Gehen

My friend Amanda encouraged me in an email I read a few days ago. She was at church and her pastor spoke on Mark 6:30-44 - 5 loaves and 2 fish. To quote her, “He was talking about nothing being impossible for God - he said that the Lord calls us to the impossible to produce through us the supernatural. He was saying that some people are motivated by comfort (happy and content where they are, and even if the Lord says move, they won't) - he said that God sometimes pushes us to uncomfortable places to produce the impossible for His glory.”

I just want to encourage anyone who feels comfortable and content where they are but feel God asking them to do something outside their comfort zone—do what He asks! You might THINK you are content, but when you’ve seen what he has had in store for you, you’ll realize you never knew the definition of content. I couldn’t be more excited in knowing that, even though I left all of my family and friends to move on with their lives for 5 months, I’m serving where my Lord wants me. To do what HE asks, and to do what HE desires me to do is the why I exist.

In other news, we've officially seen the university here in Dresden. It's a lot smaller than say, Mississippi State, but it's a decent size now that I've walked all over it. We're hoping to put up flyers offering to help with English. We haven't found much space on campus bulletin boards, but hopefully we'll figure out something. I feel really good about visiting the University! Check out my other teammates' blogs for more details.

p.s. I REALLY miss warm weather, as well as a MS blue sky.

German word:
Entschuldigung--Excuse me/pardon me/sorry

February 13

Last weekend was a bit interesting. Friday, Feb. 13, marked the 64th anniversary of the bombing in Dresden near the end of WWII. If you haven’t heard about it, or read much about it, you can go here. The most devastating destruction was the falling of the Frauenkirche. The church wasn’t completely destroyed in the bombing, but the fires in the aftermath caused it to entirely collapse 2 days later. There is a memorial service held every year in remembrance, and this year it fell on a Friday night. The service was held at 7 at night, with singing and speeches. One speaker was a POW in Italy during WWII. All 4 of us Hands-on girls, along with Jason (our supervisor) and Amy (journeygirl), attended the service. We spoke as little English as possible that night. Neo-Nazis were coming to town, and they aren’t exactly the biggest fans of foreigners—especially Britons and Americans on that weekend. They usually have marches on the anniversary date, but because the anniversary was on a Friday, they saved their marches for Saturday.

Saturday was very uneventful for us because we were practically in hiding. There were protests held all over the city, including a place near our apartment, so we spent all of Saturday at the Dietz’s house. There were rumors of anywhere between 4,000 to 6,000 Neo-Nazis in town for the marches and protests. Over 4,000 police were here, as well as almost 10,000 Anti-Neo-Nazis. The Anti-Neo-Nazis had their own marches protesting the Neo-Nazis. As you can see, being in heart of the city was the last place we wanted to be. Fortunately, nothing big occurred, and we Americans are back out in the city once again.

Also, thank you to everyone who has been praying for my team and I. We have truly felt the prayers and have seen some of them answered. God is so amazing and deserves to be glorified!

German word:
groß—big

Visa

Well, I have officially applied for a German Visa. Oddly enough, having my picture taken was the most adventurous part of the whole process. Why, you might ask? Because apparently smiling isn’t really permitted in official pictures over here. We went to a local place for someone to take our pictures. Four other girls went ahead of me and talked about theirs, and I still felt unprepared for a not-smiling picture. I went in, sat down, and the directions were, “you cannot show your teeth, but you can smile a little.” I don’t even know how to do that without looking a fool. So, I sat, put some sort of smirk on my face, and she took the picture. She took two, and I laughed after each one. I’m pretty sure the girl thought I was crazy, as she didn’t laugh at all. We were able to pick between the two pictures, and both of mine looked identical. Yet another picture to have to hide from people! The good news is I’ll have it taped inside my passport. How cool is that?

German word:
jetzt--now

Here's some sweet boots Jessica and I found:

Freitag

Well, we American Dresdeners had quite a weekend this weekend. On Friday night we went to a local place where we prayed over the city. After much prayer, we took a break, ate some snacks including bread, cheese, meat, and jam. This is really common over here (or maybe other places in Europe, too). After gaining a second wind, a local Dresdener and we Americans went walking outside in Neustadt where all the younger people hang out at night. There are a lot of them just strolling around outside. Within a minute and a half of walking, a young man saw us, yelled "Christians!!", and immediately ran up to us. How did he know we were Christians, you ask? Not exactly sure. He may have known the woman we were with was a Christian and assumed, but I don't know. He comes up and says, "Bist du Christians?" out of nowhere (that translated means are you Christians). Considering the fact that he had a Satan patch on his jacket, we were a little freaked out at this situation. Our German friend told him we only spoke English, and so a few of us got to talk with him. I wasn't in the group that talked to the young guy, but I know the group who did talk to him prayed with him and talked with him about his struggles. The guy's name is Willy, so please keep him in your prayers. He seemed to have a lot of problems with drugs and alcohol (from what he said) so we pray that he'll be released from his addictions. This was our first interaction with nonbelievers asking us about Christ. It was an amazing thing!! We're up for another round of prayer walking, so I hope the Lord speaks through us this week. It's still really cold!

Prayer Walking

We started our main focus here in Dresden this week: Prayer walking. Jason provided us with a map of an area of the city on which we were to focus. Some of it included Altstadt, but a lot of in covered neighborhoods and residential areas. We split in groups of two: Jessica and Jennifer were in one pair, and Sarah and I were the other pair. It was great to feel the power of God move around us and speak through us. We experienced the city in a whole new way. This did not go without struggles. Some days were really windy and cold, wearing down our high spirits. Nevertheless, we made it through and I look forward to moving to a new area this coming week!

Funny story: I wrote in an earlier blog back in October about being locked out of my brother’s house. Well, lo and behold it happened again. This time, it wasn’t the fact that we didn’t have a key to get back in, but our key failing to work. Apparently if you leave a key in the door on the inside of the apartment, you’re key won’t work on the outside of our apartment. Whoops. Fortunately, our landlady happened to be walking out of her door at the very moment that we discovered this. She gave us some suggestions, with a last resort of paying 50 Euros for a locksmith. Talk about burning a hole in your pocket! We returned home to see that none of her other options worked—which happened to be the cherry on top of a very discouraging day. Sarah and I sat there in anger at how so many things could go wrong. We asked God to help us out. We just need anything to lift our spirits. After a moment of frustration, Sarah put the key in the lock to try one last time, gave a huge, angry push, and BOOM!! The door opened! Praise Jesus! It was truly an answered prayer and a HUGE pick up. God shows himself in ways I would never expect, and I love that about him.

So Kalt

Well, I’ve officially attended a German Baptist worship service. Naturally, I didn’t actually understand anything going on, whether it was during the worship songs or during the message. I also was fortunate enough to be there when their annual business meeting took place…which lasted an hour and a half. In German. Let’s just say I got some quality Bible reading in on Sunday. They also serve lunch, consisting of several types of dishes. No worries for I tried everything on the table. After church, my 3 teammates, Jason, Cheryl, and their kids, all had an English worship service at home. I can tell that this will definitely be needed the longer we are over in Germany and start craving a worship service that we understand ☺ For now, I want to thank you all for your prayers. I have seen some of them answered! With this cold weather here (we actually had a decent snowfall last Saturday), I am surely starting to miss my Mississippi weather!

German Word:
Schnee—snow

Hallo!

Our first days in Dresden have been full of fabulous photo oppotunites. Our first full day here, the Dietz took us to Altstadt (old city) where all the historic buildings are. There is also Neustadt, (new city) which is where the 3 girls I’m serving with and I live. It’s where a lot of cafés and restaurants are located. The 3 other girls have short biographies that you can see if you visit the hope for Saxony link over to the right. Two of them, Sarah Fisk and Jennifer Chapman, have blogs linked over there as well. We have a cute apartment with a great view of an old church right across the street. The supermarket and Laundromat are both within close walking distance. For everything else, we take the tram. We’ve actually gotten pretty good at figuring out which number to take to get us around. It’s pretty exciting… or for me at least. Our ministry is starting off with prayer walking around neighborhoods, and hopefully, the more we go to cafés and local places, we’ll be able to build some relationships with people. Pray that God will put some people in our path. We’re also thinking about trying to get conversation partners to help us with the language. Three of the four of us have taken some German, but none of us are anywhere near a normal level of communicating with other German speakers. We’re doing our best by watching TV, almost all in German, and using the little we know when we talk to each other. I’ll write more soon. For now, here are some pictures!

All the girls in Meißen!

Very Gothic church in Meißen, Germany. The city is known for its beautiful porcelain.

This bridge is called "The Blue Wonder"

My first REAL german meal. Yum yum! I drank it with a Spezi, which is a combination of orange soda and coke.

The Zwinger.. well part of it. I was standing in the courtyard and it was all around me!

Semperoper. The opera building in downtown Dresden (also known as Altstadt). I tried to get a better picture, but a large group with a lot of yellow jackets was hindering me!

The Parade of Princes (or Dukes as I've also seen). Depiction of the rules of Saxony. The tiles survived the bombing and were put back together.

The Frauenkirche, or in English the Church of our lady. Destroyed in 1945 in the allied bombing and finally rebuilt in 2005. The darker stones are made of the original building.

Catholic church built by Augstus. He converted to Catholicism in order to become King of Poland.