Weinachtskonzert/Christmas Concert

Please be praying for our annual Christmas party tomorrow, the 10th of December. This year will be a lot of fun, since we are also having a concert. We are asking God to draw our neighbors, friends, and coworkers Saturday night for a great time of fellowship and of course, food. We have always had a good turnout to our annual Christmas party, but we are expecting a lot of new faces this year. Most importantly, we want to experience an exchange of life that is only found in God. Keep this event in your prayers today and tomorrow, no colds or sickness with the choir members. We are starting at 6:00 p.m. (noon, for those Stateside readers). We will post some pictures afterwards.

Thanksgiving Weekend

There is certainly nothing quite like celebrating Thanksgiving overseas. There is no sign of Thanksgiving in any of the stores, finding a turkey and all of the ingredients is nothing short of comical, and everyone that you pass on the streets has no idea that you are celebrating a holiday. But that does not stop us, it just makes it more of an experience! This year we celebrated Thanksgiving in Berlin twice, once with some great friends that God has given us here, another American missionary couple. Then with the Steins and a few teens from our youth group.

We have so much to be thankful for. Our home here, how God has provided for us here, our home church back in the States and our church here in Berlin, the friends that God has given us here, the support of our friends and families back in the States, and of course each other!

Below are some photos from our Thanksgiving weekend.

Matt carving one of the two turkeys. We weren't able to find a large enough turkey at the grocery store so we had to buy two!

My friend Bethany and I with all the dishes we prepared

The spread

The Post-Thanksgiving fullness

Our second Thanksgiving, serving the Pumpkin Pie (yes made in a cake pan!)

Thanksgiving was followed this weekend by decorating the church for Christmas. This Sunday was the first advent (of the four before Christmas). Advent is widely recognized in Germany, and the first advent weekend is when everyone decorates. It's always a fun annual tradition to decorate the church together!

The kids LOVED the decorating

The choir practicing during the decorating for next week's Christmas concert. They sounded great!

Let God Develop Your Reputation

So often we spend so much energy trying to establish a positive reputation for ourselves. Whether it's the way we dress, the way we speak or how we present ourselves, we always seek to "put the best foot forward." We could say it another way, that we want people to see us at our best behavior, never at our worst. Perhaps there is a fear that someone else won't like us, or on a deeper level, won't trust us because they see how we really are. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, but how do we really establish trust in a relationship?

We read in Psalm 130:4 that "there is forgiveness with thee, that you may be feared (trusted)." This is such an amazing verse, especially when we look at the verse before, "If you Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" If there is anyone that really knows who we really are, or how we really behave, it's God. But He is full of forgiveness. This is where the trust enters into the relationship. Because God has the power to forgive me, I can trust Him. I know that no matter what I do, He will not hold it against me. Forgiveness is a part of God's reputation that enables me to rest in Him, not in my own performance. In order for us to grow in our relationship to Him, there has to be forgiveness given and received. This is the same in our relationships to those around us as well. The trust which we build our relationships upon is only established when we rest in God's forgiveness and allow His reputation to become a part of our lives.

A couple of months ago we met a young man from the Dominican Republic on our outreach to the language school. He saw us talking to people on the corner and asked his friends, "hey, what are they talking about?" They told him that we are Christians talking about Jesus Christ. So he approached us and asked us where our church was and if we really were Christians as his friends had said. The very next Sunday he came to church and has been coming ever since. He has a hunger for the Word, to learn more about God and to trust Him more in his life. It was interesting to see the reputation/testimony that we had there on that street corner of Berlin. God has really established a great testimony there for us. It is great to see what God does through the things that HE establishes.

Continue to keep the church here in your prayers. There has been such a great sense of unity within the body of Christ. There is an exchange of life at our services, which is so encouraging to see and experience. We know that it is a direct result of your prayers, so we thank you and please keep it up.

The New Office and a Visit From Mat LaFlamme

We had an amazing, refreshing time with Mat LaFlamme the past few days. This video is from the Bible Study we held Sunday night at the home of a family in the church, the Wollenbergs. It was so great to have a friend visit us to just hang out and have fun together. We were really encouraged by God through Mat's visit.

There is more to be done, mainly the finishing touches, like new lighting and pictures on the walls, but this gives you an idea of what it will look like.......As promised, the "After" photos from the newly renovated office:

Renovations

This week and last week we have been doing some renovations at the church. We started in the basement, where the kids have Sunday school. New carpet, new paint, and removal of a closet and steps were some of the tasks for the basement. The carpet was the most important, I believe, since the old one was there for ten years and had accumulated quite a lot of mold. The office is getting a totally new look from top to bottom. New furniture (desks, chairs and bookshelves), new flooring (laminate), and new lighting to name a few changes. So here are some before pictures:

As you can see, there was a lot of stuff everywhere...

So everything had to be removed, which was quite a task in itself.

Now the painting could begin...

Then comes the flooring...and by the way, the paint is not pinkish, its a light mocha/tan, it just looks that way in the photos.

That's all that is done for now. We will post more photos when we are finished, I know you all are waiting to see it completed.

Church Harvest Day

We had a great day of fellowship and laughter with the body here yesterday. One of the families in our church who live outside of the city and have a large yard and house, opened their home to the church to have a harvest day. We spent the whole day and most of the night there, it seemed like no body wanted to leave. It's fun to see God really knit these families and people together in the body. Seeing new people drawn in and making friends, seeing German families spending the day together laughing. We were so encouraged by the joy that God has given the body here. And as much as we were tired and sore from the long day, we went to bed with huge smiles on our faces last night. Such a gift to be a part of a Greater Grace church on the foreign field, watch people grow, and enjoy days with lots of laughter like this with them.

Bobbing for apples

The kids had a three legged race

Matt taught the guys (and a few brave girls) how to play football

It doesen't seem to matter what the game, Germans LOVE to compete

This German game is called "Schokolade" you wrap up a bar of chocolate, and the first one to break into it wins. But you can only go at it with a fork and knife and you must wear the hat, the scarf, and the mittens before attempting. Everyone else playing rolls a dice and if you get a six its your turn, and the hat and gloves and scarf are all passed to you. Definitely good for a laugh!

We had dinner over the fire, roasting bratwurst.

A message by the fire on how we choose whether to put on the old man or the new man each day

Everyone by the fire singing songs, laughing and roasting marshmallow's.

Am I desperate for even something bitter?

Just a thought to chew on.....Proverbs 27:7 "The full soul loatheth a honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." The soul that is filled with God doesn't even desire something sweet. The word picture for loath is to tread on something, walk on it, because there is really no desire for it. It is very easy to say I trust in God, therefore, I should be full. If that trust doesn't extend to every single area of my life, then I am only partially filled. How many times have I tasted something bitter and not even been aware?

If I am hungry for attention, the world's ways of gaining attention will taste sweet to me. If I am hungry for (in need of) love, the world's conditional love will seem sweet to me. If I am hungry for security, the world's fleeting security will seem sweet to me. No matter what area of my life it is, if I don't go to God seeking His fullness, I will become filled with bitterness. Bitterness will then take over until God will not even seem like a good source of fullness.

This is why we read in Hosea 10:12 to "sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up the fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you." It is time to be filled with God in every area of our lives. Let us let God break up the bitter soil in our hearts, so the Word of God can be sown > watered > grown in our hearts and we become filled with ALL the fullness of God, desiring no bitter thing.

Church Getaway

GEMEINDEFREIZEIT

Yes that is all one word! It means "church free time" and that's exactly what we had this past weekend with our church here in Berlin. About 40 of us piled into trains, vans, taxis and buses to get to Mötzow, a small town about an hour west of Berlin that had a camp ground right on the lake.

Pastor Gary and Kathie came back from the States for a week to be there with us. Pastor Gary spoke some amazing messages on the theme of "the precious blood of Jesus". The messages were really anointed. It was so edifying to see the church desiring to gather around the word and have questions and want to discuss the messages further.

The group had so much fun together, boating, playing volleyball, swimming... it didn't seem to matter what we were doing or how good any of us spoke German, it was the body gathering together and enjoying each other. It means so much to us to stand with the Germans and sing their worship songs in their language with them, to be able have a conversation about the message (in broken German and using ALOT of hand gestures), and to be able to spend time with them sitting by a bonfire and teaching them how to roast marshmallows... God has really blessed us by giving us the privilege of getting to know these people.

Johannes is an awesome German teenager who had a powerful testimony at the end of the week about learning how to not turn to the left or to the right but to go forward with God