Herbst in Deutschland

Please sit tight and get comfortable because there's a lot to catch up on. :)

#1 Impact Day

During our annual "Impact Day", we served the German community by baking 400 "American Style" snicker doodle cookies and delivering them to a local senior home.

Frau Hinton was especially proud of her students who practiced their German and made cards for the residents.

You can watch the a video of the entire school during Impact day here:

Post by Black Forest Academy.

#2 Fall Party

This year's theme was "Apps" (5 years ago that theme would not have existed) :)

Middle School Staff as "Fruit Ninjas":

#3 Trunk or Treat

Our trunk was Narnia themed:

#4 Herbstmesse (Fall Festival)

Annual school trip to Basel, Switzerland for Herbstmesse:

Some of my coworkers :)

#5 Musical

This year the musical was combined with middle school and high school students and they performed one of my all time favorites: High School Musical! They did awesome!

Video of students performing "We're All In This Together":

#6 French/German Rap Battle

The French class made the mistake of challenging the German class to a rap battle. They owned it.

Happy Fall!

On the Move

Walked next to Laura as we rounded the rehab ward. Thanking God for His healing hand :)

Experiential Learning Week

This week I had the privilege of leading 6th graders in a week outside of the classroom. Activities included serving the elementary school, visiting roman ruins, cooking and etiquette lessons, outdoor education, and a visit to an electricity museum. Here are some pictures of our week.

And to top it off, we had an our end of the year small group sleep over! :)

Spring Party: Disney themed

Mother's Day

Praising God for this "bomb mom" right here!

I am so thankful for my mom and the sacrifices she made for me and my 3 siblings. No one else has taught me more about loving and being generous to others as much as she has. :) I am so happy to celebrate her today!

I am also excited to celebrate another kid of mom:

Divorce is messy, hard, and it hurts everyone involved. I am so happy to say that what was intended for harm, God turned into something beautiful! I am also praising God for my "beauty" mom today!

Happy Mother's day!

Best Selfie You Will Ever See

My lovely friend Laura taking some steps! :)

Never Once

Two weeks ago, we celebrated Laura’s 25th birthday at the rehabilitation center of Basel, Switzerland. I could not think of any other word to describe this night other than holy. His presence was in that place as we worshipped and praised Him. Laura sang the loudest and it was hard to hold back tears when you heard her sweet voice singing the chorus of Matt Redman’s song “Never Once”:

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did you leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Now as the weeks go by, I cling very tightly to these three lines as I face the joy and heartaches of this journey with Laura. These past weeks have been some of hardest I have experienced in my life. I was not prepared for the tremendous guilt I would feel when I started teaching again and going on with “normal” life. I was not prepared to see an empty room with boxes where I would normally come to laugh and talk. I am reminded of her absence every day and once a week visits don’t seem like enough. Maybe the hardest thing is not having answers and not knowing what the outcome of all this will be.

But I am thankful for the unknowns because they make me cling tighter to my “knowns” and remember back to that night:

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did you leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Thank you so much for your continued prayer for Laura and keep checking in with through her updates!

http://posthope.org/laurasjourney

Alles Gute zum Valentinstag!

Fun day in Frau Hinton's class watching the Olympics in German, (did you know they have a ton of golds this year?) making valentines, (they all giggled when they saw the list of endearing names in German which included gummi bear, honeybee, little mouse), and hearing a speaker from mk2mk. This is an organization of adult missionary kids (mk) who reach out to love on other mks.

Happy Valentine's day!