Last Days Part 2

Today was our last day on campus.  It was ok.  Alyssa and I went out sharing together.  The first girl we talked with was really open and willing to talk until we mentioned Jesus.  She said she was forced to go to church and the priest never explained why we shouldn't do certain things.  I tried to empathize and tell her that if she were to look, the rules really made sense.  She ultimately was kind of closed to the idea of Jesus, even from a historical sense (she was a history student).  The next two people we went to talk with didn't want to talk with us; it's kind of understandable, lots of students are taking exams this week and the exam is their whole grade.  The next person we talked with tried to argue that science would eventually prove everything and we had no need for God.  Alyssa really carried that conversation.  She is going to grad school for biology and chem, so she really knows the sciences and held her own against this guy.  The only thing I contributed besides prayer was when he said that he didn't believe in God because he couldn't see Him or hear Him, I said that you couldn't see the wind or hear it but it was still there.  I wanted to take the route that just because you can't see something or hear a tangible voice doesn't mean it isn't there, but I didn't do a very good job of explaining and he wasn't that interested.  The conversation ended shortly after that.  Alyssa and I talked about things that we can learn from that convo, and one of the things we both said that we needed to keep in mind is that we can't convince anyone, but we need to try and get them to think.  Overall, I think that we did our best to have a discussion with this guy, but ultimately he didn't want to discuss it with us.

Tonight for bible study, we went to Wahalla (we have gone there for all of our bible study meetings).  We just concluded our study on Colossians.  I really got a lot out of this study.  I read it a few days before we left and I didn't get much out of it besides the big things that everyone seems to get out of it.  I really feel like this is a book that I can discuss and share incredibly well now.  I really would like to take this kind of understanding and have it for all of the books of the Bible.  I think it would really help me live a life that is much more pleasing to God, because at the end of the day that's all that matters.  I think I've grown to the point where that's the one thing I desire more than anything is the dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.  It's kind of like that dcTalk song, "Day by Day".  Day by day, I want to see the Lord more clearly, to love Him more dearly, and to follow Him more nearly.

Tomorrow I leave for Switzerland.  I'm really excited.  We're going to be in Wengin, it's a small village up in the Alps.  It'll be about 20 degrees cooler there than here in Berlin.  I think it'll be really relaxing and pretty to look out and see mountains.  But with all the traveling, I don't know if I'll be able to update for a while.

Last Days Part 1

Today was a really good day.  Olivia and I played Let My Words Be Few.  I really love that song.  It's one of my favorite songs to sing.  I think playing with her has really helped my rhythm.  After worship, Jenna and I went out and shared together.  The lady we talked with at lunch was really nice and seemed interested to talk about spirituality but had to leave for work.  When we went back to the the Sud Mensa, we talked with a girl for five minutes but she didn't seem interested in knowing or desiring God.  That was a little sad, but each will come to God in their own time.  After that quick convo, we talked with this girl Constance.  She seemed so very interested in know God.  It was great.  We talked for about an hour and it all came so naturally.  She said she hoped to believe in heaven and that God existed but she wasn't convinced yet.  We told her that we can and that we were with Campues fuer Christus (its the German name for Crusade), and she said she thought we were because she met a guy a year ago who came up and shared the gospel with her and helped her reach the point she is at.  It was great to see that she still desired to know God and was talking with his guy.  We didn't talk for much longer since she had an exam but said she wanted our emails since we're leaving Wednesday.  It really made our day.

This evening, we went to the Olympic Stadium.  It was incredible to see the place where Jesse Owens won gold medals and where Hertha Berlin SC plays.  I sat there just in awe, realizing who am I to complain about grades or dating when a man such as Jesse Owens could stand there in persecution and perform; who am I to not rejoice daily and praise God at the top of my lunch since I do not have to worry about anything.  It was a very humbling experience.  

When we got back to the hostel, they were having a dance-party and Jenna, Alyssa, Kayla, and Austin convinced me to join them in dancing for a little bit.  It was fun.  I definitely do not enjoy dancing, but I really enjoy hanging out with them.  I'm going to be sad when I don't see those people daily when I come back to the states.  Along with Kenny and two of the male leaders, Micaiah and Doug, those are the people I'm closest to here.

Quiet Strength

This morning I went to Berlin Projekt instead of going to one of the concentration camps near here.  I didn't really want to go to one of the camp, so I decided to go to church.  I didn't really want to go there because Berlin Projekt is all in German with no translations so it's kind of hard for me to get much out of the services but everyone else was going so I went.  While I was there, I opened up my Quiet Strength devotional since I wanted to spend some time with the Lord and it was hard to get anything out of church.  I went to chapter 2 which is all about strength.  It was really refreshing because I have been feeling a little drained and weak.  There are a couple of guys on the trip that I am really trying to get to know and be close with but they keep shutting the door and its draining to try and keep pursuing them.  I told Austin this morning that I was drained from trying to pursue these two guys and that I didn't know if I could keep trying so hard without getting too drained, especially after pouring so much of myself out trying to keep things with Amy from ending like the way it did.  I don't think I'm still fully filled from all that.  But the thing that really was awesome and God's hand was about the idea of strength and where do we get our strength from and what makes us strong.  The book says that strength is "having the faith to look to God to change us and to obey Him in what He has called each of us to do ... It is revealed when your relationships get difficult and you want to just walk away."  It was great.  I know both of those sentences, but the great thing was I really felt like God was saying "keep going.  Trust in Me and this fire will burn hotter and deeper and it will spread to others.  Pursue."

I have talked about how Germany is secular and in my last post I mentioned that Berlin in particular is secular.  Being in the former East Germany, there are a lot more atheists here because of the communist regime.  But even the people who grew up in the church have an interesting view on faith and God.  A lot of pastors and priests here in Germany do not have much faith themselves.  It is an odd system here in Germany how the church works.  If a person registers as a Lutheran or a Catholic, part of the money is taxed directly to that church network so many pastors and priests go into that field because they know they can get a job and have an income.  As a result, a lot of people who to church don't really know or ever hear that Jesus is the way; all they know is that Jesus taught peace, love, etc and they think of being a Christian as a moral way to live but not a lifestyle.  It's a sad state of affairs.  It's not uncommon for people to say that they believe the bible is true and good but that Jesus isn't the son of God, even though he does claim it but they don't know it since they haven't read it or had someone tell them that.  I ask that whoever reads this post prays that their eyes will be opened to see the truth and that they be willing to learn more about Christ and desire to know Him.

Wittenburg

Today, some of us went to Wittenburg. It was really nice. Wittenburg is much more like the typical German village. Berlin is kind of like the New York of Germany, lots of diversity and a unique culture to it's self. We got to Wittenburg a little after noon and looked at some of the sites. It was kind of cool to see some of the places. The first place we saw was the house where Luther burned his excommunication papers. The town really places up Martin Luther. They have Luther Beer, Luther signs, Luther food. It's a little annoying but in a country so secular, it's nice to see them embrace some of their religious past. The town has little maps all around it with spots where Luther did something or lived. We saw his house. Originally it was an abbey for monks, which he was, before it became his family's home. After lunch, we went to the first Protestant church where Luther preached. It was a really beautiful and moving place. The entire building was made of stone so it was really nice and cool inside. The ceilings were huge arched vaults with ornate decorations on them. The pulpit was very ornate and decorative. It was not just a normal podium, but it had a spiral staircase that was connected to the wall before it branched out and became the pulpit. At the very back, Luther's 95 Theses were written in German. Where the original door that he nailed the original copy to was is a bronzed cast of his 95 Theses in German. We spent half an hour or so in the church itself praying, looking around, taking pictures before we climbed up the tower which overlooks the whole town. The climb up to the belltower was really long and hard. It was a very narrow spiral staircase that went up about four stories. Once we reached the top, we could see for miles and miles. Wittenburg is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, about 45 minutes away from Berlin. We could see the town, all the streets, and the fields surrounding Wittenburg. I could even see the wind turbines a couple of miles out from the town.

I actually read a few of Luther's Theses today. I always knew that Luther didn't want to break away from the church, just reform it but I don't think I realized how much he just wanted to change the salvation through works message. On our way there I read a little bit of his thrid treaty on freedom, and he was very adamant that it is salvation through grace alone, our works only reflect the change in spirit. Without him, the majority of our denominations would not exist. We may still have a salvation by works mindset and many people may never know that what matters is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I hope to read more of his writings, along with some from John Wessley and Oswald Chambers.

Visions, LSD, and Odd Things I've Heard

I haven't updated in a few days and I feel little bad about that.  I just haven't had a lot of time.  Tuesday after bible study, Doug, Patrick, and myself went to a tent by Victoria Park and watched the Dutch triumph over Uruguay.  Yesterday, I didn't have a great conversation but I did spend a lot of time in prayer and really loved it.  That night I watched Spain beat Germany.  A lot of people were really upset, I guess it's understandable I am in Germany.  The Netherlands are going to beat Spain.

Today, I had a pretty good quiet time.  I woke up really tired and had a sore neck.  I haven't been sleeping well the past couple of nights, but I only a few more days in the bed I'm in.  In-spite of that I spent a good hour with God, asking for Him to refresh me and keep me burning for Him.  On campus today, Alyssa and I went sharing.  The guy we sat down with at lunch didn't speak English, so we just talked between ourselves since I don't feel confident enough to share in German.  When we went back to the south part of campus, the first guy we spoke with was from South Carolina.  He grew up in the church but fell away when he saw how people, in this case priests, can use God to do bad things.  But before we could really share and let him know that we are not called to live like that, he had to leave.  The next person we talked with, was this girl Ulli.  She was really nice but had some traumatizing experiences.  She said that she lost her faith at age 10 when something horrible happened in her life and that she didn't think God was with her through it.  We tried to say that God was with you through that, and His heart broke when it happened and that He can heal you.  As we started to explain that, she moved into how God was neither good nor bad and that Allah, Buddha, Krisna, YHWH, etc are all the same god.  When we asked her about what she thought would happen in death, she said that she had vision where she was approaching death and her grandma said it wasn't time for her to die but when it was she would walk with her through a purgatory type of place seeing everyone she's ever met before deciding if she wants to move on to something else or relive life.  It was very odd.  She somehow moved into how Jesus is viewed the same in both Islam and Christianity.  We tried to discuss that with her but she had to leave for work.

The last guy we spoke with was very odd.  I'm not really sure what he believed other than helping the poor and communism.  He was very smart, just very odd.  He kept talking about LSD, I kind of think he was on some sort of drug.  He believed that people have auras and energy but that Christians have weaker auras than the rest of society because we spend so much time serving others and that we steal other people's energy.  It was all really weird.  I spent some of the time in prayer and then the rest trying to figure out a way we could get out of the conversation since it was moving no where and we were supposed to be back at the hostel at 4 but somehow Alyssa found a way to share the gospel with him.  She was like "ok, you know how you keep talking about how there is so much suffering in the world?  It's because of sin and then Jesus came and He is the way for us to get out of it.  He came so we can find redemption and hope.  He taught that we need a relationship with Him to heal ourselves and then we're supposed to help everyone else."  We ended up giving him one of our pages that have the churches we got on it with our emails.  I hope he emails us and goes to one of the churches and sees how much people care about this world because God cares about this world.

For dinner, Austin, Alyssa, Jenna, Kathy, Patrick Martin, Christina, and myself went to this Spanish place for dinner.  It was so good.  I forgot how much I like Paella.

Last Full Week

This is my last full week in Germany.  I'm excited and kind of sad.  I miss my friends and family and AC.  I'm not homesick but I miss seeing everyone but I felt the same way when I moved to Pittsburgh.  Today was pretty good.  Patrick and I went out together.  He was kind of drained and tired, but we kept going.  We talked with this couple of five or ten minutes but they didn't really want to talk much and weren't interested in learning about God.  Maybe it just wasn't their time.  After that we went back and prayed for 10 minutes or so before deciding to do solarium.  It went really well.  I haven't done solarium here and Patrick has never used it, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace for us.  The first girl we talked with was a pantheist and we didn't really get to share with her but she was our first so it was a good learning experience.  She is also the first pantheist I've met here.  Then these two people came up and asked what we were doing, so we told them and they said they wanted to be a part of this.  The girl was an agnostic from Hungary and the guy was some what spiritual from Germany but he left before we could ask him about his beliefs.  After the girl finished solarium, she asked us why we were doing this and we told her why and that we believed in God and shared a little bit of our faith but she didn't seem like she wanted to learn more.  

We decided to pack up and try our normal method for the last 45 minutes.  We talked with this guy who grew up in the church and stopped believing in God after he was confirmed but still thought there was a higher power.  He thought that God wouldn't be able to have a relationship with all of the people.  We explained to him that since God was all-powerful that He could do that.  Then he thought that maybe God would favor the person who sinned less or had less big sins, like lying over murder.  We explained to him that God didn't differentiate between sin and that He would always love us like a father loves his children.  The more we talked with him, the more he started to think and start to agree with what we were saying about God.  Unfortunately, we had to leave as things were starting to get really good but we got his email.  Hopefully we'll meet up with him before we leave and continue sharing.  It was just an awesome way for God to show up and refresh Patrick who was tired and drained; feeling like he wasn't making a difference for God.

Kenny and Patrick met a very interesting group of people today.  There is a group of "Christians" who are going around talking to people and teaching that the way to salvation is through works and not grace.  I understand that many people do see that passage in James as saying that we need to do works or else our faith is dead, but they teach that God merits us salvation based on how well we perform.  They also believe that there is God the Father and a God Mother.  They cite Revelation 21, where the Bride comes down, but they refused to tell Kenny more about this God Mother unless he agreed that he would follow their teachings and spread what they believed.  He said it was a very strange experience.

Friday

So Friday was a little different.  I woke up and had my quiet time at the Tiergarten with Doug.  It was nice.  I sat in the little garden by the coffeehouse I like.  At Humboldt, Micaiah and I went sharing before he discipled me.  We shared with this one guy and it was a pretty good conversation.  Micaiah is a really good evangelist, but it is his job.  The guy enjoyed talking with us and listening to our viewpoints.  This one guy next to us didn't like that we weren't speaking German so he asked if we thought we were condescending by sharing our faith and by not speaking in the guy's native language.  He just wanted to make us embarrassed and stop sharing.  Micaiah told him that was a valid point and that he would love to discuss that with him after our conversation with the guy in front of us ended but the guy just left.  After that conversation, we had discipleship which was pretty good.  We talked more about why I struggle with some of the things I struggle with and just ways to work on changing that.

That evening was mens time.  So we decided to play soccer.  I was so happy about that.  We went to this park where a local club has a few fields and played there.  If a club has fields they're usually turf unless they're pro.  It was kind of interesting but cool.  It was more like carpet that turf that I'm used to.  As we started to play a few German players at the club wanted to play with us, so we split them up among our two teams.  I started off playing behind the striker, but eventually I became the striker.  I forgot how much I love to play up front or from the middle.  We played for a couple of hours, and it took until right before we decided that we were going to stop playing soon that someone scored.  I hope we play again sometime before we leave.

Pergamum

Today was kind of hard.  Aaron and I went out sharing together.  Within 3 hours, we initiated 10 conversations, 7 of those conversations lasted 30 seconds, shared the gospel twice, and were blown off three times.  It was kind of a rough day for us.  The first time we shared the gospel was pretty good.  We shared it with two guys, and one of them seemed interested in possibly learning more about God and Christ but didn't speak up much because his friend is against the church.  All in all, it was a good conversation.  We gave them a flyer for this thing some of the stinters are speaking at on who Jesus actually is.

This evening, I went to see the Pergamum Museum.  It was incredible.  The archeologists excavated the steps, the alter and a couple of other things.  It was really incredible.  To sit where ancient worshipers sat and to see what they saw was great.  We also saw some other artifacts from Syria, Babylon, Arabia, and Islamic Spain.  Two of the coolest things was a room from Damascus, that had verses from Exodus and Deuteronomy written in Arabic on it.  The other really cool thing was another room brought back to Berlin that had Psalms in Arabic and pictures of Mary and the child Christ, the last supper, and Isaac's sacrifice.  That room also was from Damascus.  It was just really cool to see some of Biblical history in real life.  One of the guys Patrick Martin talked with today was a history major and said 90% of the New Testament was 100% reliable which was kind of cool.