Greater Grace is alive and well in Heidelberg

We just returned from a 3 day trip to Heidelberg. 6 of us from Berlin piled in a rented van and drove down to Heidelberg to visit the Greater Grace church there. The drive takes about 6-7 hours, Heidelberg is about an hour and a half outside of Frankfurt.

The church in Heidelberg is led by Pastor Tahir who recently moved from Azerbijan with his family of 5 to pastor the church there. You can really keep them in your prayers as they are still adjusting to living in Germany, and starting to learn the language. The church group in Heidelberg is about 20 people and ALOT of young children. They are going to have a power house youth group in about 10 years. We were so encouraged by their love, their hospitality and their desire to gather together around the Word, they are a great group full of life and joy.

Thursday evening home Bible study

The Heidelberg church (minus a few)

Pastor Tahir, his wife Ina and their children Nathan, Caleb & Rebecca

We did outreach on Friday afternoon on the main walking street. Matt played the guitar and the group sang some worship songs for about an hour while a few handed out gospels of John to anyone who stopped to listen. Nathan, below with Matt, is holding some of the gospels of John's, he was fearless!

This boy below was our biggest fan. He sat and watched with a few other kids for most of the time we played. At the end he came up and just held his hand on Matt's guitar until his mom came to collect him.

This walking street is one of the longest walking streets in Europe.

Despite all the shops around people were not so much in a rush and were willing to stop and talk and listen to the worship music. MUCH different then the atmosphere in Berlin.

Below is Emily & Juliana. Juliana's sister Nikolai lives in Baltimore with her family (some of you may know her). Back when the two sisters were in college in Berlin they prayed for missionaries to come to Germany. They later met the original team that came to Berlin 13 years ago and have been part of Greater Grace, in Germany & Baltimore ever since.

Hungarian Visitors

Did you know it takes 11 hours to drive from Budapest to Berlin? These 5 Hungarians drove 22 hours to spend 2 days with us. Pastor Bendeguz and Andras (pictured below on left) came for the men's retreat and Timea, Hajnal, and Ancsika (right) jumped in the car and traveled all that way just to visit our church here in Berlin!

More photos coming about the men's retreat. But we just wanted to thank these 5 for taking the time to visit us in Berlin. If you are ever thinking about visiting a small church or team, DO IT! You have no idea how much that means to people.

Köszönöm szépen to our Hungarian friends!

The "Original" May's in Berlin

The first generation May's hit the ground in Berlin this past week! After years of prayer & anticipation Matt's parents finally got the chance to stay with us in Berlin. We thoroughly enjoyed the visit & the opportunity to show our parents/in-laws our city & our home. The same weekend they were here we also had a visit from Pastor Morley, the Pastor of the Greater Grace church in London, England. The church & team were really built up by his visit and to find out how much his church in London has been keeping Berlin on their hearts & in their prayers.

There's not much in the city of Berlin that the May's did not see.

Here they are in front of a few remnants of the Berlin wall.

They were hardcore troopers and did a 6km bike ride with us into the city of Potsdam.

While the May's happened to be here so did one of our best friends Matt Grady, who was working in Berlin for a few weeks.

Saturday morning outreach with the May's is highly recommended.

Pastor Morley is a serious soul winner.

We loved the opportunity to watch him speak to young people on the streets.

Pastor Morley preaching Sunday morning on being "Graced Out"

The guys after church were getting pumped about their men's retreat next weekend.

The May's and the Simseks, an awesome Turkish/Finnish couple in our church.

Pastor Stephan, Matt, Matt's dad Bruce & Pastor Morley... along with many other of the awesome men in our church

Some of the mom's, including Matt's! Celebrating Mother's Day together.

The amazing Wollenberg family. To know them is to love them.

He is Risen! Jesus ist auferstanden!

Easter Weekend in Europe is a huge holiday. They celebrate Good Friday, Sunday and Easter Monday. Which means no one has work, nothing is opened, the whole city is practically shutdown for about 4 days. It's a great opportunity to get together with people in the church that normally would have little free time. We had a picnic on Good Friday with about 25 people, an amazing time on outreach Saturday and our first "Sunrise Service" with a great group of about 20 of us. I put Sunrise Service in quotes because we met about 30 min. after the sun actually rose, when planning around train schedules we all agreed that 7:00 was early enough for everyone!

Just to share really quickly about outreach, we went on Saturday thinking that it would be an easy opportunity to share with people about Christ since everyone is very aware that it was Easter Weekend. We were out for about an hour with not so much response when one man from China walked up to us, and said "What is the difference between God and Jesus?" And we got the opportunity to share with him the entire gospel, the finished work, and the importance of the shed blood of Christ. He told us that his grandmother had just passed away about a month ago and she had become a Christian right before she died. He was raised a Buddhist and was so intrigued by what made his grandmother change right before she passed. He said, "I can't believe that I met you guys, I have been looking for answers to my questions and not knowing where to go." It was amazing to get the opportunity to really share the gospel message this weekend for us and have it fall on open ears. In Germany that is not a conversation that happens on a regular basis, and it was really a gift from God that encouraged us hopefully as much as it encouraged him.

Here's a video of our weekend as a church.

Of course any holiday reminds us just how far away from home we are. We love and miss our family, friends and home church and are looking forward to seeing everyone in about a month and a half!

Matt & Emily

Proclaim It From The Roofs

There is a beautiful verse in Matthew 10 that I stumbled upon today.

"What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs" Matt. 10:27

We have been really encouraged by this thought lately of "the closet life". Pastor Schaller preached on this principle in Leadership class from last fall, and this spring we have been auditing the class online. The closet life is my personal private life with God. But even though my relationship with God is private and there are things in my life and emotions I have that I only communicate to God; I have gained something in the closet, and I am compelled to share it with others. This seed thought of the closet life has stirred up many thoughts and conversations among us, as individuals, as a team, and as a church. But this verse in Matthew coupled with this thought of having a closet life is what missions is all about. Whether it's in Germany, America, Africa, or South America; God speaks to us in the dark, He whispers it to us, and we are compelled to shout it from the rooftops. This message, God's grace, God's mercy, and God's loving friendship in our lives. How can we not tell the world...

By His grace we keep walking forward.

~Matt & Emily

God is with us in everything we do...

This is just a quick post with lots of photos from this past week. Sometimes as we go through the motions of our days and our week we forget that God has sent us, He keeps us, He leads us and He uses us. The little things we do every day don't seem like much sometimes, but when we are together with the body and doing things for our church here on Eberstrasse in Berlin we are left at the end of the day so edified.

We did a little spring cleaning at the church recently.

Fresh coats of paint, lots of scrubbing and some fresh flowers out front made a huge difference.

We had a great time on outreach Saturday. Because the weather was so nice we went to the nearest park, played some songs and invited people to church.

Also for the first time ever we had a woman's cooking night. This is a new thing that we are going to start doing once a month. This first month we learned how to make traditional German food. We have so many amazing international women in our church and we were all really excited about this new tradition!

Rosie up above cooked Kassler (roasted pork filet), sauerkraut & potatoes. It doesn't get more German than that meal!

Forgiveness

There is something about the week after a conference that is very unique. You have just been built up with messages and fellowship all day every day for a solid week and then boom your back to your missionfield. You sometimes wish that it would be so as easy as just looking at someone and smile and they would instantly get this deep satisfaction that we hold so near in our hearts because of our relationship with Christ. And yes we can say that our countenance is important but we also have to open our mouths. But where to begin when your heart is so full with these deep revelations from God's Word?

Matt preached in service on Wednesday night here in Berlin. You can listen to his message online here (ggwo.de). But I just want to write down some notes that I took during his message and share them. He spoke on Matthew 18:21-28 in light of Pastor Schaller's last message at EuroCon about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a choice. Forgiveness doesn't give back what you have lost.

We cannot go around humanity and say that we are never hurt because we forgive.

We are real human beings with real hurt and real pain. Forgiveness isn't pretending that nothing happened, but it is choosing to live in love. I have to choose to live in love.

Choosing not to live in love puts us in prison in our minds.

Thinking about ourselves brings us into prison.

Three things happen when we live in prison:

1- We have no capacity to receive from God

2- We have no capacity for relationships

3- We filter everything through our situation

Years can go by while we are stuck in this mental prison where we don't make a choice for forgiveness. I have been forgiven so much. I have no right not to forgive.

80% of the time when someone is offended the offender has no idea it even took place.

When we live in un-forgiveness we refuse the voice of God.

God shakes things in our lives to get rid of things that shouldn't be there. When God shakes our lives we can hang on to the things that need to be shaken out because we are not willing to hear from God. God's kingdom can never be shaken, and we have to receive from that unshakeable kingdom.

We live in grace and receive the Word of God and it enables us to forgive. We cannot trick ourselves and pretend that we forgive someone when we haven't, it will come out later. Man cannot trick his own heart. There is no middle ground, we either forgive from our heart or we do not.