Last Post from Germany

This will probably be my last post from Germany. Lauren is returning to the states tomorrow, and I shall stay here. :-(... but :-) cause I get 10 more days of Europe. It would be better if she were here to experience it with me though....

That also means I will not have easy access to a laptop to edit my pictures and post updates on my blog.

VBC will be updating our daily happenings on the VBC blog though, so if you want to know what we are doing as a group go here.

Musically Magical Wonder Land

First, some pictures of Auschwitz, somber, I know.

I could sit in the caourtyard of the school that we've been working at FOREVER! I had a cool conversation with a Catholic student at the school today. It was cool, cause he was certainly a God fearing catholic, not just a go through the motions catholic. We talked, as much his broken English, and my complete lack of Polish would allow, about the importance of evangilization. He asked why we chose to come to Poland, and I told him that is exactly why we came.

I got to listen to another Trombone quartet, and added about 7 Polish friends on Facebook, I am so multi cultural. totaly unrelated. But man, it has been great making a whole bunch of new international friends.

I have also gotten to connect with a lot of students that we brought with us from the German base. That has also been fun, they are a bunch of great people. Most of them are very new to their faith, or still unbelieveing. But they are here because they appreciate the love shown by all their leaders, and are curious about the source of that love. We have seen a couple kids make new decisions to allow God to be Lord of their lives, and a couple of them deciding to recommit to serving Him as well.

We have also really connected with the other leaders from the Bittburg base. Lauren has certainly been blessed by God recently by all the solid friends that she now has in her life here. I have been really blessed especially by Brent and Joe by the way that they love on their kids, which I have been able to see closer, since Deej and I are staying at there house.

Dan and I also got a chance to sit down with the Chaplain over lunch. It was a good opportuity to pick his brain about the difficulty of being a minister to the military life style. I was very encouraged by his heart for the Lord.

This post is SO extrememly scattered, but I will not appologize, that is how this week has been. Now here are some more pictures, the reason you all really come to this page any way. ;-)

Service

I have very limited time to post, so a quick little update. I now have my roles of leadership clarified on the trip. I am my sites photographer, the slide show coordinator, and the percussionist for musical worship. It is quite a lot, nd has been keeping me very busy, thus the lack of posting.

The work site we are at has been AMAZING! we are at a more upscale music school in Poland, I can't remember/wouldn't know how to spell the name of the town it is in. It is like a musically magical wonderland! But I have to run, more to come... with photos.

Poland

Internet coverage is pretty touch and go out here. I am now in Poland on an old military vacation location. We are staying in an old hotel, which is pretty sweet. Deej and I got our own room.

It has been a very surreal experience so far. We are here, in a foreign country, but aren't really getting any feel for the culture here yet. Hanging out with a bunch of American kids kinda strips the foreign feel from the whole experience. The weird thing is that there still is a very stark difference in the culture still. The difference between military and non military living is super strange.

It is also very strange cause I still am having a hard time figuring out my role in the ministry that is taking place this week. As far as I have gathered so far, we are doing a cross between Christian camp and an outreach trip to the people of Poland. My job has changed so many times that I feel very disorganized. But God is good, I have made some connections with a handful of the students here that Lauren is ministering to here. I even have had a handful of facebook friend requests, which is like the confirmation that we are indeed friends.

We went with Lauren to watch her girls play soccer. All the teams from Bittburg; Varsity and JV guys and girls; owned their competition. It was a good day. I had fun taking some pictures.

We then got on a bus for the 20 hr bus ride from Bittburg to where we are now staying in Poland. That wasn't as fun, but still a pretty good experience. We stopped at a McDonalds in the Czech Republick on the way, it was really weird. It looked just like McDonalds on the outside, but once we entered the building it felt like we were in some hip European coffee shop. Super strange.

Well, tomorrow is Catholic Mass time, followed by a trip to Auschwitz. I am not super pumped about going to Auschwitz, since I have seen Dachou already, and I don't have a great desire to go and see another place that was so evil. But my Lauren has never been to a concentration camp, and would like to see it for the historical importance of it, so I am going. I will have some pictures of that and the church probably to post tomorrow, but for now enjoy some pictures from our random adventures today and yesterday.

04.01-04.02

Today has been long, I suppose it has been two days really, but it has felt like a lot longer than that. There were a few exciting moments traveling. Through a miscommunication Deej and Lauren accidentally walked out of the security check point, so they had to go through security twice at SFO. That was funny. The connecting flight from Chicago Ohare to Frankfurt, so we had to sit a little longer than we wanted to, but it was alright. We still made it into Germany on time.

Lauren met us at the airport, and we had a fun little drive to Bittburg. We stopped of at a little town called Burnkastel, which was great. We only had a little while to walk around, but it was the perfect little quintessential German town.

After that we got to go to Dub’s soccer practice, she helps coach the high school girls team. Deej and and scrimmaged with them a little, our team one, which was cause for much celebration. After the practice they had a little BBQ that we were lucky enough to partake in. At the BBQ a fire extinguisher got knocked off the way and sprayed all over, filling the room with white powdery dust. It was incredibly funny.

We then hung out with some of the girls from the soccer team after going to the grocery store to buy some snaky wackies. It has been quite an epic beginning, and I trust that this is only the start of an amazing trip. Pray for us as seek to serve the Lord, and bring him honor.

Here are some picture to entertain.

I will be posting this tomorrow, since I do not have internet at the moment.