Trip to Germany- Spring 2013

We finally laid our heads down on our own pillows for the first time in three weeks last Tuesday night. We had such a wonderful trip, but I would not recommend traveling for that long with an infant! 6 planes, one rental car, countless trains and buses, many many hours in cars, 3 US sates, and 2 different countries is a lot for a 3 month old to experience! He generally did a fantastic job! Still, I consider myself all the stronger for surviving without too many breakdowns. J We had a great time visiting our family and friends in the Midwest! Sorry if we didn’t get to see some of you. We will be back in IL for a whole month (hopefully) in either July or August!

From IL we flew to Germany on March 24 to attend Kontaktmission’s annual retreat. What a blessing it was to be a part of such a wonderful event! There were around 200 adults along with 100+ kids all packed into the retreat center. The week’s theme was on church planting and how to incorporate small groups, there were also workshops to attend and plenty of worship time. We got to see old friends and make some new ones as well! This was our 3rd time attending this retreat. All of the last three years of our attendance have been so different! The first time we went, we had just finished our 6 month long internship in Jena. We knew we were committed to doing ministry work in Germany, but we had no idea about the where’s, when’s with whom’s, or how’s. The next year, we had a bit of a clearer view and were able to finally make some decisions at a meeting time with our two supervisors. It was last year that we committed to serving in Dresden, and that we would make the move in the fall of 2013. It was also at this retreat last year that we first had suspicions that I was pregnant- upon our arrival back in the states (literally, not even 2 hours after we had landed in Peoria!) those suspicions were confirmed! And this year we had Oliver with us in person, and knew a lot more of the details for our plans for moving to Dresden later this year!

From where we were staying for the retreat, we took the very long trek by train (ended up taking about 10 hours) to Dresden! There we stayed with a young woman from the church in her darling little apartment. She was brave enough to house the Americans with a 3 month old in her apartment for 5 nights… she’s a saint! Most mornings we would get up and have breakfast with her, then someone else from the church would pick us up so we could spend the first part of the day with them and their family, then after lunch someone else from the church would come and get us and we would spend the last half with them! It was a pretty sweet set up, really. We saw a lot of the city, got some good history and cultural lessons, ate a lot of good food, battled Oliver at a lot of nap times, and most importantly… met a lot of amazing people from the church! We are so very grateful for the hospitality of those families that took time out of their Easter vacation time to entertain us!

For Easter Sunday we got to attend service at B19 (the name of the church we will be working with in Dresden). It’s an amazing community of believers, pretty much 100% German, and around 200 people strong (very big for a

German evangelical church). As far as our roles at B19 once we move to Dresden, our main focus will be integration. We have a 2 year commitment to serving and attending B19 and after that we will go on to start our own new church plant, either somewhere else in the city or in another place in Germany. While at B19, Ryan will have the opportunity to serve as the worship director as well as help with some of the technical aspects of a Sunday morning service. I will be focusing mainly on taking care of our son, but the church as a wonderful moms and babies group that really reaches out to the non-Christian community and I will have the opportunity to be involved in that. Also, I may be able to teach some art classes! We, as well as the leaders and members of the church, are all excited for our arrival and involvement at B19, but our main focus for these first 2 years are language and culture immersion. We think B19 will be just the perfect place for us to grow and learn! We are so excited to see what God has in store for our future in Dresden!