Trust His Heart...

Wow, so I have decided that I am allergic to Germany!! I have never sneezed so much in my entire life!!! Yesterday I decided to count them and I think the total was 72 (give or take a few sneezes). I have the whole can't breath, stuffy/runny nose, itchy eyes, and lots of sneezing thing. Fun times… It is really funny because Brigitte (my host person) is really worried about me so she keeps making me this hot tea that is supposed to help. It's called Natürlicher geht's nicht. It smells awful but it tastes great, especially when she puts a spoon full of honey in it. The honey is fresh and from a friend of hers who as she says "collects fraum zee bee's." =) It's amazing!

So other than being all stuffy I have to say that this has been the most amazing weekend full of adventures and the Lords handy work!!! First I will tell you about the adventures and then you have to hear about how AMAZING the Lord is!

Adventure time...
For this weekend we decided to explore our transportation passes and see where they could take us. Friday AIB gave us a map of where they could go so we decided to split our group of 6 into 2 groups of 3 and then go on a sort of unstructured scavenger hunt. The only requirements were to pick a direction and go. When we got to a town we were to find a cool looking statue and take a picture and then take a bunch of other random pictures and see who could get the best ones. Then we would meet in Dortmund (which is the furthest city our passes would take us to). So Barrett, Savannah, and I decided to go north. We found a train that went in that direction and hopped on.

When we boarded we were amazed at how nice it was! It was very roomy and there was hardly anyone there. But the best part of all....it had FREE BATHROOMS!!! I was in love! We got of at Duisburg which is pretty far away, but we got there really fast! It was amazing! We found all sorts of fun things to play with. Some examples: a yellow phone booth by an old church, a purple manikin in a window, some concrete pipes we turned into a jungle gym, and a random ship propeller on a construction site (go figure). Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I do not have any neat pictures for you, but you can go to savsingermany.worpress.com, I think she posted a few. Anyway, we finally found our statues to take pictures of and left. When we got back to the Hauptbahnhof to catch our train, we pieced together that the reason our first trip was so nice was because we accidentally got in 1st class. The person checking tickets walked past us several times and never said anything so it was a good thing we didn't get caught. We figured out that the trains were marked with 1's or 2's. We decided to get in the 2 car for this trip =) Since the bathrooms where free, I decided to take advantage of them and while I was gone, the man came to check tickets. He did not speak English and when I came back he seemed to be very upset with us. When I asked what was going on, Barrett simply said, "We are getting off in Essen." (hat was the next stop) You see when we got our public transportation passes; they just gave us this map and told us we could go wherever within a certain boundary. They never told us that all trains in that boundary weren't covered. Yes that’s right, we rode on the ICE train twice that day, once in first class, and once in second without tickets. For those that do not know, apparently ICE is a national train, aka the ones that you would use a eurorail pass on, aka the fast ones (that’s why we got to our city in just a few minutes), aka not covered by our passes! Opps! Thankfully we did not get in trouble or anything; we just made a German ticket checker very angry and had to get off 3 stops before we were supposed to! Haha! I guess that’s what happens when you hand some American students transportation passes where the fine print is in German =) So instead of making it to Dortmund, our journey ended in Essen and the other group had to meet us there to help us find our way home. We were so scarred of getting on the wrong train again. It was quite the experience! =)

And now for the "How Amazing is our God" part...
When I fist got here I was totally unsure of everything. We were told that "everyone speaks English!" HA! Well they must all be hiding cause I have not found that to be the case. Things just were not going well. I missed my mom, I missed home, I missed free public bathrooms and free water, and I wanted nothing more than to hop on the next plane home. I was so confused as to why the Lord allowed me to come. I kept questioning if it was actually His will or not because I felt like I was being punished or something. This week has been an example of waiting on the Lord. I am reminded of Proverbs 3:5-6. It’s funny because in the summers at camp this is always the verse I teach my skiing class. To ski we tell them that you have to rely on the boat like you would rely on God! If you try to get up on your own strength (like pull the rope to your chest) then you will fall. But if you let the boat pull you up, you can ski. So I am used to saying "Trust in the Lord," "Give Him everything," "He will take care of the details." But for some reason my silly human nature took over and I felt as though He just left me here!

All week I have just been praying and praying that He would give me something, anything would let me not only know that this is where I am supposed to be, and to give me something to make things easier. This weekend He did! Check this out! Through my amazing family, I have been able to collect a bunch of contacts here in Germany. Of the many different ones, 3 of them have actually been calling my host lady's house trying to get in touch with me. Two of them are with the IMB.

Friday as my host lady was heading out for the night, she hands me the phone and says "you call this number, it keep calling for you." She pulls up the number on the phone memory and leaves. I'm thinking, "you want me to do WHAT?" No name, no message, no nothing. I'm not even sure the number she pulled up is right. I just knew I was going to hit send and then some random German person was going to answer and I wasn't going to have a clue what they were saying! So after about 30 minutes of just starring at the phone, I hit the call button and to my relief I found myself talking to someone who is with the IMB. It was so great to hear that she was an American from Oregon. Well we worked to out to meet and have dinner and get to know each other. You will never believe this, not only does she play guitar and trumpet, but she has a guitar at her apartment and wants me to come play it sometime =) YAY!!! But more than connecting on musical instruments, I found out we share a very similar story. Her father passed away from a blood clot while he was recovering from a surgery he had to treat his cancer. Sound freakishly familiar? I was blown away! How great is our God?!? She only lives 15 minutes away by train and is already making plans for me to come over and have some sweet tea(American style) and watch movies! But it doesn't end there.

The other person that called me happens to be her team leader and he lives within walking distance from my apartment. This morning he and his family picked me up to go with them to the International Baptist Church of Dusseldorf. They normally go to church with the Germans, but it just so happened that last week they had decided to go here to the English speaking church. Ohh, and they are from Texas =) The pastor and his wife are from Henderson, Tx too. Although the Texas pastor wasn't there, the guy who filled in was from Ireland! He has the coolest accent! It was such a relief to walk into the church and hear them worshiping to a songs I knew! Ohh man, the Lord is just blessing me like crazy! So Thursday hopefully I will be able to go to a small group bible study there. And get this...they are going through a Beth Moore deal. Haha! Amazing! I am just flat in awe of our Father! There is a song that my mom and dad used to sing called Trust His Heart. The chorus goes

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you don't understand
When you don't see his plan
When you can't trace his hand
Trust His heart

The whole song is amazing! So if you have time you should google it and read the rest of the words. But just know that even when we feel like He has forgotten about us, when we feel all alone, know that He alone is faithful and true and He alone knows what is best for you. And we have to trust His heart! The Lord knows where you are in life. Even if you can't see Him working in your life for a time, He is there. He is always there! We just have to keep trusting and seeking Him!