Things didn't start out so smoothly because it took me about an hour to get in contact with the people who were picking me up. Apparently they were just outside the train car waiting to pick me up, however, they were on the opposite end of a very long train, which started off a very long chain of apparently barely missing one another. I would to see the surveillance cameras as we walked right by one another over and over again.
Finally, I called information to try to page my party, but they told me I had to go up to the airport meeting area to do so, so I headed that way. I looked through the airport meeting areas, but still didn't see anyone whom I thought was supposed to meet me. Then I found the information counter and asked to page my party. She asked me if I was Jeremy Stephenson, and then she told me that a young man had been trying to page me and kept checking in to see if she had heard from me. She didn't know what his name was, and I had been expecting a woman to pick me up, so she paged the "Party looking for Jeremy Stephenson." Still nobody showed for a few minutes, but finally a big guy named Steve with a gray beard walked up and asked if I was the person they were looking for.
This is Steve.
After we finally got everybody together - I got to see a couple of the group members miss one another going out through one door while another came in through another at the exact same time, twice - we loaded in the van and headed from the airport in Frankfurt to the church in Landau where we met up with the rest of the team who had come in earlier in the day.
After a brief orientation, we took a very interesting tour of the city of Landau, and I got to know my new teammates, most of whom came from the same church in Colorado, so they already knew eachother.
If you look closely at the picture below, you can see that all of the saints have been beheaded. There is an interesting story that goes with it, but I don't know what it is.
Then I went home with my hosts, the Kalf Family, and Jeff, another member of the team who was also going to be staying with the family. We had a great meal - one of the many, many we were served over the 10 days - and got to know eachother a little better.
The next morning was Easter Sunday. We went to church and got to meet all of the amazing people we would be working with over the next week. They were all very friendly and welcomed us warmly, and they even got us someone to interpret during the message.
After church, Jeff and I kicked the soccer ball around with some of the kids and got the bonding started for the week.
After lunch that afternoon we went to see the ruins of Madenburg Castle and did a little more bonding as a team.
Then we headed back to the church for a special meal called Raclette where you cook your own food of potatoes, meats, cheeses, and vegetables in little dishes. It was really good - you can't go wrong with meat and cheese, and some people even used the vegetables :).
Monday we spent the morning hiking up a hill called Kalmit.
Here is our whole team.
That evening the high school kids, or, "teenies" as they call him, came and watched the film, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, upon which the the English program was based.
The next morning we spent the day preparing our rooms and our lesson plans and transforming the auditorium into a scene of winter in Narnia.This is me and my team-teacher, Jamie, getting our room ready for class.
Then, that evening, we opened with some get-to-know-you games and had our first class sessions.
On Wednesday after we had spent the morning preparing, a group of us went into the city of Landau and passed out stacks of fliers for a new program the church was going to be starting. It is called "Church Re-loaded, and its aim is to change the negative mindset that most people in Germany have about church. We were afraid that people would not be open to allowing us to leave the fliers, but we prayed, and because of God's intervention we were able to place stacks of fliers in a number of different businesses in the area - including some that were very unlikely to accept them.
That evening the kids came again, and we opened with silent pantomime about sin. One of the ladies from the group walked up to a chair which had just been painted and had a sign on it that said, "Do Not Touch!" She then proceeded to touch it and got stuck. Then another person and I tried to help her get off and ended up getting stuck ourselves. Then someone came up and talked about sin and how some things seem good and fun at first, but then they end up trapping and hurting us.
One of the things we taught in class was types of clothing. In this game, the kids worked in teams to dress up one of their members. Then they had to explain to us what the person was wearing.
Even the guys were good sports with this one.
On Thursday morning we started the day by painting part of the church, a project they had been hoping to get done for a while. Then we spent the rest of the day preparing for the evening classes.
That evening we did another skit about how when we try to fit in with worldly things like the popular crowd, the boyfriend, etc, they tend to take pieces of our heart and break them. This is a picture of Christ picking up the broken pieces of a young girl's heart.
Friday we got to go out in the rain to prayer-walk a city not too far from Landau where, with God's provision, they are planning to plant a new church in about a year.
Then we had our last night of classes.
The skit Friday evening was about how God created man's hands to do good things like create and help, but man used them to destroy and to nail him on the cross. I got to play God/Jesus, mostly because of my hair at the moment.
Saturday was very rainy, but we went to Heidelberg Castle anyway. It was strange to see it looming over the little town, and it was a beautiful place to walk around.
Here I am next to a really, really big keg of wine.
Here is the potluck celebration with the kids. Apparently Germans do potlucks even better than Baptists - there was a ton of food!
Some of the parents even joined in the songs and did the motions.
Here I am with my group of kids after they received their certificates.
Thank you to all of you who prayed for me leading up to the trip and while I was in Germany. God truly did bless the entire event, and the church in Germany is excited about what they feel God started through our ministry there.
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