First Post From Germany!

Hello! I made it. I am in Germany! We are all moved into our apartment in Germany after finishing up training in the Netherlands. We live on top of a bakery; it's so cool! Apologies for not having posted much else prior to this; we just today got Wifi in our apartment so there hasn't been an opportunity to post anything. 

So, update on my life in the past two weeks: I left on Sunday the 15^th and arrived in the Netherlands on Monday the 16^th. We jumped right into training, despite being awake for roughly 36 hours. In that training time, we did a lot of prayer and intercession on behalf of our teams, our cities, and the refugees. Day 2 was a continuation of the training, and we did some evangelism on the streets to practice listening to the Lord and stepping out of or comfort zones. However, the highlight of my day has got to be this- one of the base leaders prayed for me and my stomach. I’ve been asking God to heal me of my wheat allergy for at least the time that I’m in Germany, and so together we prayed and asked God for healing. Lunch time came around, and I had to make a decision. Make a decision based off of fear, and a decision without faith, and find some gluten-free alternative, or I could radically trust God and eat a sandwich with the bread. Never in my life has taking just one bite of food been so difficult! I fought through my brain trying to rationalize and make up excuses as to why I should just not eat the sandwich, and I ate one. And then I ate another. With no consequences!!!!! Jesus took the wheat allergy away! In the past several days, I’ve eaten basically whatever I want without having any allergic reaction. Praise Jesus! You guys have no idea how lucky you are to be able to eat such delicious bread whenever you want….

This past week or so here has been crazy. Our first day, we jumped straight into what is called a "Luke 10 Challenge." Luke 10 is where Jesus sends out his disciples, tells them to take nothing, and search for people of peace to feed them and give them a place to stay the night. So, that's what we did. We went out into different cities, backed by a prayer team back at our base, and shared the Gospel with people and prayed for a place to stay. That experience was absolutely unreal. There will be a separate post detailing that.

As a 3-month intern, my role is to be a leader and a resource for the short-term teams that come in, and to build relationships with refugees and the German church. However, this first week has been like a short-term trip for us as we prepare to host our first short term team tomorrow (5/28). There is no handbook for the church detailing how to engage a crisis like this, so we are writing it as we go. We've put on picnics, done outreaches, and worked closely with the German church that we have partnered with in order to build relationships with refugees, and we have spent countless hours building up the logistics and administrative side of the whole operation.

I've been lucky enough to already have built several important relationships. On our first day in the city (while on Luke 10), another teammate and I met a couple of Palestinians from Syria. They were eager to engage us in conversation about religion, and were even open to meeting with us again to talk more about what we believe. We've followed up with them a few times already, and have developed a friendship with them. What's crazy about this, is that these guys are 17 years old. I would have never thought that they were that young. They are here in Germany, without their families, because they payed thousands on thousands of dollars to smuggle themselves from Syria to here. As I find out more and more about their story and what they have been through, both in Syria and on the way here, my heart breaks. There is a whole demographic of Syrian youth with similar stories who all stick together that I'm building relationship with, and I have a vision of them building relationships with youth in the German church. 

One more story of someone I met- He is a man from Baghdad that I met at a picnic just yesterday. With a translator, I went to him and his family and introduced myself. I have no idea how it happened, but the next thing I know I'm going for a walk with him and the translator. Quite quickly he is asking me to tell him about my faith. I ask him what exactly he wants to know, and so I answer a few of his questions as we sit down on a grass hill. He then asks me to tell him what exactly I believe as a Christian. God seriously tossed this one in my lap. I laid out the Gospel to him, and talked about how what we believe comes down to Jesus' love for us, and we're just loving him back. He said to me, "I like your religion. What you believe is good. I want to be a Christian. I have to think though. We meet one more time and I make decision then." Um.. Okay, God. My mind was blown. This is a HUGE deal. As I said goodbye to him, I tried to thank him for listening to me, but he stopped me and almost tearfully thanked me for talking to him. If you would, please be praying for him. 

God has wasted no time in showing up in everything that we've done so far out here. I'm excited to see what happens as we get settled into our roles and host our first short-term team! Please be praying for us!