Back in Dresden!
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Hello from Dresden, everyone! It’s been an exciting summer for us! Hopefully we even got to see some of you while we were in California. We just wanted to update you guys on what’s been happening around here :-)
Ryan preached at church in July…. In German! He did great and everyone really loved it. We even had some friends from our International family group come to church that Sunday to see Ryan preach, and one of them hadn’t been to church in 9 years! Ryan has another preaching date set for November. Please be praying that God helps Ryan prepare for this, as it is a very stressful thing to get ready for.
Ollie on the plane ride to America!
At the end of July we flew out to California! It was an amazing 3 weeks of seeing loved ones, visiting churches, and attending Ryan’s brother’s wedding in Los Angeles. We hope we got to visit with you while we were in Napa! Of course, we didn’t get to see everyone that we wanted to since our time there was much too short. We didn’t even get to go to Butter Cream Bakery to get donuts!!
A couple days after we arrived back in Dresden after our California trip, Ryan left to go work at our church’s teen summer camp. That was a hard week on all of us since we were all still jet lagged, Ryan was having to have enough energy to work at the camp everyday and I was home alone with a jet lagged toddler and a dog who needed to go out on walks everyday (yes, we brought Brucie back with us!!). It was a hard week, but we made it through!
And now, in these last two weeks we have just been trying to get back into our routine. I (Elyse) have started a ladies Bible study for English speakers. We meet every Monday and it’s been really great so far! Please pray that God uses this group to do amazing things in the hearts of the ladies who are coming. I have also been busy with my photography work! This is truly an amazing thing that God has been using. I have met SO many families through this work, and I have made some really great friends because of it. Pray that God continues to use this as a way for me to meet people and build relationships in a culture that makes it very difficult to usually accomplish those things. I also just signed up for my doula classes to become a certified doula! The course is completely online and I work at my own pace. I’m hoping it wont take me more than 6 months to finish. The hardest aspect of the training is that I’m requited to attend at least 2 births as a doula. As it turns out, I have two friends who are due in January and are both interested in having me attend their birth as a doula! Please pray that this all works out the way that God intends for it to!
Ryan is keeping very busy with leadership meetings, youth group weekly events, music at church, music practice, more meetings and a few more meetings J He’s also taking very good care of Ollie and I and making it possible for me to have the freedom and time to get out of the house more. He’s still working on his iPhone apps as well. He had a great time at camp our first week back in Germany, even though the theme of the week was “The Time of the GDR”. It was a very interesting cultural experience! He also helps me with my German homework sometimes, thank goodness!
I don’t wan to go on and on, so I’ll wrap it up here and promise to do some blog updates more often! We can’t thank you enough for the love, prayers and financial support that you send to us. It means so much and we thank God for you everyday! We are feeling more and more at home here in Dresden and we’re so excited to see how God uses us to help spread His light and love to the people here! God bless!