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.

Missions MARCH

Marching for Germany at EuroCon 2011

What an amazing two weeks we just had! God poured out to us with our friends and body members around the world. We had visitors in Berlin last weekend, Emily's friend Michelle stayed with us for 5 days, and we also had Pastor Steve & Jean Marie Andrulonis visit that same weekend and held a marriage seminar at the church. We then left Monday morning for Budapest and just returned to Berlin yesterday completely filled with encouragement, joy, and rest. (Well maybe not so much rest physically due to many late nights of raps and laughing but rest in our hearts-absolutely). Our time in Budapest at EuroCon 2011 was amazing and we will be blogging later to share some of our favorite messages and thoughts that really stuck with us. But for now, as we enjoy being back home in our apartment in Berlin, we want to share with everyone photos of our friends and time the past few weeks. Enjoy! And we hope you come next year!

The day Michelle arrived she served a pancake breakfast to Lisa & Thea

They thoroughly enjoyed their American breakfast

Such a treat to get to show my friend around the city and spend time with her

Jean Marie's visit fell on her birthday so we grabbed a special coffee time with the birthday girl

Michelle and the girls at church Sunday morning

One of the many raps during the relationship seminar weekend.

Apparently people LOVE to talk about relationships :)

Upon our arrival in Budapest we were warmly welcomed by the Quirk family who opened up their home to us for the entire week. This was the view of the city from their home.

Missions march day at the conference- we proudly marched for Germany along with 2 people from the church in Heidleberg.

My new friend from Kyrgyzstan who spoke Russian and German and my other friend from Russia who speaks English and of course Russian- how fun to get to talk to these girls!

Post service rap on stage about forgiveness

Last night of the conference- worship service after prayer for healing. A really special time.

My Finnish friend Johanna!

Our awesome friends living in Budapest Ryan & Krista

This pretty much sums up the end of our weeks...

Grace in Bible School

We LOVE our Bible school! The students that come regularly are amazing. Some are moms, some are students, all with different stories but all sacrificing their time to hear the Word. On top of that they are the coolest bunch of people you could ever put in a room together. After class yesterday we wanted to see how many languages we could write the word "grace" in. Each student wrote the word in their own language, and some in a second language they also know.

Here are the languages shown below (going down the left column and then the right)

English, French, German, Spanish, Greek, Persian, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Italian.

Our students with their teacher (Matt) & translator (Pastor Stephan)

Here's a little video clip from Sunday morning church service.

This is Edwige, she's from the Ivory Coast and singing in French.

New Team Member!

We are so excited to introduce our newest team member! Many of you may know this couple on our team Adrian & Olessya, they are our two awesome friends and team members who we lived with for a while last year before moving into our apartment. Two weekends ago they welcomed their first born, Jayden, after 3 long days of labor. He is 11 days old as of this morning and quickly becoming the most popular guy around.

Olessya at her baby shower the night before she went into labor!

Adrian & his new son!

Jayden :)

Holding him at 1 day old! Such a snuggle-bug!

Visit from Poland!

There are two things that are huge encouragements to us here. One is having visitors, two is getting mail. When people take the time to come and see you, or write you an email or a letter it is a million times more encouraging then you can imagine. It really reminds us we are not alone. I think Satan's biggest pit that he wants us to fall into as believers is loneliness and a sense of being invaluable. I think that's why God gave us the body. Even though we know we are not alone because we have Christ in us, we still get the constant physical reminder of God saying "I'm here" through the body.

That said, we were blessed to have visitors last weekend from the church in Warsaw, Poland. They came to Berlin for their family vacation and we totally enjoyed getting to know them a little.

Matt, Stephan and the Knechciak family

Pastor Maciej preaching Sunday morning

A month in photos

Admitably it's been hard getting back into the habit of keeping up our blog since the Christmas break. After going through pictures on my phone from the last month it inspired me to share with you all a little bit of what we've been up and how the church is doing.

Sunday School is continuing to grow. Whether it be families in the church that are growing, or more people coming to church with children we seem to be getting more young ones every Sunday morning. The boy third from the left leaning forward actually wanted to sit in Bible school after service on Sunday afternoon and sat in the class for the full hour and half listening completely still. He walks into church every Sunday with his Bible and will gladly tell you about it and how he frequently reads it at home if you ask. These kids all speak only German but it is amazing to see them soak up the Word of God. I guess that's why they call it child like faith!

As we mentioned we have started Bible School on Sundays after service. This is "Old Testament Survey". Taught by Matt and Adrien, and they rotate every week on teaching the class. We have had great turn outs by doing class after services. It seems to be the most difficult thing to get people to come out on a weeknight, after their day is over. And the response we have been getting by moving the class to Sunday afternoon has been great. People have been really enjoying spending time with each other after services and waiting for classes to start. For the past 3 weeks we have been consistently getting around 10 people.

We took a trip to the Uckermark region of Germany. This is East Germany. This is as east as you get before hitting Poland. Many of you may remember the unreached areas where we did concerts a few years back. Well we have recently started a new outreach program called "Love Brandenburg" (inspired by Baltimore's "Love Maryland" outreaches). It is to keep us all remembering the people that we have met in these areas and to not forget them in our prayers and outreach. The place feels as cold and as isolated as you can imagine. And it is easy to go there and come back with a sense of empty handedness, but that doesn't negate the fact that they need God and these towns need His Word. This picture of this one building I think will give you an idea of the area that we are trying to describe. We stopped a few people on the street and tried to speak with them about the gospel and encourage them.

Lastly, we recently celebrated Valentines Day! Valentines Day is no where near as popular here as it is in the States. In the States we are constantly reminded of it the day after New Years, but here it is easily skipped over. So, I decided to make some Valentines Day cookies and bring them to church this last Sunday and they were a huge hit. We also celebrated Valentines Day together by going out for breakfast, something we realized we never do. Our American friends here wanted to celebrate Valentines Day by going out to dinner, which inspired us to celebrate somehow. On Valentines night we had Bible school at the church (which is why we went out for breakfast) and having a little cash in our pockets from babysitting for our American friends while they celebrated, we decided to spend it on our own celebration.

Our Valentines Day breakfast.

Also, Emily has started to teach English classes at the church. It is a free class that we are offering to the church and hoping it will also be used as a form of outreach to draw people in. Tonight is actually the first class she will teach so you can be keeping it in prayer!

-Matt & Emily

Check out our year in review on YouTube!

Yes, we are now on YouTube. Thanks to Matt and his hours of work on putting together a few minutes of our life in Berlin in photos. This video really gives you an idea of the demographic and a glimpse into our day to day lives.

Enjoy!