March has Flown By

So This month has flown by and many things have happened. The month was kicked off with an event called Karneval.  There is something for everyone during Karneval and everyone participates from the tiniest of villages to the center of all the activities in Cologne. School is out from Thursday through Tuesday and many people have off work for part of that time. There are lots of fun and parties, but my favorite was the grandcentral in Cologne on Monday. There was a massive parade that lasted all day. There were floats from soccer teams, dance squads, people making political statements ended with the Prince of Karneval. I took many pictures and it was a great weekend.

BIJ is the Friday night youth service at the church. Here one night we took the opportunity to play wiffleball with the students inviting people to come into the church and enjoy a taste of baseball camp and learn a little bit about our youth service. We hope to continue this throughout the spring and inviting more and more students providing opportunities to contact and build relationships with those from outside the church.

Ralf and I also met with some of the other pastors within the local pastors network and offered the opportunity for any of the churches that would like to have a baseball event. We would bring all the equipment and teach the students quickly how to play and share about Christ with them in the mean time. My hope is that other churches will have interest in something like this so that in the future churches in this area could work together using baseball to reach this area for Christ.

Last Friday I spoke at BIJ about prayer. We talked about it and then we took time to pray over several issues. It was a good time together and I hope it challenged the students to make prayer more a part of their daily lives. I began giving the message in German and we switched back to using a translator after the vocabulary went a little beyond my knowledge. It has been great to see how different it is understanding and being able to speak in German.

Be praying for me in the next few months. Its crazy but I only have 3 months before baseball camp and after camp we head back to the states. In those 3 months I hope that things like this wiffleball/baseball events will catch on as something that is depended on. My wish is that as I am gone there will be a person to pick up the torch to carry on the ministry. More than that I pray that there is a ministry and desire that the Lord has created through my time here. I believe in the effectiveness of this ministry and I hope that you do too. Pray that both of those things the Lord will provide and that whoever might step up I could deliver the vision and ideas to be carried on.

Follow His Call