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!

Nothing could quite prepare me for this time of year. Once December hit, it was like everything transformed overnight.

Nothing could escape it, no street,

house,

balcony,

window,

door,

pond?

fountain?

....you get what I mean :)

This is also an exciting time of the year for students. Christmas Banquet was a much anticipated event for high school students. Here are some fun pictures from the evening.

On December 6th, we celebrated St. Nikolaus day, which is the day St. Nikolaus comes and fills your shoes with goodies.

Then we had an awesome winter concert. It was so fun to see these talented students in action!

and the last week of school, we had our small group Christmas party

Now that school is out, Kandern seems a bit empty with all the students scattered around the world for Christmas. Now that I have some time to process, I've realized this semester has been incredible! I thank you all so much that I can be here! Have a Merry Christmas!

October Highlights

It's officially fall here in Germany and you know what that means...

Time for fall parties! (space theme)

Fall Festivals in Basel! (aka who can ram their teachers the hardest on bumper cars?)

Time for fall sports!

Time for Operation Christmas Child packing! (we lead the best small group!)

Visiting some incredible friends!

And as always, having fun learning German in Frau Hinton's classroom

Happy Fall!

Spiritual Emphasis Weak/Impact Day

I thought Homecoming and Courtwarming were high-energy weeks, but I was definitely wrong!

Spiritual Emphasis Week definitely blew those out of the water. This a week at BFA that is an incredible time of year for students. Every morning we gathered together in the Chapel with the High School students for worship and speakers. Students are challenged and encouraged in their faith and there was so much energy as they entered into our classrooms and the discussions just spilled over. It was really great to experience!

The Middle Schoolers were interviewed one morning and asked what they enjoy about Spiritual Emphasis week and I was so excited to get a video of them. Some of their answers blew me away, but sorry it's not the best quality





They didn't just say it with words, but I saw it in action as we served the community on "Impact Day" where we were split into groups and given different jobs throughout the community.

My group spent the first half of the morning cleaning classrooms and windows in the High School building.

Here is a picture of my group working really hard! :)

After lunch, we went to a local nursing home and brought some "amerikanisch" snicker doodles and peanut butter cookies.
But what happened next was incredible! As they were giving out cookies, the middle schoolers were talking, smiling, and putting their arms around the people there. They played "Gymnastik" with them and sang to them. Most of them did not know a lot of German, but this did not bother them.

The joy from the students serving and the joy on the people there was amazing. I just kept thinking "We've got to do this again!"

Here is a picture of the students who did "Gymnastik" with 99 almost 100 year old woman

Group picture

Mayor of Kandern thanking everyone for their hard work

At the end of the week we hiked from Sitzenkirch to Kandern

met some llamas

When we arrived in Kandern, we had a BBQ waiting for the students. It was a great time to wind down, worship, and talk about all the things we had learned that week.

It was such an amazing week of just bonding with the students and challenging them in their faith. I am so thankful I was able to be apart it!