February 13, 1945

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After living here in Dresden for the past 2 and a half months, visiting the historic sites, and walking through the Old Town section, it's impossible to imagine that it ever could have looked like this. Yet, if we could have been here this time, 69 years ago, this is exactly what we would have seen. Beginning the night of February 13, British and American forces launched an all-out assault on the city of Dresden. During several raids over the course of two days, a total of 650,000 incendiary bombs were dropped, along with hundreds of tons of other high explosives. The historic city center and surrounding areas were absolutely leveled, and this once-beautiful "Florence on the Elbe" vanished. The magnificent Frauenkirche, - or, "Church of Our Lady" - stood for over 200 years as one of the treasures of Dresden. On the morning of February 15, after burning for over a day, the massive dome finally caved in, and the rest of the structure collapsed with it.

The bombed out Frauenkirche, with statue of Martin Luther

The bombed out Frauenkirche, with statue of Martin Luther

There was a desire among the people of Dresden to rebuild the Frauenkirche starting immediately after the war, but nothing ever came to fruition. In Soviet controlled East Germany, the ruins were never cleared. At one point there were plans to remove the rubble and build a parking lot, but popular sentiment won out, and the decision was made to leave the ruins as a memorial to war and a reminder of its devastation. Even as other buildings were restored around it, for over 40 years, the ruins of the Frauenkirche lay as they were at the heart of Dresden.

1967

1967

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1992 - Shortly before restoration began.

1992 - Shortly before restoration began.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany the following year, plans were immediately begun for rebuilding the church, with the actual work beginning in 1993. The reconstruction was largely a grass roots effort funded by individual donations from throughout Germany and around the world. The total cost for the restoration was €180 million with over €100 million coming from private donations. The restored Frauenkirche was completed in 2005 and dedicated in October of that year and now once again dominates the Dresden skyline.

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If you take a look at the walls of the restored church, you'll certainly notice something interesting about how it looks. The lighter stones are all new, and the darker ones are stones that they managed to salvage from the wreckage. In this case seen below, one of the entire corner walls that remained standing after the bombing and through the centuries of the GDR was even able to be incorporated as a whole. One particularly moving story has to do with the cross on top of the dome. The old cross was discovered in the wreckage, mangled and burned but largely in tact, and now sits inside the church building. The new gold cross and orb come from England and were created by a smith whose father was one of the bomber pilots in the 1945 attack.

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The Frauenkirche is once again a powerful symbol, not only of the destruction of war as seen in the black stones, but also of a restored Dresden, a renewed German people, and through the funding from all across Europe and the world, a symbol of a more unified and restored world. Unfortunately, the world is not totally unified. In Germany, the extreme right-wing movement is still alive in some places. In the last 10-15 years, these neo-Nazis have decided to use the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden as a rallying point for their party. A large portion of their strategy is to rewrite history by denying the holocaust and painting the German people as the major victims of WWII. The bombing of Dresden, as a supposedly innocent, non-military target, fits in nicely with this revisionist history. In 2007-2009, the Nazi demonstrations reached a peak with over 6,000 protestors from around the country and across Europe in attendance. However, the counter protesting movement has become more and more active as well. This year, the Nazis wanted to hold their gathering in front of the Frauenkirche itself, but were not granted the permission. They do have protected freedom of speech and a right to gather, but they do not have free reign to do whatever they please. In fact, through some turn of events, this year they did not obtain permission to demonstrate on the 13th at all. On the night before, February 12th, only about 500 neo-Nazis showed up for a march through parts of the city. And they were met by over 1,000 counter protestors who attempted to block their march!! This year, counter-protesters also organized a walk to visit various Nazi sites and other relevant locations around the city as a reminder that Dresden was not completely innocent. It's so sad that they would even have to do this and focus so strongly on the negative parts of their history, and yet it's a powerful sign of their determination to fight against racism and prejudice.

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Each year, the on night of February 13th, the city of Dresden holds a special gathering for remembrance and reflection. People wear white roses, light candles, and even form a human chain surrounding the area of the city that was destroyed. This year, 11,000 residents came out to help form the chain around the old city and across the bridges into parts of the city on the other side of the river. Unfortunately, we were not able to be a part of the chain this year, but we really hope to be there next year!

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War is terrible and tragic. For those nations directly involved, as well as for the entire world, there will almost certainly never be an end to our discussions of World War Two, it's causes, consequences, and moral implications. What is certain, though, is that war changes people and cultures, and the marks it leaves on a nation and even on individual cities can last for centuries. 69 years after the bombing of Dresden as well as the end of the war, there is a small and sadly vanishing number of people still living who experienced and remember the events of those days. And yet the city, its people, and the people of Germany as a whole, are still confronted with the past. We are just getting started, but we are so excited to be here, to continue learning about this great city, and to share with them about the great love that God has for them. Thanks for reading and going on this little historical journey with us!!

New Apartment, Visitors, and Holidays

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Well, last time you heard from us, we were in Wüstenrot for our 2 week orientation course at the Kontaktmission headquarters. It was a wonderful time of meeting fellow KM workers, getting a crash course/refresher in missions, as well as easing our way into life in Germany. A LOT has happened since then, and there's so much to share! We've now been in Dresden for almost 6 weeks, and we are getting settled into our new apartment. After making the 5 hour drive from Wüstenrot to Dresden, we didn't waste any time and went straight to our appointment to look at the apartment we had seen online and through pictures. It was so surreal to finally see it in person, and once we did, we were ready to take it and get moved in. We knew it was going to be a lot of work, but I don't think we had any idea just how crazy it was going to be! As you may have heard us explain before, German apartments are quite a bit different from normal US apartments. They come completely empty, meaning no lights, no curtain rods, no kitchen appliances or even kitchen cabinets, just bare wires and bare walls *everywhere*! Through a contact at our church, we were able to live for two weeks in a furnished apartment while we got our place ready enough to move in. It would have been much more simple if we just needed a bed to sleep in, but as it was we definitely used the full 2 weeks, and with LOTS of help from people in the church, we had enough to move in: working ceiling lights, functioning kitchen appliances, and a bed to sleep in! After many, many trips to IKEA, and trips back and forth everyday between the two apartments - all on the public transportation - it felt so wonderful to finally sleep in our new place. Thank you everyone at B19 for all your help and for everything you donated to us as well!


Our First Visitors from the USA

Not only did we need to get our apartment up and running so we could move in, but just a few days after we did, we had our first visitors. Elyse's mom and grandma, and Ryan's mom and sister all flew over! They helped us put together furniture, make one more IKEA trip, bought us cool stuff for the apartment, but mostly they were here to help us celebrate Oliver's 1st Birthday!!! We seriously cannot believe it's already been a year; and we cannot believe what a crazy, exciting, and happy year it's been. He is the most wonderful thing to ever happen and brings so much joy to our lives every day! Even if he still doesn't sleep very well at night (or barely at all still sometimes!), he's the best little boy we could ever ask for! Thank you so much Nana, Mimi, Grammy, and Antie KK for making such a huge trip and for all your help. We all three love you so much!!!


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Christmas and New Years

The family picked a perfect time to come visit too, right in time to visit all the wonderful Dresden Christmas markets! We've been in Germany for Christmas before when we lived in Jena three years ago, so we knew a little what to expect, but it was so totally different this time! In Jena, Christmas came at the very end of our internship as we were winding down and getting ready to come back to the US. This time, it's right at the beginning of our time here, and of course, we've got our little boy now!! Even though they had to leave before Christmas Day itself, it was wonderful to have our family here and to be able to share a little of the magic of the Christmas season in Germany with them. We went to a wonderful Christmas Eve concert at our church, and then celebrated at home with just the three of us that evening and Christmas morning. Even though it was sad to be away from family, it was still a wonderful Christmas with our little family and a chance to start some new traditions as well as carry on Dillon and Ferrario ones! Although we had experienced a German Christmas, we had not been here for a New Years Eve, and boy were we in for a treat! After a beautiful, fun evening with several families from the church, we made our way back home - with Oliver still awake, that stinker! - about 11:30, and got ready for the clock to strike midnight. We knew there would be fireworks, but we had no idea what that meant. We had some idea just how crazy it might be, since we could hear fireworks from our apartment all day and even steadily from about 4:00pm on. It basically just escalated all night, and then at 12:00, it was OUT OF CONTROL! Not only are there official, big, fireworks displays, but everyone in the city had been stocking up for weeks apparently, and they let it ALL fly at midnight and for the next hour straight! This video taken from our balcony starts actually at about ten minutes after midnight, everything still in full force and even intensifying. And this is just what we could see and hear right on our street from our balcony; it was going on all around the entire city! Good times, and Oliver actually did fall asleep finally even through the fireworks. No wonder, he must have been a very tired boy by 12:30!

Well, that's all for now. Happy New Years from the Dillons!!

Our first week in Germany!

Leaving from San Fransisco last week!  

Leaving from San Fransisco last week!  

Yes, we finally made it to Germany! We have been here for almost a week now (and finally over jet lag)! Jet lag with a baby who is already a usually bad sleeper anyway and who is also majorly teething is a COMPLETE nightmare.  Just to give you a little idea, there was one night when Ryan took Ollie on a walk in the carrier for TWO hours at 2:00 in the morning just to try and get him to sleep! He still only slept for about 40 minutes after that.... ugh. Anyway, we're going MUCH better now thanks to some lavender oil and baby ibuprofen for those huge teethies coming in :-)

Oliver did great on the plane rides

Oliver did great on the plane rides

We wanted to give you a bit of an update as to what we have been up to this past week! We are NOT in Dresden yet. We flew into Stuttgart and drove about an hour to Wüstenrot, where the Kontaktmission head offices are located.  This week and all of next week we are attending the KM annual orientation course of prospective and new missionaries on the field. The meetings for the course are being held at the KM office, and above the offices in the same building is an apartment that we have been staying in and sharing with a few of the others who are here for the course. Oliver doesn't have much patience for the course meetings so I usually take him upstairs in the apartment to hang out, play and take his naps. A week from tomorrow is the last day of the orientation course. We'll then rent a van (navigating all the trains with the amount of luggage we have would be impossible!) and drive to Dresden!

This weekend we will take a little trip to Stuttgart and roam around IKEA for a while to try and start picking out things that we need for our apartment :-) We hope to be able to give you a good update on an apartment pretty soon!! We have something in the works, but it's not for sure yet. Please be praying that everything works out!

Some other prayer requests:  

- That Oliver and his parents get enough sleep at night!  

- That the rest of the KM orientation course goes well

- That everything with our transition to Dresden goes smoothly  

-And finally, that Oliver stops falling everywhere and bonking his head every 20 minutes!! He seriously has like 5 bruises on his forehead :- ( He's getting the walking concept down though!!

Crazy little man!

Crazy little man!

 

Thank you all SO much for your thoughts and prayers! We have definitely been feeling the love and support! We are encouraged and excited to see what God has in store for us! Hope to give another update pretty soon, thanks again everyone!