Its still snowing

This is honestly the longest I can remember snow staying on the ground here - I realize that other places in the world its normal for the ground to be covered in snow from the beginning of Winter until Spring. Here, near Cleveland, the ground gets covered, and then the snow melts at least a couple of times each year. This year its been different: we had one huge snowstorm in early January, and I haven't seen the grass since. Last night we got dumped on again by a massive front.

In Germany news - I'm inching closer and closer to my support goal, and am hoping to leave the States sometime in later February... The whole process of support raising, in a lot of ways, is nerve wracking - there is so much of it that I have little or no control over. I can work at it, but in the end, really, there is no guarantee that any kind of time line will be met. Don't take this as complaining though, its really not meant as it. The other side of the coin is that the support raising process has been a way in which I've been able to see the goodness of God, as well as the generosity of His people - both are things that are deeply humbling.

We interrupt this broadcast...

Its been way too long since I've posted anything here, so I'll try to get the most pertinent information out first. Germany update: I want to thank all of you who are supporting me either through giving or through prayer. I appreciate both, and both are vitally necessary to the success of any ministry. Based on my wonderful number crunching skills (cough... former English major) I'm around %55 total support - I need to be at %90 before leaving. I, personally, would love to see the total closer to %100 simply by virtue of there not being too much "wiggle room" in the budget, especially if the Euro has a substantial jump against the Dollar. That being said it is a blessing to see my total increasing with every update that I get. And for that I thank the Lord, and all of you.

I've been reading from Deuteronomy lately - it may seem like an odd book to be looking at, but I find it fascinating. We, as Christians, often focus on the historical parts of the Pentateuch: The Creation Story, Noah's Ark, The Exodus, The Giving of the Ten Commandments, The Children of Israel wandering in the desert for forty years, Moses going to Mt. Nebo to look into the promised land before he died. And the stories are useful, but I find it odd we skim over the actual meat of the law. Sure, some of it is kind of obscure (rules and regulations for clean & unclean animals, laws for ceremonial cleanliness, etc.). Overall though I'm struck  by several things, so I'll leave you with a couple of thoughts, and observations that are striking me as I read:

1) the demand of God for his people to holy unto the Lord. Some of the commandments are given with the simple reasoning that God called the Israelites to Himself, and that they should be different from the other people in the land. 2) The demands the Law makes to force the Israelites to rely on God, rather than conventional Human power structures. The way the "nation" of Israel was set up in Deuteronomy. 3) The inherent tragedy of the circumstances. Not only is Moses writing these things fully knowing he will not be able to enter the promised Land... It is only a matter of a few years after their initial conquest of the Land, that the Lord begins to raise "judges" up to rescue them, and the spiral further and further downwards. Judges may be one of the most tragic books of the Bible, as with every revolution of the Judge cycle Israel moves further and further away from God.

The Blizzard of '09

So the wintry weather hit Ohio in force this past week. I had been down at Cedarville for the annual missions conference last week, and ended up leaving sooner than I had planned when I got a call from my Dad telling me there was a huge storm on the way. It took about 5 minutes to check the weather map online and realize that the first fingers of what looked like a nasty snow storm were already twenty miles away. So I packed my bags, and was on my way home within 20 minutes of talking to Dad.

The storm caught up to me by the time I got home, and it didn't really stop snowing until sometime on Saturday. Its snowing again - and its really cold. And the truth is, aside from being relieved I didn't have to drive home through it, I'm loving it. It feels like winter!

The 80s?

Why does this give me the feeling that I'm reliving the 80s?

The Dollar Is Falling.

I don't want to sound like Chicken Little, especially because this time its true. The Euro peaked in its value against the dollar this summer while I was in Germany - I was paying about $1.60 to get 1 Euro. Then over the past few months the Euro began to slowly, but surely, fall in value. Up to a week ago... then over the past few days it spiked up again. Although its not as high as it used to be, it does skew my support estimates (which were based off of the value of the Euro about a month ago - somewhere in the $1.28 range). Hopefully the market will stabilize somewhat so that I'm not bartering off various articles of Americana to pay my rent next year :-).

Seriously though - Its crazy how much even a 10 cent shift in currency value can make. Last summer I was talking to some missionaries who were explaining how people in America couldn't understand how they had effectively lost about a third of their pay because of the way the market fluctuated. As support is coming in form America (In USD) by the time it is converted into European local currency (which for most countries is now the Euro, or EUR), it takes a few hits in value - between the bank taking an exchange fee, and being converted into the local currency. So a family over in Germany who started off when the Euro was about equal with the Dollar saw their support, without having done anything wrong, continually loose its value over a six year (or so) span to the point where every dollar that they had raised was worth only about $.66. And the buying power of the Euro is no better than the dollar.

This all goes to say though - there is a God who is in control over the world's financial markets, but we don't always know why He allows the markets to fluctuate... or his plan for what we ought to do with our finances.  I'll be honest, I'm hoping and praying that the market will stabilize (if not go down) for pretty self serving reasons (I don't want to have to raise more money than I already do... and I don't want to get to Europe and have my support collapse...), and at the same time those its the same money that goes to allow me to serve the Lord in Germany - so its kind of a strange, very human, mix of emotions that I feel while watching the money market. Its actually quite humbling - it is completely out of my control, and yet it will dictate a lot of what I can/will do in the next year...

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Theres never enough...

... Time. We're moving from early to mid December, and Christmas is right around the corner. This time of year always feels rushed to me. One minute its thanksgiving and before you know it you're heralding the new year. And then everything slows down and sleeps until spring. Its crazy though - this year January may actually be as frantic as December usually is. Right now I'm still raising funds to go to Germany, and I kind of expect to keep doing that right up until the deadline -- Worried isn't the right word to use for whether or not I'll be able to raise the support, concerned probably is. If God does want me in Germany, and I diligently do my part to try and raise funds, I am confident that I will get there in His time. So even though I'm not worried, I am concerned as I watch the days tick away, and mid January is coming ever-closer.

Almost There

I think I'm almost done with the letters. And that's good news.