Its been a pretty busy few weeks since Ive gotten back from
Christmas break. We have started having
out sport afternoon every Friday and a youth small group/bible study every
Tuesday evening. We have also had to do
two worship services at nursing homes here in Zeitz. On the day I got back to Zeitz I went and ate
dinner with Albrecht and was introduced to the English Camp director from last
year and since then we have been much busier planning for that as well. Aside from work, Matthias, the other guy that
Im living and working with, has been reading this New Age book and asking lots
of questions about his faith and at times bringing these views into our
discussions with the youth or kids. It
has been a little bit of stress, and prayers for him are appreciated. I know it is normal for someone his age to
question the beliefs he was always told were correct, but Im learning how
frustrating it can be and also how much patience you have to have or else you
only hurt the situation. I have also
been busy with applications to Candler and all kinds of forms and interviews to
begin the candidacy process to become a pastor in the UMC.
Last weekend I did get to take a little break and went and
visited Claudi at her parents house in Mildenau. Sni was there from Latvia so we had a little
IMT reunion with half of the team. It
was a really good and much needed break for me.
We mostly just chilled and played rummikub. We watched a really good film that was based
on a true story about two guys that liked to make movies in the GDR and who
decided to visit America after the wall fell.
One of the guys wanted to get to San Francisco because he got birthday
cards from his dad every year from San Francisco. The movie was about all the differences and
things they had never got to experience before as they travelled through America
and then in the end we find out that it was a random guy sending the birthday
cards every year. The stasi had shot his
dad and then told this guy he had to send birthday cards every year or theyd
kill him too. Stories like that make it hard
to understand the people that come to our soup kitchen and other programs at
the church and that continue to believe things were better in the GDR. One guy spoke very passionately about it last
week. It was really an interesting
conversation and I really wish I could have seen how things really were, like
being a fly on the wall. I think it is
clear that he has something else going on than just the fact that he truly
believes things were so much better then, but he makes a very passionate
case. He says that back then people
would help each other out, that people were nicer to one another. He believes that the West came in and shut
down all of the factories, especially the one he worked in, so that they could
sell their goods to the east. He says
that capitalism means that for him to have more then someone else has to have
less and back then everyone at least got a more even piece of the pie. Of course there are plenty of other people
that say this is a much better place after the wall fell. Using that guys argument, for him to get a
piece of the pie then it meant freedoms were taken away from many, many other
people. Although, I do wonder what the
real story is about the factories and all… the winners do always write the
history books, and it wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened
in this world. However, like I said
before, from everything Ive heard, its definitely not good here but it is
better than it was for the simple reason that you can go where you want and
youre not being constantly spied on by your government. Anyways, we ate a ton last weekend. We celebrated her granddads and a cousins
bday and ate so many tortes, eclairs, and pastries.. it was delicious. On Monday we went to a really neat toy
museum. It was a collection of toys from
the early 1900s and earlier and really told the story of Erzgeberg, this area
of Germany. I think almost everything
was carved out of wood. They had lots of
figurines that portrayed towns or castles or the work that took place in the
mines in this area. So many of the
models had Jesus or something with Christianity built into them. It was really neat. One of the things they had was a huge model
that had all these gears underneath and it the figures would appear and
disappear and it told the entire story of Jesus. It was really amazing to see how it all
worked, and to know how old it was. They
also had plenty of raucherman (smoking men), pyramids, and nutcrackers which
are all very traditional Erzgeberg Christmas traditions.
I
really cant wait for it to warm up here.
We had two days where it was relatively warm and I realized how big of a
difference that makes for my mood. Just
walking outside and feeling the sun instead of a cold wind and snow or rain
really made me happier. Besides the weather,
I also get annoyed much easier when I have to walk with other people because
they don’t realize its cold outside and walk so slow. I know Matthias probably thinks Im a jerk,
but some days I just have to walk on ahead.
Its like when the speed limit says 20 on some roads and you try to go
the speed limit but it just doesn’t make sense to go that slow so you finally
speed up just to feel like youre moving.
And Alabama won the National Championship and had the #1
recruiting class, again. In case some of
you hadn’t heard yet.
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