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The Church Has a New Home! |
Prayer Requests:
Martins
Please pray for the Martin family as they move back to the United States and try to readjust to a culture they've been away from for three and a half years. This is a time of intense prayer on their behalf as they search for a new home, settle into a new business and help Hannah integrate into the American school system. Though research shows this will be a difficult time we favor the optimistic view that God will have them in His hand and be with them throughout. On the flip side we ask that you pray for the church here as we adjust to to their absence.
Church Family
The church family here in Dresden is searching for ways to reach out to the community we are now in, as well as trying to maintain the friends and contacts we already have. There is also much self-evaluation occuring within the group and we pray that God will continue to show us his ways--the best ways--in our growth as a family. He has already taught us--this congregation--so much.
English Bible Study
Along with new outreach our Monday night English bible study group has decided to "start anew" with new advertising, new studies and a website in order to draw new interest to the group. We will be discussing this more in our next newsletter, but please keep this small, but very close-knit, group in your prayers.
We Thank You
We cannot thank you enough for staying interested in our work here in Dresden. Many of you have written kind words to us and still keep us updated on life in the States and throughout the church, which we appreciate deeply. A special heartfelt thank you this month as well to our sponsoring church, Northwest Church of Christ, in St. Petersburg, FL for your most generous Christmas gift!
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of th Holy Spirit."
--Romans 15:13
Are You A Missionary?
Are you a missionary interested in updating your newsletter or website format? Steve will still be working in this area when he's back in the States, so stay tuned for more information about his new business. He designed our newsletter and is happy to help other missionaries with theirs.
Links:
But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generations.
--Psalm 33:11
God's Perfect Plan
We will be sharing many new things in this newsletter--first time experiences and also fresh, new starts. The word, "New," for us is starting to mean "a shift in our pre-conceived ideas of what the future will hold." If we had known some of what the future had in store for us, we wonder if we would have chosen Moses' words of "please send someone else" or Isaiah's words of "here am I, send me!" We hope that it would have been the latter! As missionaries we have a natural love of making plans for how things should be "woven"--our specific design in mind, of course. Then a thread gets cut, or what we view as a "mistake" happens in our design. We can certainly sympathize with the Jews of Jesus' time when we see a change that was unexpected and/or seems like a complete diversion from our view of
how things should be working. However, with time, we see God's undeniable hand at work--especially over the last year. Of course, some of the wonderful things we're seeing now have only come after months and months of hard work, stress, uncertainty and lots of prayer. With other things we're still wondering when we're going to recognize the thread of God's plan so that we can pick it up and start weaving again. However, we have not come this far without trusting that He has us all in His hand and that we are indeed woven into His plan--His most perfect plan.
The Martins Head Home
As some of you may already have heard, our co-workers and friends here in Dresden, the Martin family, are heading home at the end of January. They will be sorely missed as they have become an integral part of the work and the lives of the Christians here in Dresden. However, we understand their reasons for moving back to the States and we support them wholeheartedly in their decision. If you would like more information about their move and its origins, feel free to visit their family website, Martin Life.
Ladies' and Men's Retreats
Ladies' Retreat in Filzmoos, Austria
This year Dresden was responsible for the German-speaking ladies retreat in Filzmoos, Austria, so I was quite busy with Kristi, Marion and Janine for most of 2008 with organization and planning! The retreat went really well and we in Dresden benefitted from our time together over the months by getting to know each other on a more personal level. This year I even branched out into unknown territory and gave a lecture in German myself! I had a lot of support from the ladies here and for that I offer them my heartfelt thanks. The theme this year was "Vater Unser: Unsere Beziehung zu Gott durch sein Gebet" or "The Lord's Prayer: our relationship to God through his prayer." --Brianna
Men's Retreat in
The men in Saxony were responsible for organizing the men's retreat in Germany this year and that meant that men from the churches in Dresden, Chemnitz, Oelsnitz and Zwickau all coordinated together to make it a very spiritually rewarding and fulfilling time. It's held annually at the end of September and the theme this year was "Um seines Namens Willen" or "For His Names Sake
" and discussed topics from the books 1, 2, and 3 John. We had an especially difficult task as the location changed for the first time in many years. There were many logistical questions which needed to be addressed and we know that God helped make everything run smoothly. The fellowship as usual was unbelievable and provided me, at least, with a great boost of spiritual energy. I am already looking forward to next year's retreat in September. --Randy
The Church Has a New Home!
The church in Dreden has been looking for a new place to meet for close to a year now as we slowly discovered that the cost in our old place was too high for us to maintain. In November, we found a place that seemed to fit our needs. After much negotiation the Lord blessed us with a new location on Tieckstraße 10, 01099 Dresden, Germany
. For those who are interested in checking it out on a satellite photo, just click on the address. With the move to a new and better location, the church is now discussing ways to improve our responsibility as a church family, as well as our public outreach. Even our meeting time for worship, which has been in the afternoon/evening for about the last ten years, has been moved to a morning time in order to appeal to the church's growing number of contacts that are families. Everyone is intent on using the new location to further God's work in whatever way possible. The group was also intent on resolving a financial and technical issue of registering our small church with the government. As of now, we are official! As Christians, we know it is unnecessary; as a legitimate church group in the public eye it is, however, beneficial. We hope that this
also increases our credibility and dissuades some skeptics from believing that we are merely a sect. Our sister in Christ, Annette, worked very hard to make us "legit" before moving day came. We are very thankful to her and to the whole church for pitching in and getting everything done with the holidays already underway. But we are especially thankful to the Father for the learning experiences we have had over the last several months that have helped us to grow as a church family.
Parenting Circle
Our English Play Group
has generated a wonderful number of contacts over the last two and a half years. A few of the families who attend have been with us for at least two years and have become good friends of ours. After hearing about an on-going parenting discussion in the Chemnitz church, about an hour away, we decided to "feel out" the families we know best to see if they would be interested in being part of a parenting discussion group centered on Christian-based principles. We met for the first time last month with a wonderful response. The group was very interested in the topic and participated very openly in every aspect of discussion. Randy gave an overview of the three books that we will be using (outside of the bible) and asked the group to contribute their ideas of which discussion topics would be helpful for the group. We will be starting this month
with the German translation of The Five Love Languages For Children. We agreed to meet at our house one Friday a month and also maintain discussion questions in between via email. Our goal with this group is to provide a stable and welcoming parenting group for young parents as well as a comfortable environment to discuss biblical principles. We are praying that this group will eventually provoke individuals within the group to become more interested in the bible as a way of life.
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