Meetings

Today was a day full of meetings. we kicked the work day off with the weekly English Camp planning meeting. Without divulging too much information, I can honestly say I'm encouraged at what's going on already - and it makes me more anxious for summer to come! I can't wait for the teens to get here. But one step at a time.

We also had an office "Welcome Steve" gathering today, so I could be introduced to the people I didn't know yet, as well as tell the story of how I got here. 

We also had a "camp staff planning meeting" (*disclaimer this is not a direct translation of the German word used), which was conducted entirely in German. I can honestly say I've never been more tired after an hour and fifteen minute long meeting. It all just goes to show my German isn't entirely back yet, (I really don't expect it to be for the next couple of weeks) but it feels good to be working :-), and in a kind of strange way it feels great to be speaking German again.

So - it was kind of a psychologically hard day of meetings: planning, meeting people, having my German tested... But it was a good day nonetheless.

Back to Work

Honestly, it feels great to be back at work. I'm spending a couple of minutes today updating my blog. My work responsibilities don't get a little bit crazier until sometime next week, so I've got some time to spend updating the blog.

I got to Germany yesterday ( running on about 5 hours of sleep for the past 48 hours - so I was dead tired. I unpacked, and then was asleep by 9:30 in the evening. I slept until 9 this morning (My alarm clock said it was 7:00... it was wrong). But the truth is I really needed it. I still made it to the office on time for my orientation meeting as well - so no harm done. But I'll definitely need to make sure the clock is working from now on out (I think its loosing time - because by the time I had left for work it had lost a couple of minutes already).

It snowed last night as well - its still going now. I woke up to find that there was a couple of inches of "the white stuff" on the ground. Kandern is beautiful in the winter.

***Note: this post was written on Friday the 6th of March. I did not have internet in my apartment until this morning (Saturday. So the time stamp for it is wrong... and I'm too lazy to change it (subtext: Its an absolutely gorgeous Saturday, and I've got better things to do this afternoon than sort through blog settings).

"Every new beginnings come from some other beginnings end"

The first leg of my flight starts boarding in just over half an hour. So I'm sitting in an airport restaurant across the hall from my terminal, surfing the web, and trying to get one update in before I leave. Today starts the "Great Adventure" - actually that's not entirely true: in a lot of ways the journey started a long time ago... its just coming to fruition this afternoon. I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm a little bit nervous - but overall I'm excited.

I just wanted to get a quick update out as a first step on the journey, and thank everyone once again for all of the love and support over the past few months! Thank you all!

Update

Ok... so its been a while since I've posted anything, and a lot of things have changed since then. Truthfully up until about a week and a half ago there really wasn't much to "report on" and since then I've been going kind of crazy. That being said I'll let the cat out of the bag: I crossed into the %90 range about two weeks ago... upon checking, double checking, and then triple checking my math, I found out I was indeed between %90 and %100. That means that I now have a plane ticket... That in turn means that I board a plane next Wednesday afternoon, and fly to Germany for the next ten months.

Alright... that's life in a nutshell right now - More updates coming soon. I'm hoping to get a kind of "mission statement" out for this blog, as well as do a little bit of a facelift on it. I'm also planning on keeping everyone updated from here on out on my status!

Best wishes to all, and many thanks for the prayers!

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!