being heavily infiltrated with Scientology, 

so they are a little leery about people coming to the country for "religious purposes".  So we got an extension on our passports. U.S. citizens can stay in the country for 3 months without going through any visa application, so we were granted an extension on that 3 months until June 10. We also were given another appointment in May where we are to bring back more paperwork. If we bring back everything she asked for in May we should be all set.

On a lighter note, the church is done! 

The church looks amazing! Before when you walked in you were in a bright yellow room with huge tables for coffee to be served afte

r service. Now the room is blue, brown and beige. It has a built in dark wood counter top with cafe lighting over it. And a new sitting area, with a bench and two chairs. The finished product looks great, and everyone is very excited. 

The Painting has Come to an End...

Today was our last day of painting and we finished the living room. We painted it a color that Emily has now named "Eggnog Latte". We had an extra bucket of tan laying around that matched the chapel, so we took it back and asked if they could mix any other colors into it to make it a richer, darker color. We ended up with a beautiful shade of... eggnog latte. So, it has been a long day again of painting to add to a long couple of weeks of remodeling. But we are finally in the home stretch!

Please keep in prayer our visas as we will go to apply for them for the first time tomorrow. This involves a lot of waiting, explaining, and showing a lot of documents. Pray that tomorrow will be the only day we have to go to the offices and they don't send us back for another time with more paperwork.

... Pictures of the church before & after to come soon!!!

Doing Nothing or The Down Time on the Mission Field

This is an excerpt written by Pastor Schaller in the "Church Planting Handbook II". It speaks about the life on the mission field and his experience as he was a missionary in Finland for many years. It is amazing how God speaks to you in the quiet times of "doing nothing".


I do not know ho much time I have spent on the mission field, how many days, months, years in accumulated time doing what some people would call virtually "NOTHING". I have no doubt that the fear of doing "nothing" would be one of our greatest fears and perhaps one reason why some people would never want to venture into this type of ministry.
Consider living in Finland, a highly technological advanced and organized society, and explaining to people what you are doing there. You do not have a job. No one is delegating to you specific responsibilities. You have very little accountability to anyone. What do you do?
The answer to this question and the natural analysis of our lives must be addressed from an entirely different direction. A spiritual man has learned to serve God. His position and work in a foreign country may at times, particularly at the beginning appear foolish, awkward, undefined, vague, general, idealistic and naive. This strange position of doing "nothing" and yet walking with God is part of His cross life.
I would like to suggest five principles that I personally practiced that helped me through this period in my life.

1. Considering the life of Jesus Christ.
The principle of following Christ wherever He goes and walking with Him as my example for my life. Simply stated:
If Jesus Christ walked obeying His Father in all things and changed the history of the world by doing so then I can certainly trust Him.
2. I practice the presence of God in meditation and realized God is in the present moment. According to the understanding we have of God and man, man meets God in the NOW. God is here... in the present. He is the "I AM".
3. I learned the value of patience, as a listener to God, the Word of God and people.
4. I discerned God's wisdom in the conversations and fed from the Truth of Fellowship.
5. I believed ONE soul was worth the entire world.

Again I repeat. I do not know how much time I spent doing "nothing" from the world's point of view. How much money did I make? What material or educational benefits did I do? How many hours did I work or what position did I gain in a corporation? I achieved none of these.
Rather we cared for our own souls and those around us. We prepared our hearts and minds to preach the Gospel of Christ and His finished work. We also spent thousands of hours, days, weeks, years, ministering and being ministered unto. We traveled, knocked on doors (40,000 in one year) and worked hard.
Sometimes after being on the street for several hours I would slip into a big church in Helsinki and pray in the middle of the afternoon. I was doing "nothing". Actually, however, I was practicing faith, listening to the comforting stillness for truth and reflect upon my calling; a purpose. Sometimes people that have wasted their lives find them. God is good to us and very present.
Actually I was living by a simple philosophy of life. God has saved the believer through Jesus Christ and anointed us. We abide in Him and He bears fruit.
I was living by simple but disciplined thoughts. When people could say I was doing nothing I actually in fact was recalling Bible verses, meditating, studying and preparing my heart in faith. We lived in divine expectation, anticipating in opportunity to share our faith.
We shared words of faith and encouragement. Often we would sense God's presence in our conversations and fellowship. We rejoiced in the Words of Grace and often experienced a flow of the Word,

II Thess. 3:1,2

"Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith."

Eph. 6:19, 20

"And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, For which I am an ambassador in bonds; that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak."