A Bridge Between Texas and Germany

Everything's bigger in Texas, even connections!

Thirty-one years ago, I was a single girl, freshly moved up to Germany for Spain. God had been teaching me many things over the past few years in Spain, one of which was that I liked to be in control of my life and often used manipulation to bring about what I wanted. I spent much time repenting and praying about this, but realized how prone I was to fall back into relying on manipulation, rather than trusting God.

Enter an incredible man sitting at the computer opposite me in my new office in Germany and my good friend "Brenny Brewer"! I won't go into the whole story here, but it finally came down to a late-night bareing of my heart to Brenny, telling her I liked this incredible man (yes, you may have guessed that it was Jim) and telling her that I didn't want to manipulate the situation in any way, but wanted to totally rely on God. At this point, Brenny said, "I think I'll take Jim out for dinner on Sunday night and find out what he thinks." I panicked! I told her not to do that, as I really wanted this to be from God if it were to happen. At this point Brenny said, "Oh, I'll be subtle." My reply? "Brenny, there is not a subtle bone in your body!" Well, needless to say, that dinner did happen, Brenny was not subtle, and 31 years later I am still married to that incredible man!

We had the joy of seeing Brenny (Brenda) and her father in San Antonio during our Home Assignment! What a joyous time time we had remembering and laughing and sharing what God had done in all of our lives since those Germany days! Thanks, Brenny, for that not-so-subtle dinner!

Brenny, in front of the Alamo

At the Firehouse Museum where Brenny's dad, Walt, works.

A few years after that fateful dinner, we were invited over to our Chaplain's house, Rick and Helga Needham, near Heidelberg, Germany. Still being newly married, Jim and I sat on their love seat, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes. (Ok, I may be overdoing it on the mush here!) Nine months later, our son Nathan was born! We took baby Nathan over to the Needham's house for dinner one night, and two exhausted new parents fell, glassy eyed onto that same love seat. Nine months later our daughter, Emily was born! Believe me, when we visited Rick and Helga this fall in their Texas home, we made sure we did NOT sit on their love seat! What a joyous time time we had remembering and laughing and sharing what God had done in all of our lives since those Germany days! Thanks, Rick and Helga for sharing your home and your love seat with us!

In front of Needham's house, minus love seat!

Texas was full of Germany connections. Visiting Ron and Linda Franklin, the parents of some of our former Heidelberg youth group kids. Stopping by for an hour to see the son of a couple we served with in Germany, who is now married to a girl I had the privilege of mentoring for a while when she was serving with Josiah Venture in Serbia a few years ago! What a privilege to see you, Regent and Traci Perez!

Ron and Linda Franklin

Traci and Regent Perez

Germans have a saying, "Die Welt ist ein Dorf", "the world is a village". We experienced that over and over again as we visited dear "family" in so many states, from so many parts of our past! God is so good!

Here are some things to pray about for us over the next few weeks:

• We still need to find facilities for 2 of our 6 camps that we are planning this summer. Pray that God will lead us to the right places, with the right dates available, at the right price.
• Pray for our NEW TEAM MATE Rachel Berkebile, as she continues to prepare to join us full time in February. Pray for everything to come together on her end there in the States, as well as all the logistics for receiving here here in Germany. Check out Rachel's Bio here.
• Pray for our 4 interns, Claire, Lemuel, Anna, and Sofia, as they raise support to serve with us this summer. Check them out here.

Thanks for being part of our "Dorf"!

Back in Leipzig and Back to "Normal" Life

I have never assumed my life would be "normal". In fact, most people looking at my life the past 35 years would say it is quite "abnormal", but after 3 months of traveling and living out of suitcases, I am so happy to be back to my "abnormal normalcy"! One of my most cherished "normal" rituals is my early morning coffee and time in the Word, often skyping with my daughter, Emily!

Oh, but the "abnormal" was so rich and beautiful! We traveled 12 states in the US, spoke in or met with staff from each of our 6 supporting churches, and had incredible times of telling and listening to "God stories" with about 40 of our supporters! We loved our time with each, many of them YOU!

We got so much special family time, seeing each of our children and our parents, and most of our siblings! We celebrated Thanksgiving with Jim's family and Christmas with Emily and Alpha in Bangladesh!

Since we've been back, Jim has attended the "Revive Europe" Conference with some our youth group young people, and we have started having camp meetings!

Jim and youth group kids, driving back from "Revive".

So many things happened during our "abnormal" that I want to share with you, so I will be sharing snippets over the next few weeks, as well as letting you know what's going on here!

Pray for us as we settle back in. We are filled to over-flowing!

Summer's End!

Summer has officially ended! We were with friends at a lake on August 31 and they said, "Well today is the last day of summer. It will be too cold to swim from now on." I totally didn't believe them, as it was so hot that day (that day being 82), but sure enough, September 1 hit and out came the long pants and jackets!

The weather is not the only change around here, of course. Our camp season is over and we are full-throttle into fall ministry! That means following up with newly established youth groups, youth-leader training, continued discipleship, and back-to-school youth programs!

We ended the summer involved in 4 full camps and 1 week-end camp, reaching over 130 teens, about half of which are not yet believers. What a privilege to do this work God has call us to and thank you so much for your part in it through your faithful prayers and financial support!

I want to give a shout out to our incredible interns this summer. Take a look at them in action:

Meet Claire from Oklahoma, Joel from Arkansas, and Pavel from the Czech Republic

One of the themes of the summer was eating! Downtown Leipzig enjoying an ice cream break!

Poor Claire, the only girl. But don't feel too sorry for her...

Not surprisingly, Jim taught them how to cook, namely, make donuts!

Joel hanging out, playing games with campers.

Not all games were quiet and well mannered! Here's Pavel's crazy sports team after a game of volleyball!

Thoughtful times, too, as seen with Pavel here singing worship songs around the camp fire.

Claire, the best score-keeper around for a rousing game of American Baseball!

Claire at an after-camp follow-up time.

Already time to say good bye.

Melli, one of our German Camp Leaders, and Claire, sad to say good bye.

Thanks, Interns! You were all a great addition to Team JV Germany and God used you in many lives! We miss you!

 So, there's a quick shout-out to our great interns. Stay tuned to our next blog post where we will be talking about our Home Assignment in the States. We may be visiting near you and we would love to see as many of you as possible!!!

God Continues to Amaze!!!

So, the roller coaster ride continues, but it is definitely getting fun! Our camp last week was a twice-cancelled, and finally-realized camp! EXACTLY God's plan!

We had 9 teens, at least 4-5 of which were not believers and had never even really heard about or thought about God! How fun to see these kid warm up in the highly relational atmosphere and begin to ask incredible questions!

Some of the teens in English Class

The Incredible Band! During the last session, we went around and had the teens share their favorite parts of camp and almost all of them included the Singing! How incredible to hear all of them singing Praise and Worship songs!

They LOVED playing "American Baseball"! We played it most every day with only one split-eyebrow, ball-in-the-face injury! 

Fun surprise, we didn't know until our first face-to-face meeting with the team that this man, Thomas, former associate pastor at our church here in Leipzig, is the pastor of the church we were partnering with for the camp!!!

Please, pray for the teens that attended the camp, that they will continue on their quest for God. We fell in love with these kids!

We leave tomorrow for another cancelled, now-scheduled camp! Pray for our time there that God will use us, will speak to the teens, and that He will renew our strength!

Answers Coming In!

So many of you wrote to tell me you were praying after my last post! Thank you! I am just now updating you because it seems that every few days, our summer changes!

We did a week-end retreat with a church in Magdeburg, near one of our canceled camps. What an exciting time! There were about 15 teens there, most of which were not believers! We will be doing more follow-up with them.

Teens from our Magdeburg Week-end.

Pavel, one of our interns, sharing his story.

Everyone excited for Jim's BBQ!

Ready to serve it up!

Teens during one of the talks.

 This past week we finished our first week-long camp. This camp was in the Brandenburg area and draws from 4 communities, only one of which has a church with a pastor. This was very exciting, as we have been training the teens to run their own youth groups the past 2 years. The camp had 31 teens, about half of which are not believers and some who have never even thought about God before this week! It was so incredible to see most of them come to the individual churches in their villages the day after camp finished!

Lina speaking at evening program

Yes, that was Jim and Lina 30 years ago...Really, I was using it as an illustration!

Of course, messy games!

The girls dressed up for Banquet Night

Western Night!

Campfire

Campers glued broken pieces to a cross during our afternoon Labyrinth experience.

Broken pieces

Campers in Zeesen on Sunday after Camp

Campers at Guben church on Sunday

Campers at Eisenhűttenstadt church

Campers at Cottbus Church

Please, continue to pray. We will be doing a small 5-day camp next week and we are hoping to do more follow-up with each of the campers from all the camps over the next few weeks.

No, summer is not turning out how we originally planned, but we are CERTAIN it is turning out how God is planning!!!

Urgent Prayer Needed!

We are feeling the full-force of the enemy's attack against the ministry God has called us to this summer. Our 3 interns have arrived, we have 3 camps planned for the summer, but Satan is trying to shut things down.

Yesterday we got word that the youth pastor for our second camp, July 20-26, was in a car accident and they are feeling that they should cancel the camp. We also got a call from the leaders of our third camp, August 4-11, saying that they feel that they may have to cancel their camp, as we only have 2 kids signed up and the principle of the local high school, where we have already done outreach for the camp, has said that we are not allowed to come on to campus again before camp.

This is not surprising as to the timing. This week is Pentecost, the day Jesus sent His Spirit! They actually celebrate Pentecost here in Germany, but Satan has twisted it into his own holiday. Leipzig becomes the largest Gothic gathering in the world.  According to Leipzig's city website it is  "the world's largest meeting of the "black scene", which takes place annually since 1992 at Pentecost in Leipzig and attracts around 20,000 guests from all over the world."

This couple was the most disturbing for me, seeing the bondage the lady submitted herself to. It is such a picture of the bondage Satan has over the people here!

Satan wants the young people of Germany for himself, be we are asking you to stand together with us against his schemes! We know that God has called us to promote His Kingdom this summer and to tell young people about Him!

Pray with us that these camps will not be canceled and, in fact that there will be such an outpouring of God's Spirit over the youth of eastern Germany that we will know that it is only because of God's power!

5 Years Ago Today!

As we finished up lunch at our friend Steffen's house, he brought out my favorite dessert, WATERMELON, and said, "Today we are celebrating something." Jim and I looked at him in anticipation and he said, "5 years ago today, I met you when you came to Leipzig on your vision trip!" (This was the trip we made with my mother before we actually moved here the next November.)

WHAT! Time has flown by, yet so much has happened it seem it must have been 50 years ago! So, here we were on that visit to Leipzig.

Jim, Lina, Steffen, David, Samuel, Anela, and Thomas

Yes, that is Steffen standing next to me. We had no idea at the time that he would be such a "Rascal", but we've learned since then!

So, here we were today out in Steffen's garden, having an impromptu 5 year anniversary celebration!

So how about the rest of them? Well, believe it or not we are all still friends and doing ministry together!!!!

Yes, here's David and me with "masks" on during a game at our recent Girls' Night at Youth Group.  

We help out with the youth group in Samuel and Anela's church plant and have English camp with them! They now have two kids and another one on the way! 

Thomas, our pastor at the time, is now married to Hannah and they have 2 boys. We are still in House Group with them!

We are so thankful for all of them and the blessing of being here in Leipzig!

Please pray:

• Next week we go to Czech for our Spring Conference. Please, pray for safety and good connections.
• We have three Summer Interns come to help us this summer. Please, pray for Pavel (from Czech), Clare, and Joel (both from the US).
• Pray for many teens to register for the camps this summer.