Okay, so I am going to try to do a quick and brief update of
something that actually really happened back in the middle of November. Yeah…I know I’m quite behind. I should just forget about it and not
post about it, but I will go crazy knowing that I never posted anything about
it. So well, here it is. So what is this thing that I did that I
just have to update you on? Well,
we went to Germany! Exciting
right?! So, here’s the thing. You all may or may not know that well,
I guess you could say that I have a slight problem with over packing. Why am I telling you this? Well, the airline that we flew with has
an extremely small weight limit and size limit for luggage for flying with
them. We are only allowed one
small carry-on bag with a small personal item. So, you remember those old school backpacks that we thought
were the cool thing to have back in late elementary school…like the rolly
ones? Yeah those backpacks are
pushing the size limit. We were
going for a week… An entire week, and I had to fit all of my clothing in that
size of bag! Winter clothing! Don’t stress too much. I will tell you now instead of worrying
you. I was able to do it, and did
not have to take anything out when I got to the airport. Impressive, I know! :)
Becca, how did you get there? Very good question!
I am glad you asked! Well, the
journey started off leaving our houses in Arbury (Cambridge) in a rush, as
always. We all hurried along to
the bus stop a short distance from our house. We caught the city bus to the train station, where we all
boarded a train to head to the Stansted Airport. After we all arrived at the airport, we went through
security and hurried on to our plane.
Let me take a quick side note and tell you about this plane. We flew with Ryan Air. It was quite the adventure. It almost reminded me of a toy
plane. Like a plastic plane that
kids play with. It was quite
humorous! But it was great because
it was cheap!
After a short plane ride over to Germany, we landed in
Berlin. (The small Berlin airport) When I say small, I mean really small! This started our 12-13 hour layover. (I forget how long it was if it was 12
or 13 hours to be honest) Fortunately,
it was an overnight layover, so after hanging out in the airport for a bit,
then going on an adventure outside the streets surrounding the airport at like
1:00 in the morning, we settled down on some comfortable tile, airport floor,
and “slept”.
Photo by Sarah Wickstrom
After throwing our stuff in our flat, and quickly getting
our bearings, we started our walk over to the main base. It was a beautiful walk through town,
then down “Slow Death” (That is seriously the name of the path, its funny!)
into the woods and through the woods then around to the beautiful
building! It is an amazing
base! So yeah. Enough about the boring details. That week in Germany was amazing. Oh, I guess I should tell you that we
were there to join in with that base with their week’s teaching. We had an awesome speaker, Dan
Baumann. He is a YWAMer who has a
crazy life story. He was arrested
in Iran, and spent 9 weeks in prison having two death sentences on his life. During that time, he kept his faith and
continued to turn to the Lord. Seriously,
you should read his book! I cannot
do his story justice here, so I am not even going to try. But, I’ll but a link to his site at the
end so you can look it up for yourself.
Anyway, he taught on friendship with God. He really challenged us to stop trying
so hard to make our relationship with God something more difficult than it has
to be. God wants to spend time
with us and He wants to talk to us.
We make it out to be something so hard to attain that since we are
looking so hard for the crazy miraculousness (yes that is now a word) of God,
we miss the everyday miraculousness of Him. We miss the simple ways that He is trying to communicate
with us. We need to stop striving
to hear God in the way that we believe we should hear God. He is with us always, so we will hear
from Him always.
Something he
encouraged us to do is to every morning just start of by saying, “Hey God! Good morning!” He also shared with us that God uses
ordinary people in ordinary situations on ordinary days. He started off most stories by saying,
“It was just an ordinary day…”
This reminds us that this is still real life. Even though we are setting out to live the “different” life
of being missionaries, God still uses the ordinary times, not just the times
when we are doing crazy adventurous things. He does things in our lives a lot of times when we least
expect it. Its pretty darn cool! I also loved Dan’s teaching because it
was so down to earth. He was so
real in his teaching. It was
really refreshing to have the realness.
View from my window
"Slow Death"
Pretty Building on the walk to the base
Path to the Base
Walking to the base
Ahh I love architecture!
The "Castle" Aka the base
Morning walk to the base
Morning Psalms
Morning Worship
Danny's creeper pictures when I was having my quiet time
All of us right before we left to come home.
Photo by Danny Wickstrom
Another Worship time
Us on the tower looking out over the town
Class with Dan
Class with Dan
Awesome building up the street from our flat
Worship night
Class again
Me and my one-on-one, Bethany
town
My roomie and me outside our flat. We were on the second floor.
Love!
Dani and Me enjoying a cup of coffee at the YWAM caffee before heading home
Anyway, the week there was amazing! It was so cool to see the heart of that
base there! It was a much larger
base with over 100 people. Or at
least it seemed like over 100 people.
We also were able to learn the history of Herrnhut and how that is where
the Moravian movement started, and how revival bubbled out of that town. However, the week ended on a pretty sad
note. My roommate, and best friend
from the DTS, informed me that she was leaving the DTS that Monday. (She told me on Saturday) I knew she was contemplating it for a
little now, but I did not realize it was going to be that soon. So, I was semi-prepared, but it was
still very difficult. The whole
journey back, we stuck together like glue. We decided we were going to make the best out of the last
two days we had together. We
informed the rest of the DTS on Sunday.
The whole team was very supportive of her decision, but it was still a
very sad time.
The day she left was probably one of the hardest days I have
had on this DTS so far. My
roommate and I were really close.
You’re probably thinking, how close could two people get in just three
short months. I know it sounds
weird, but when you’re on a DTS, things are different. You get really really close with the
people on your team. You pretty
much become family. So, it was sad
having her go. I’m not going to
lie it was hard. However, the rest
of my team was really encouraging to me.
A lot of people just kept coming up to me just to give me a hug, which
was awesome! I love hugs! (The
whole love language thing… yeah touch is number one! Followed closely by quality time!) In the afternoon, Simon
came over with stuff to bake with and got me out of my funk and got me baking,
which was awesome! And let’s be
real, the cookies turned out amazing and were quite delicious! We were able to share them with some of
the team who were around. Then
Lukas came over, and the three of us hung out until dinner. It was nice and chill and a good way to
just relax and be with friends.
Side note. We ended up
looking up a lot of things on google earth. That thing is insane!
Kind of creepy, not going to lie, but cool! Check it out if you’ve never
looked at it before. The next day
we had to go back into our normal schedule, which was weird doing things
without my roommate, but well, I know God was there in it all because He
started giving me peace about things by the end of the week.
Later that week, was Thanksgiving week, which I already
blogged about, so yeah I know this was a really random, not that put together
little entry, but I just really wanted to get one done about Germany, so its
here now, so I can relax. Peace
out Y’all
Dan Baumann's Page
Dan Baumann's Page
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