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!

Our New Normal

Well, I know it has been a crazy long time since we have posted, updated, worked on our website, or reached out to many of you. Well here's why... Oliver. Our little boy was born on a Thursday morning, December 13th at 8:50am. Both mama and baby did great and were and still are perfectly happy and healthy! 

Happy Ollie at about 10 weeks old

Oliver has been such a joy and an honor to get to know over the past almost 3 months! He is such a special little boy and we are so proud to be able to call ourselves his parents. Some of Oliver's favorite things right now are his Mommy (mostly because mommy means food hehe), his Sophie the giraffe, sucking on his hands, watching Baby Einstein and looking at the smoke alarm on our ceiling. ​It's pretty rough being a baby :-)

​Right now we are still living in the heart of the Napa Valley in Yountville. The Yountville Community Church has been so very generous and loving toward Ryan and I over the last 8 months. We are still living in the church's "Loft" apartment while Ryan works part time as the church's worship leader. Ryan is also working part time at a local hotel (The Vintage Inn) as well as trying to find time for his app writing. Thankfully, because of YCC's generosity and Ryan's hard work, I'm able to stay home with Mr. Oliver to be a full time stay at home mama. God sure has been blessing us!

Yountville, CA

We are just now getting ready to start with support raising again after our little baby break. So far we have 3 churches (yay!!) and a few individuals who have committed to monthly partnership! Because of these supporters we are close to being 40% monthly funded! ​We have a few events planned for this spring where more of you can come meet with us and learn about our commitment to doing church planting in Germany. We hope that you and your family consider partnering with us! on our "Germany" page, you can see our informational packet if you would like to learn some more about our heart for Germany.

​Our estimated date of departure for moving to Germany is still October of this year, but in the meantime we have another trip to Germany coming up in our very immediate future! Every year, our mission organization Kontaktmission, has a sort of conference/ retreat in Germany for all of their missionary workers. You have probably heard of this from us before since we have attended the lat two years in a row! (It was actually at this conference last year where I started suspecting that I may be pregnant. And upon the day of our return to the US, my suspicions were indeed confirmed!) This year we will be attending again and bringing Ollie of course as well! If you're thinking, "Man, that's a lot of traveling for new parents and their 3 month old!"... you have no idea. The conference is the week right before Easter; TWO weeks before that we are flying from California to Minnesota to spend a couple days with Ryan's grandma, then driving from Minnesota to Illinois (a 9 hour drive by the way.... and Mr. Oliver hates car rides and needs to eat like ever 2 hours, so that should be fun...), staying in IL for about 10 days where I am a bridesmaid in a wedding, and then we leave the day after the wedding for another 10 days in Germany. Whoa! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pray for us!!!! It's a daunting trip, but thankfully Ryan and I are good travelers and hardly ever get stressed out from traveling, so hopefully things are not too completely overwhelming even after throwing a 3 month old into the mix. We'll see :-)

​We are very excited to go back in Illinois for a while to see our much missed friends and family! Please make sure we see you! We are also very excited to be able to spend a few days in Dresden after the Kontaktmission retreat to meet the church that we will be working with our first 1-2 years in Dresden! So be sure to check back in here on the blog after we get back  to get an update and see some pictures!

Wow, this post sure has covered quite a few things! Hopefully we get better at posting more often so that we can avoid these long generic posts! Well, Oliver should be waking up from his nap any minute now, so I'll leave you with some more pictures to look at of our cute boy :-)

Heading West

One of the big announcements that I planned on sharing with yall a couple months ago (oops! Sorry it's been so long) was that... We are moving to California!!! In about a month now, actually!

This is in now way a permanent move (much to my parents' dismay), as we will only be out there for about a year and a half. We are partnering with a church in Yountville (just 15ish minutes north of Napa) as their sort of missionaries in residence while we dive into this time of full time support raising.

This is not going to be a long detailed post. We are up to our necks right now with selling pretty much all of our belongings, and we have a garage sale happening this weekend that we are getting ready for :-) Please pray that we get everything sold and that God blesses this time of transition for us and paves the way to California these next few weeks!

Yountville Community Church

As far as housing, there happens to be a sweet little apartment inside the church building that we will be able to live in! Ryan will put in some hours helping with worship ministry, and we get a place to live... pretty good trade off!

Anyway, we are super excited and are in awe of how God works these things out! 

Blessings!

R&E

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