Im finally blogging and hopefully I can remember everything
from the last month or so. The last day
of May I gave a talk to the German- British Society here in Chemnitz. They are always looking for native speakers
to come and speak and are interested in different cultures and ideas. It was really a good time for me. I was able to speak English and tell about
where I am from and some of the places I have been, and everyone had to sit
there and listen, hopefully more from interest than politeness. Either way, they were a captive
audience. As I arrived one elderly
couple started talking to me and said they knew my grandparents… I had a
picture of my family projected on a screen and they thought they recognized
Papa. At first I thought they knew I was
from America and that Gran and Papa really did know someone in every country,
but then realized they believed I was someone else’s grandkid. It was funny.
I know my mom will be disappointed, but I didn’t really have a speech or
anything that I could repost here. I put
together a slide show of pictures and then talked about what they were and what
they meant to me. I started out talking
about myself and my family, just who I am, where Im from, and what I have done
in life so far. Since where you come
from is a large part of who you are, I seamlessly flowed into talking about
Alabama and the culture of the South. I
mentioned the football rivalries, some history of Alabama, Civil Rights and
todays immigration laws, our beaches and mountains, and the connections Alabama
has with Germany. After talking about
Alabama I moved on to pictures from several Mexico mission trips I had been
on. I spent a long time just showing
pictures of the conditions we encountered there in the villages and dumps. I told about some of our experiences there in
Mexico and then was not sure how much time I had left. I thought I had moved rather quickly and had
only used 30 minutes or so of my hour allotted, so I moved on from my pictures
and just told my story about sleeping outside in Barcelona. After that was question and answer time. I would have never guessed it, and Im still
not sure its true, but they told me they have the Mexican Burning Plant here in
Germany, and some people eat it as a kind of challenge. Does not sound like a good idea. Afterwards the president of the society and a
couple other members took me out to eat which was totally worth all the work
for the presentation. They announced that
the next week the British Ambassador to Germany would be speaking… Good luck to
that guy.
The
last month has been super busy, Im not sure I can even remember in what order
everything was done. We had an Irish guy
visiting us for two weeks to see what we did and to practice his German. That was really great having another guy
around and he was really cool. We went
to a big concert at some point with 15 or so youth and friends we’ve met at
different conferences this year. It was
an awesome day. There were 10 or more
bands and the day ended with Newsboys w/Michael Tait and then Casting Crowns at
the very end. Ive never really been a
huge fan of concerts, and earlier in the day I was thinking I kinda wish I
hadn’t spent so much money to come to this one, but by the end of it, I was
definitely happy I went. I had to drive
5 hours in the morning to get there and then when the concert was over around
midnight, 5 more hours back to Chemnitz, but it was def. worth it. The music was really good and it was really a
blessing to worship God with so many other people in that place. There was also a band called Gungor I had
never heard of but really enjoyed.. they are a kind of folksy, laid back
music. Daniel (the Irish guy) and I even
made some money at the end of the day.
You had to buy drinks from the refreshment stands inside the venue, but
you would get 50 cents if you turned your empty bottle back into one of the
stands.. they do that with all their bottles here to encourage recycling, you
pay the 50 cents when you buy it and then get it back when you turn in your
empty bottle. But, not everyone cared
about their 50 cents. Dan and I found
several empty bottles in the trash cans and after fishing them out, cashed in
with a couple of Euro. We would’ve made
a lot more money but the girls were already waiting for us, so we decided we’d
better go ahead and catch up with them.
The ride back was also a lot of fun.
We played 20 questions/Who am I? until everyone but Keren and I fell
asleep. Then we talked about everything
possible, and somehow ended up on Disney Princesses. At some point I think Keren fell asleep too,
after we made up a story about our team as Werewolves and vegetarians. It was late.
The
next weekend, I think it was, we were in Dresden for a youth and kids
conference. It was the closing to their
conference’s Conference. On Saturday was
the youth conference and on Sunday was the kids conference. I was in charge of leading a creative writing
workshop. I thought I was pretty well
prepared and was excited to see who would come and what they would create with
the prompts I had prepared, however, it didn’t really turn out like I had
thought it would. My workshop was set up
outside with several others to begin the afternoon. Outside was not a bad place as the youth
could have had a chance to spread out and write in peace with a bunch of white
noise in the background. But then the
wind started blowing my papers everywhere and it threatened to rain so everyone
outside moved our tables into a small room inside. Inside there was really just an aisle down
the middle with our tables on either side and no quiet or peaceful places to
sit and write. I ended up having two
people actually sit down and attempt to write something. It wasn’t a big deal to me, but I would have
rather not spent my time preparing and then my afternoon sitting there when no
one was interested. The girls workshops
were the same way. Luckily we were all
crammed in the same room together so we at least had fun just chilling. That night we were supposed to go to a
concert, but there were a million other things more entertaining to do in
Dresden at night. It was also Germany’s
first game in the European Championships.
We all went down to the public viewing of the game on the banks of the
Elbe. It was really cool. They had a huge screen set up and thousands
of fans were crammed in there together.
If you looked to the right of the screen, the backdrop of the city of
Dresden at night was as captivating as the game.
On
Monday we all went to the Aqua Marien, a really small water park in the
country. It was a lot of fun just
hanging out with the girls and Dan. From
there we went to spend the night at Claudi’s parents house and the next day
they took us to a castle nearby Dresden.
It was a really good day and an interesting castle to explore. We ate a really good dinner in a little
restaurant that’s located inside the castle.
It was our good bye to Claudi’s family.
I think we will all miss them and are very thankful for them this
year. They are really generous people
and offered their house and family anytime and really helped to make us feel at
home when we visited.
The
next Thursday was Keren’s last day with us in Checkpoint. She is now at a missions school nearby
Dresden. It was really a sad day. Several of the kids cried and it was clear she
will be missed. We have our last day
there tom, so we will see who made more kids cry.
Last
weekend we had our IMT closing together time.
We went on a bike tour from Friday to Sunday and camped out on the edge
of a small river overnight. It was a really
good weekend. The biking was at times
strenuous, and my legs burned pretty good, but it was fun and with a decent
bike I think I could actually get into biking.
Based on the results from our last bike tour with Barry, I was a little
worried heading into the weekend that Id embarrass myself, but I never really
hit my limits like I had on the other trip.
We had a good time hanging out with one another and staying up talking
around the fire. Barry did snore, but I
was pretty tired from biking during the day so it wasn’t so bad.
In the
times when we haven’t been travelling somewhere, we’ve done our last Sunday
services at all three churches, watched a lot of European Championship soccer,
and stayed busy with our usual work. The
last church services were the first time it really hit me we are about to
leave. As we said tschuss to the smaller
churches I thought how it was probably the last time Id see these people, maybe
in my entire life. Hopefully I can at
least visit sometime in the future. Yesterday
I went to Zeitz to meet with the pastor there about a possible position
starting in September. They have a kids
program that is very similar to Checkpoint and want a young man to help them
out. There were some things very similar
and some things rather different in their program. The workers were all older than me by several
years and it seemed to be not quite as hectic as it can be in Checkpoint. One reason is because they didn’t have as
many kids, but it was also clear they had been doing this for a while and had
the program down pretty good. The pastor
also took me on a tour of the city and showed me that all of the shops are
being closed and where the men go to sit and drink all day. The problems the parents had sounded very
much like the problems several of the parents from the Checkpoint kids have as
well. He told me there is one other
applicant and that they want to take both of us as a team, but they only have
money for one right now. If they get the
money then they will take us both, but if not then they will take the other guy
since he is German and can communicate much better than I can. Im just praying that God will make a way if
that’s where He wants me. It is a little
bit scary for me. I know Ill have to
rely on God more than ever if I go to live and work there. It is not a big city like Chemnitz and I
didn’t see a whole lot to do. Many of
the shops are empty and the buildings need to be renewed. The pastor said only 18% of people in that
state go to church and in this city of 31000 maybe 1000 actually attend
church. But I know God will provide and
if He thinks He can use me then Ill go for His glory. Mal sehen.
