Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again......

Well I don't have time to give you a wonderful update on the happenings in Germany because I leave for Paris in a little over 45 minutes! Yikes! I'm kinda running late =) I am leaving my computer behind so you will have to wait until Monday for another update! Please pray for the safety of our group (there are 6 of us) as we roam the streets of Paris! Yay! I'm pretty excited! =) Have a wonderful weekend!!! I hope everyone is having an awesome day. Don't forget to praise the Lord in all that you do!!

Fourth times a charm...

Today was a monumental day! I had the most amazing reunion with an item that is very dear to me. I thought they were lost forever.....

Check it out!

TA-DA!!
I FOUND MY GLOVES!!!!!

That is right! They are back! After returning to Kaufhof (the site of their disappearance) on three separate occasions in the past week to check the lost and found only to come up empty, I thought all hope was lost. Let me set the stage for you. This afternoon, a group of us went to check out the one euro stores to try and find some supplies for our studio project. After gaining a few fun items half of the group went home while the other half checked out the Kaufhof to see if it had anything to offer. Right as we were about to leave I half heartedly made the comment that I wanted to check the lost and found one more time. I felt like the little kid who let the family bird fly out the window. Although you know it's gone for good, you find yourself checking the window with such innocent hopes in that one day it will fly home. I almost didn't go, I didn't want the group waiting on me. Well I chose to check just one last time. If they weren't there, I figured I would consider them gone forever. So I ventured back to the service desk and tried my best to get the lady to understand what I was saying. Finally many hand motions later and with the help of some other customers, she figured out what I was saying and pulled a big bag out from behind the counter. As she poured out the contents of the bag it was as if the world moved in slow motion! There they were. The only gloves in the whole bag that were not black or brown. My gloves! My amazing multi-color striped mittens with removable flap for ultimate finger dexterity plus bonus exposable thumb flap sitting right there in front of me!!! I could not believe it. As soon as I saw them I gasped and laughed out "That's them!!" Everyone around laughed. It was great!!!

So now I have my gloves back. I'm sure I had some other lovely stories to tell but all I can think about right now is the beautiful return of my mittens. Life is good...

Weekend wonderings...

Operation find hidden church on the other side of the town was a success! Geoff, Allen, and I set out early this morning to try and conquer the bus system and make it to this destination that only existed in my head as a memory from the week before. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get all the way out there. We live in the southern part of Dusseldorf and this church is the furthest north you can go before your in another town! Fun times. But the service was great. The pastor is a fellow Texan. We got there a little early so we were able to meet him. During the welcome he gave the typical "If you are a visitor..." speech while handing us visitors cards. Note: we were the only ones he did this for. Haha. And then he went on to explain how there were some college students all the way from Texas (talking about us). It was awesome. I am so glad we got hooked up with this church! I can't wait to go back!!!




To get there you have to take a lovely hike through a trail in the woods. It's kinda fun.

.....

Then afterwards Geoff and I went to the Alstadt to find some lunch and ran into some interesting characters. Apparently they were about to have a parade so there were all these people dressed up in blue and red uniforms with instruments and such. I was sooo glad we stumbled across them because it was hilarious.


I took a picture of one of the boys as they were walking by and he got so excited that he grabbed his two friends and posed for me to take another one =)



He was really tall!!! We went to eat at the Döner place and he walked in for a sandwich. Haha! Priceless....


During our adventures Geoff stumbles across Dr. Pepper!! He has been looking for one since we got here and was convinced they didn't have them here. So he bought 3! =)


On another note...
I have decided that I am in love! With filming that is =) All week we learned about filming and all that goes with it. It has been a blast! Friday each group took all their footage collected over the week and made a collage of their favorite/best shots. Then our favorite mullet sporting camera workshop leader, Jens (pronounced yens), put the films together and added some music. I have yet to see the finished product but from what I saw it should be pretty neat! Hopefully I can get a hold of it and post it on here for your enjoyment =)

Yesterday Geoff, Savannah, and I set out to find the nearest Toys "R" Us. Can you believe they have those here? It was appropriately placed right next to a McDonalds. For a moment I felt like I was back in the states. Then after failing to decipher the letters of gibberish on the banners and signs the American soil feeling quickly vanished. It's like hearing a choir of heavenly voices and then the record player suddenly crashes and a loud screeching overtakes the moment of triumph as the voices slow and deepen until silence fills the air. Yup. Still in Germany =)

This excursion was part of our search for project materials. Our first studio project involves us making some sort of model that can function underwater. Toys "r" Us was our attempt at finding toy water crafts that we could take apart and use the motors. But our search failed. All the toys were either really expensive or really cheap(meaning, not useable). The journey getting there and back, however, made up for the failure to gain items. Savs brought along her really nice camera for the first time and I got to play with it a bit! Ohh it was amazing! I have to stop playing with all this expensive equipment though because I'm slowly realizing all that I am missing out on. Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is discontentment in the area of technology.

Last night I got to hang out at Julie's(my new missionary friend who is completely awesome) apartment and it was absolutely amazing! We had hot dogs and played guitar =) What a night. We just played the guitar and worshiped for hours. I got to listen to a bunch of German worship songs and it was neat! Sometimes I would recognize the tune and sing along in English. Or when I was singing an English song she would sing a verse through in German. It was awesome! My goal before I leave is to learn at least one song in German. Julie explained that to sing the songs in German they aren't the exact words as the English version because the words have to fit. I thought that was interesting. It was also neat to hear her translate the German worship songs. They have such a neat way of expressing their love for the Lord. I love it!

Working out German Style...

Mission dispose of chocolate cake was a success!!! She will never know!!! =)

Have you ever underestimated the time it would take for you to travel from point A to point B and then back? Well that is exactly what happened today! During our lunch Jacob, Savannah, and I decided to make the most of our time by spending our hour and 15 minute lunch break getting art supplies at Düsseldorf University’s art supply store. We knew we were going to be cutting it close but the only time this little shop opened was on Mondays - Thursdays from 1pm to 2pm. We hoped that since this shop was part of the university, the prices would be lower than that of the ones in town. When we finally got to the bus stop closest to the University we realized time was quickly running out so we ran. Literally! Un-tied shoes and all =) We finally got there only to find that the shop did not meet our expectations. It was really small and contained only a few items, all which were more expensive than the places in town. We quickly make our exit and started heading back to the train stop when suddenly we saw our train quickly approaching from behind! Our jog quickly turned into an all out sprint. It was go time! Thankfully we made it just in the nick of time! In the end, and possible only because of all our running, we were about 20 minutes late to class =) Our camera workshop leader just laughed at our story and gave us his approval. This supply "run" really lived up to its name. What a work out!

Tonight my goal was to somehow make my way to the absolute opposite side of town so I could attend this bible study at the English speaking Baptist Church that I learned about last Sunday. I was so pumped and couldn't wait to go. I was extremely worried about where in the heck this thing was! All I had was a mint tin with the name of a train stop that I had written down as we passed by on the way to church last Sunday, and a mental picture of the how to get from the stop to the church. That should be enough to get me there right? HAHA! Well actually if I could have gotten to the stop I am pretty confident I could have found my way from there. Getting to the stop proved harder that I thought! First of all I almost missed every train I had to catch so I had some lovely sprints worked into the journey. From the Hauptbahnhof I carefully studied the maps to see which train would take me to my destination. I found the number and got on. The stop was going to be at least 30 minutes away so I just turned up my ipod and relaxed. Time was ticking away and I was starting to get worried that I would be late. Forty minutes pass by and suddenly I hear the bus speakers say Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof. But why? That is where I just came from! Apparently there are 2 different trains for 719. One that goes all the way to my stop and one that goes halfway and then goes back to the Hauptbahnhof! Of course if I could actually read German I would have been able to figure this out BEFORE I missed my bible study! Tonight I spent 2 1/2 hours traveling to and from a destination I never reached =( Sunday I think I am going to take a different route that involves changing trains 3 or 4 times. This one should work for sure!!! I guess I will have to leave at 8am to allow for mistakes so I can be there by 11 o’clock. =) Traveling to the other side of town is way more complicated than it looks!

So today was full of very interesting train rides! On the up side, dinner was amazing! My host lady prepared an awesome salad, some home made fries, and chicken cordon blu. It was delicious! And best of all...there was no chocolate for dessert!!!!!!!!

Chocolate? NO THANK YOU!!!

Lesson number one: Never pretend you like food when you really don't.
Lesson number two: Never, ever, ever, pretend you like food when you really don't especially when it’s chocolate!!!!

The chocolate cake is haunting me! Tonight after a very interesting meal (she called it Chinese, but it definitely was NOT any form of Chinese food I have ever seen or tasted) my host lady leans over and explains "I have sweets vor you if you en like." Of course, I am never one to turn down something sweet so I smile and say yes! Dessert time is my favorite! I follow her into the kitchen very excited for some sugary goodness. She opens the refrigerator and pulls out something wrapped in tin foil. Then she starts explaining, "I save for you after Sunday." Suddenly my heart sinks! As she pulled back the foil my deepest fear was confirmed! It was THE cake! Ohh man!! What do you do? She explains that I can have 2 pieces to which I quickly made up an excuse about being to full. After much convincing I was able to make it out of the kitchen with only one piece of this "delightful" headache! So here I sit in my room with this silly cake sitting next to me. My plan? I think I shall wait until the cover of darkens when she quietly retreats her room for a night of peaceful slumber. Then when all is clear, I will sneak into the kitchen, crumble the cake into many pieces and distribute it throughout the trash can. Of course these drastic measures must be taken in case she happens to look into the trash can. We wouldn't want her finding any evidence. Crumbs are a must to disguise the presence of the cake in the trash. A whole piece is easily spotted, but crumbs…
She will never know... =)

Yesterday was our first camera workshop. It was amazing! Basically we sat and listened to this dude (with a very stylish mullet I might add) talk about how our cameras work and what all you can do with them. After lunch we were assigned a very hard task; Split into groups of 3, go somewhere and get some good footage! Simply translated: here take this very nice piece of equipment that costs more than your car and see who can get the best footage! Take a camera; take some friends and just play! Cool! I can do that =) At the end of the week we are to make a collage of the best shots. It was simply beautiful!! Savs, Jacob, and I grouped together and immediately went to work planning out what we could do. Sure there didn't have to be a story involved, but we wanted to make this interesting. Some how there needed to be a contrast going on so we developed 2 characters: a creepy stalker person and a wildly crazy happy person! Savs has this puffy black knee length coat complete with a hood that became the wardrobe of the stalker. My light grey fleece, blue scarf and Savs turquoise gloves completed the look of the crazy person and thus the characters came to life. Of course each one of us had to experience being behind the camera so that left the character roles to be filled by whoever was left. We all ended up playing one of the characters at some point. This made the content of our film quite amusing especially when it was Jacob’s turn to play a part. Have you ever seen a guy wearing a girl’s size small fleece with turquoise gloves or a girl’s small knee length overcoat? Words cannot describe how wildly random and hilarious our footage was. Maybe one day I can get parts of it uploaded for you to see =)

Then last night we got the chance to go to a professional soccer game! It was pretty neat. In aggieland we have the whole 12th Man towel thing where we twirl them in the air like a helicopter. In Dusseldorf they have that same concept but with scarves instead. Of course! What else would you do with your hot stuffy scarf while at an indoor soccer game? These guys are brilliant! =) Their favorite (and only) chant that they yelled over and over again sounded as if they were yelling "Dusseldorf! For tuna!" I couldn't figure out what in the world soccer had to do with fish, but oh well. Finally at the end I learned that their team name was Fortuna. (Something about Latin and fortunes…who knows?) I did find their songs rather interesting however. I can officially say I learned a German song. It's really complicated but I think I can teach it to you. Here we go. Can you say Dusseldorf? Do you know the tune to Amazing Grace? Good! Now sing the word Dusseldorf over and over again to the tune of amazing grace! Yay! You now know a German song too! I kid you not. They actually played this interesting song over the loud speakers with some woman singing. In fact, just pick a tune and insert the lyric "Dusseldorf." I know for sure I heard at least 3 different American tunes used in this manner. I had to laugh =)

Some pictures...


Soccer field.


Geoff, Jacob, and Barrett enjoying the soccer game =)


Yes that’s right! Instead of hotdogs they walk around with bread baskets! And instead of normal drinks like say Coke or Dr. Pepper they have these guys who walk around with a backpack keg thing full of beer and they will gladly serve you one. Didn't exactly want a picture of that, but they were there and it was funny =)


A crowd. Notice the empty seats in the top left corner. When they built the stadium they knew that they would never fill it so they painted the chairs random colors so that at a glance it looks full. Smart...


A common hair style for all ages around here..
This and the mullet! haha


Jacob and Geoff


Well I hope all is well with everyone. Have a wonderful day!

Let the classes begin...

Today marked our first day of real class. The subject; architectural and art history...ALL DAY! That’s right, we started at 10:15am and didn't get out until a little after 5pm. Now doesn't that sound like fun? Of course we had about an hour lunch break to ease the brain. I am not sure how this whole one class per day thing is going to work out. My attention span just does not like to cooperate with keeping on task for long periods of time. This should be interesting =) They have to schedule these classes this way because we do not meet very often. For instance, the next 2 classes will be Jan 28th and then Feb 11th. On the plus side, there are no tests! You know at first we were really upset about the absence of this popular form of student torture, but I think if we really try, we might be able to recover from this shocking news and make the best of things =)

After class, Jacob, Savannah, Geoff, and I, went to a store to purchase some school supplies. You see our professor will not let us use our computers to take notes on. Apparently they are catching on to the fact that some students "note taking" consists of facebook, email, or internet games. Sad for those of us who actually stay true to Microsoft Word, but what can you do? So we ended up in the Galeria Kaufhof where a college ruled spiral just did not exist. Apparently they use either our equivalent to wide ruled paper or graph paper. Go figure. I settled on the cheapest thing I found that would provide decent note taking space and I walked away with a red spiral that contained 80 sheets of graphing paper. Any guesses on the cost of such an item? Try 2,75 euros! And don't forget, 1 Euro = 1.58 US dollars. This paper better be magical or something!

In the end, this silly spiral ended up costing me more than a few euros. While I was wondering around the department store, I lost my mittens =( Yes it is true. My favorite, multi-colored, striped mittens with removable flap for ultimate finger dexterity have vanished! At some point they wiggled loose from my messenger bag and are now probably being enjoyed by some random German who has way too many gloves at home and won't fully appreciate the exposable thumb feature. I am telling you, these mittens were amazing! There is still hope though! Tomorrow I will return to this mitten snatching store and see if by chance someone was nice enough to turn then in the lost and found. That is my prayer for tonight; that my mittens will not be gone forever!!! I miss them already =( Sad, I know. But if you had cool mittens like these, you would be as sad as I am.


On a happier note, dinner tonight was amazing! I am luck to have a host lady who loves to cook! And she cooks well! The first few nights were pretty rocky because the menu only contained vegetables cooked many different ways. And, well, let's just say that I have never really been big on those green "food" items. I always feel like a rabbit crunching on some grass. I mean, why not just go eat a tree. When I eat a lot of green veggies I always have to stop my urge to grab the next tree limb and see if it tastes the same. Especially broccoli! It even looks like mini trees! Ohh boy. But tonight we had spaghetti with meat! I can handle that =) She always has great presentation too! Check it out...


This is the salad with dessert. Ohh boy the salad was actually amazing!


Spaghetti!!!


And here is a picture of my host lady! She is really nice =)
Not to great at the whole speaking English thing, but she is getting better each day!

Ohh and last night she had 5 ladies over. They all spoke a little English which made it fun for me. They would have this long conversation in German and every once in a while the lady sitting next to me would lean over and tell me what the conversation was about. Try following a conversation where you have not even the slightest idea as to what is being said and then having to act like you are interested. Haha. It was crazy! Here is how the evening went. These ladies meet every two months and they all bring food. Then they sit down, have some wine, eat the food, and talk about everything! And when I say they eat food, I mean they EAT food! I think there about 6 different courses served. I missed the first two because I was taking a nap. When I woke up, my host lady saw my light on and offered for me to join them. When I got there they were on their 3rd table full of goodies. It was one of two dessert times that evening. Then they cleared the deserts from the table. They filled the table with cheeses and sauerkraut (yuck). Cleared the table again and filled it with a big dish of lasagna (which by the way means pasta, mushrooms, spinach, and cheese). They cleared the table again for some form of chicken legs in a soup with spinach and some red stuff. Cleared the table for the last time and wrapped up the evening with more dessert. It was insane. These ladies could eat!

At some point in the evening I was offered cake. Of course the cake was out of sight so I had no clue what I was getting myself into. Not thinking, I responded yes, to which I was served a big hunk of chocolate cake! And if you know me, then you know I dislike chocolate very very very much!!! But as she was serving it to me she explained how it was the specialty of one of the ladies there. And I looked over to see that lady's face shinning with happiness because she was about to see how this silly American kid would like her cake. I mean, what do you do? So I did the unthinkable. For the first time in my LIFE, I ate that whole piece of chocolate cake. With a smile too! =) And I am happy to report that she was overjoyed that I "liked" her cake. Ohh man!


Here it is. The cake I will never forget!

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!