It's been quite a fall

Berlin Marathon
This marathon had about 40,000 runners from around the world. Steve Nelson, a missionary from the Ukraine, was an entrant and stayed with us before and after the marathon. Steve is in his 50's, but in great shape. This was his thirteenth marathon. Steve takes every opportunity to share his love for the Lord and this race was no exception.

Pastors Conference in Poland
We were in Poland for the first time at the beginning of October. The conference took place near the city of Krakow, which was the capital of Poland until the 1500's.
Steve and his wife also attended and we had dinner together in town on our free evening.


Bible Study
Lucy began a Beth Moore study group using the latest study, The Psalms of the Ascent.


The group consists of two singles and two marrieds. Countries represented are the states, Poland and Russia. But the language is, of course, English.
We are starting an English-speaking home group before Thanksgiving. It will have singles and married couples. Some of the Rock Berliners want to improve their English skills.

Baby

We wrote in our last Germanator email that Lucy was asked to be present at the birth of a Rock Berlin baby. Here is an introduction to Samuel Suwalla.

Busy Summer

END OF MAY
Wittenberg (officially named Lutherstadt Wittenberg) is the German city most associated with Martin Luther (1483-1546), leader of the German Reformation and was our destination with Pastor Dave when he visited for two weeks in May(he tries to make sure we are seeing some of Germany). We enjoyed our time with Dave as he encouraged us.

I was there previously in 1995 with my dad and relatives and WOW how it has changed. It has become very commercial. What that means is you can buy Luther beer, bread, candy and many other assorted things.

It was still neat to see a few of the old buildings, but I have to think that Martin Luther cannot be too pleased with what the town has become.

We had an interesting conversation with a restaraunt owner. He's a German who thinks Joe Cocker is the best guy in the world and who wants to travel Route 66 on a motorcycle. He sounds like many Americans:)

JUNE

June found Lucy in the states taking care of some family business and, of course, visiting with family, but only in Ohio.

While Lucy was gone, one of my cousins and a friend came to Berlin and stayed with me. It was very cool to be able have family visit after being gone for so many years.

Before Lucy left we were able to visit with a couple of Berliners, Guenther and Charlotte Grosche. We met them in Columbus, Ohio when they lived there for two years. We met them at a restaraunt and watched a European Cup game on a huge outdoor screen (the bigger screen was nearby:)

The European Cup was huge. It felt like being in Columbus on Buckeye football gameday. The people really enjoy their soccer, all day and ALL NIGHT! Germany made it to the finals, but lost to Spain.

JULY

In July, Lucy and I celebrated our first anniversary in Germany, number 21. We stayed in and Lucy cooked a special meal, and it was awesome to reflect on how God has worked in our lives. All praise goes to Him.

We had visitors in July, too. Drew Hage, a church planter working with the Amsterdam church, spent a few days with us so he could look around this incredible city.

Then on July 22, a missions team from our old church, Linworth Rd. Church, came for 10 days. It was great to see some old friends and to hear news from the "old country". Mike Faler kept the team of seven working from the morning into the evening. They witnessed in a local park and also downtown where young people congregate. They also helped RB celebrate our 5-year anniversary. We also gave the team a todo list for a little maintenance work around the church.

Daniel Goering visited RB for the anniversary celebration and shared the message with his son, John, and me. We talked about the past, the present, and the future of RB and Great Commission Europe.

Here is a picture of Daniel with one of our RB folks, Maria Larson.

Here are a few photos of the team. They shared breakfast together every morning before prayer and music worship.

Here is Tim Short with a couple of RBers. Below are Rhonda Hearon and Kelley Faler
sharing with women in the park.

Lucy finished her third language class in July. She is off until the end of August. Here is a photo of her classmates.

God is alive and working in Berlin, even though most of the people do not believe in Him.

As always, thank you for your prayer support. It is critical and it really is encouraging to know that people are bringing us before the Father. It is a blessing for us to pray for you too.

And, of course, we appreciate the financial support. The euro and the dollar are locked in a battle. You are supplying us with the means to stay in the spiritual battle that rages on here.

Volleyball Plus

Hello Germanators,

Hope you are all enjoying this time of the year as we move from spring into summer (at least here we are:). We have had two sessions of beach volleyball (BVB) so far. We play on Thursday evenings, but must go to the park between 3-4 p.m. to claim a spot. The park fills up quickly and it's neat to see people get to know one another a little over a game of volleyball.

The volleyball area is big enough for six nets to be erected.

Here's Pastor Dave telling me to get to work and stop posing for the camera. He showed us how to set up the home-made system.

Pastor Dave came back to Berlin to visit for two weeks. It was a great time as he encouraged us in our ministry. He was able to meet with almost all the leaders at Rock Berlin. Plus he led four leadership training sessions. Hopefully Dave was able to rest when he was back in Wisconsin.

This past weekend we had a baby dedication (Kindersegnung) which was done in German. The room was very warm and little Silas Schueler fell asleep during the ceremony.

Above is Silas with his parents, Uwe and Kathleen Schueler, and friend of the family and a RB leader, Stephi Goering. Silas is 5-6 months old.

As was done in Ohio, we charged the parents and the congregation to all be a part of Silas' spiritual growth. We prayed that one day Silas will give his life to the Savior, Jesus Christ.

Recently we participated in a Chinese tea ceremony that celebrated the birthday of one of the Rock Berliners, Christina Serafy.

Much of Germany still has stone sidewalks which require a fair amount of maintenance. Here are pictures of sidewalk work.

I hope the photos give you a flavor of what we are experiencing. We thank the Lord for directing us to Berlin and we are grateful for all the Germanators.

We continue to ask the Lord to make His will known, that everything we do would further His kingdom and bring Him glory.

We are being challenged and are growing in our walk with our Lord. Being a Christ follower means that we continue to desire to be more like Christ.

Thank you for your support in all its forms: prayer, financial, and messages of encouragement.

Dieter and Lucy

It's been a while:(

Times flies, even in Germany. We have been here six months already. We thank the Lord for His sovreignty in our lives and how He has blessed us during our time year. Thank you for your support.
It has been suggested that we include more photos, so here we go.

Language acquisition is moving along. What a challenge! Lucy is finishing one class and will begin another on May 7th. Lucy also works with a tandem partner whose name is Gesa.

Dieter practices German when he can, for example, with one of the RockBerliners who wants to improve her guitar playing.

Recently we learned that May 1st is a national holiday in Germany. We attended an outdoor church service in another part of Berlin. The service was attended by approximately 100 believers. It rained that morning, but when the service started the rain stopped and the band led us in worship music. There were short messages by people representing different Christian organizations in Berlin. It was exciting to hear what God is doing through groups like Teen Challenge. They are helping people get off the street and out of addictions.
Several of the Rock Berliners enjoyed the service and the activities.

The other side of the coin is that a few blocks away the Communists had a stage and made speeches for their cause.

We recently taught on prayer for three weeks. During that time we had an all-night prayer vigil at church which finished with a prayer breakfast. There seems to be food with every activity:)
Sorry, no pictures of this event.

We have shown you pictures of the room where we hold our services, but I would like to add one with our unique cross. It is a Bat signal type of cross.

That's enough pictures for this blog

Rock Berlin has encouraged outreach and a couple of our young moms have started ministering to pregnant singles. Lucy helps by caring for the children of the ministering moms.
In two weeks we will begin our volleyball ministry in a local park. This will be new for Lucy and I. This ministry provides opportunity to create relationships with non-believers in a relaxed atmosphere.

God is working at RB and we thank you for enabling us to take part.

Easter in Berlin

Another landmark, our first Easter in Berlin! It was the same awesome realization as in past years - God sent His Son to die a horrible death for every person and then Jesus defeated death by rising from the dead. He is risen! He is risen indeed! He is our hope for eternity and for now!

Before we celebrated Easter, we traveled to Bled, Slovenia for a Great Commission Europe staff retreat from March 16 to March 22. This retreat occurs yearly for spiritual, physical and emotional revival. For many of the people in the field, other missionaries have become their families and this retreat can be a family reunion. It is a very important time. We enjoyed the fellowship and wisdom of people who have been in the field for many years in countries such as Italy, Germany, Poland, Netherlands and the Ukraine. The organizers, Dave and Mindy Henson, did an incredible job serving approximately 50-60 missionaries, including a bunch of children.

While the adults were involved in seminars and teachings and music worship times, there was a staff of people to care for the younger children.

We were given plenty of free time to enjoy the beautiful surroundings; a lake, a castle, an island in the lake with a church, mountains, and much more. It was like looking at gorgeous postcards.

The food wasn't bad either. Fortunately, a two hour walk around the lake was enough to make room for the next delicious meal. Dieter also used some of the time to prepare his Easter message.




Here is the castle near the hotel.












Here are two missionaries by the lake with the church on the island in the background.






The weekend before this retreat we traveled to southern Germany to visit Dieter's relatives in two different locations. One visit was near Stuttgart and the second stop was in Singen on the border of Switzerland. This trip took about 8 hours via highspeed train, regional trains, local trains and buses. It was a traveling education with a few hiccups that stretched us. The relatives are still somewhat amazed that we moved to Germany, but they are pleased to have us this close.

We left on Thursday, March 6, and arrived back in Berlin on Monday, the 10th. We were not sure about being able to return to Berlin on time because of a threatened rail strike. Actually, before we left, the local streetcars, some trains and buses went on strike with the national trains threatening to strike. We thank the Lord that the strike was averted and we traveled back without delays.



Here is everybody except Lucy from the visit near
Stuttgart. The key person is on the right, one of Dieter's three
aunts.






We'll include more pics in future blogs.

This past Saturday was Lucy's birthday and it was a working birthday. We arrived in Berlin after the staff retreat on Saturday, about 1 p.m. Lucy immediately went shopping to prepare for the potluck after the Easter service. She arrived at church before the service to help with food prep. At the end of the service everyone joined in to sing Happy Birthday to Lucy and another person. Then she helped with the potluck, serving and cleaning, until we arrived back at the apartment around 11 p.m. We stayed up until 1 a.m. getting ready for Easter Sunday. The alarm went off at 4 a.m. because we had a sunrise service at 5:45 a.m. Then, off to church to prepare for an 8 a.m. breakfast for 13 people. At ten, it was back to the apartment to prepare for a 1 p.m. dinner for four of the singles from church. Whew! Sunday night was spent Skyping with family. But we are home today because the Monday after Easter is a holiday in Germany.

The two Easter services were well attended, which was a pleasant surprise because most Germans travel to be with family for Easter. It was very cool to have 9 people attend the sunrise service at 5:45 a.m. in the cold and snow. We prayed, sang and had a short (very short) message.

Thank you for your part in making this first Easter in Berlin very special.
He is risen, He is risen indeed!

Feburary

It has been a month since we posted a blog and much has happened. Unfortunately, the majority of the pics were deleted from our camera. Sorry.

Since our last posting, the Lennanders have returned to the states and now we are the only old-timers left:)

Lucy has a couple of days left to her first German language class. She is sighing with relief. She starts class again at the end of March. Dieter continues to work on German by having conversations, but has also started using a German study Bible and is reading a mystery in German. He is not teaching in German yet, but recently prayed in German during the service.

Lucy hosted a prayer breakfast at RB to kick off the Easter season. Many of our RB people are participating in 40 days of fasting and prayer for Germany.

A couples group started up on Feb. 10 and looks like it will be a lot of fun. The group is going through a marriage course. Our first meeting had an ice breaker where the husbands and wives were tested in their knowledge of each other. The results confirmed the need for this group:)

Lucy and eight other women went bowling on Feb. 15. We are still amazed how big bowling is in Germany. You need reservations for a lane. They had a great time of fellowship, but it must (not really:) be noted that Lucy had the best score. You rock Lucy!

Dieter went to Cologne for an existing leaders huddle (ELH) in Feb. Twelve men representing Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain met at Daniel Goerings home for a weekend of meetings to encourage each other, discuss raising new leaders and to talk about the future of Great Commission Europe (GCE). It was great to learn from men that have been ministering in Europe for many years. Picture below:

We did some modeling in Feb. too. The hairdresser that kept the Lennanders looking stylish had cut our hair one time before Feb. But in Feb. Ramona asked us if we would allow her to cut our hair for a potential new employer. So we went and were beautified, well Lucy was. Bottom line, Ramona got the job!

In Feb. we also had our first music worship night for 2008. It was fun with three people each leading part of the evening.

This past weekend we traveled to the city of Cottbus, which is very close to the Polish border. One of the musicians at RB invited us to help provide music for a group of people from Camaroon. The Methodist church has a service for them once per month. The folks from Camaroon are in Cottbus studying at the university and unfortunately some of the German citizens look down on them, especially the skinheads. They love to sing and sounded great and it was good to provide encouragement for them.

We are planning to visit some relatives on the weekend of March 7. They live in southern Germany on the border of Switzerland in a town called Singen. It will be an eight hour plus ride on a train. We will have the opportunity to see more of Germany. Hopefully we will have some pictures to share with you when be blog again.

We are looking forward to our first Easter in Berlin, which will also be Lucy's birthday - March 22nd. We praise God for His love and care and especially for Jesus.

Awaken

The title does not mean we have been sleeping, not enough time for that.

We've been back for over a week from the conference called Awaken. We mentioned it in our last blog. It was a Great Commission Europe conference that meets every two years. The last Awaken was held in Amsterdam, a very busy, exciting city. This Awaken took place in the middle of nowhere about an hour south of Cologne. It is a very peaceful, serene setting that 200 people converged upon. The conference went from Jan. 2-6 and six countries were represented, Spain, Italy, Poland, Holland, Ukraine and Germany. The main teaching sessions were in English and were translated into five languages, Spanish, Italian, Polish, German and Russian. The music worship was mainly in English led by a band from Amsterdam. They also did some worship songs in Spanish, Russian, Polish, Dutch and German. It was fun trying to follow the Russian:)

The organizers did a great job providing opportunities for fun and fellowship to accompany the great teachings. There was a coffeehouse every evening and each one had different musical offerings and even poetry and skits. Dieter and two guys had a jam session one night. There was a bonfire where marshmallows and bread were put on sticks; no, not a loaf of bread. Just enough bread to sprinkle sugar or cinammon over. One day was a free day and about 75% of the people took a train into Cologne to go sight seeing. Lucy went along and visited the Lindt chocolate factory.
There was also highspeed internet for the really desperate people who needed some outside contact.

Our Rock Berlin church sent 18 people to Awaken. Three guys were worried about having nothing to do out in the woods and one was concerned about the lack of city noise to lull him to sleep. To their surprise, everyone had a great time interacting with people from different countries speaking different languages but serving the same God.

Some great stories came out of this conference and we'll share one with you. It's about Irina from Kiev, Ukraine. She spoke Russian and English, but no German. She was separated from her traveling companions in Cologne, but was able to get on the right train to Pracht, the village near where the conference was held. Irina had traveled over 20 hours and had spent a lot of money to get this far. She was still not sure she would be able to find the conference center so she asked God to provide people to help her complete the trip.

When the Rock Berlin group entered the train for the final leg of the journey we saw a lot of empty seats, but we decided to sit in the same area as Irina. We spoke in English and German and tried to make a connection with Irina. After a bit she pulled a book out of her bag and ten minutes later Dieter saw that it was a Bible (his eyes aren't what they used to be). We then began speaking about the conference and eventually Irina asked if we were traveling to Awaken. She began praising God when we told her we were and she told us we were the answer to her prayer. It was a great introduction to the conference. After Awaken Irina traveled back to Berlin with a few of our people who came by car. She stayed one night with of our leaders and even toured the city for half a day. Irina was praising the Lord the entire time. What a blessing for everyone.

The conference theme was Waking Up to the God of the Story. Are we willing to join God in the story He has for each of us?
The second session was called Waking Up to War. We are in a spiritual battle and our enemy is coming after us. Waking up to God is waking up to war.
Then in the last couple of sessions we were encouraged to Go Change the World and to Go Out and Glorify God by obeying the Great Commission.
There is much more, but you can hear the teachings in English at http://www.gceweb.org/.

We have included some pictures below to help you imagine the blessing that Awaken was to 200 people from different parts of Europe who came together to worship our heavenly Father. Thank you for your part in this adventure.