Everyone's In

Kelly, Christine, Michelle, Jon, Dustin and Tyler are in Southern California, Erin is in Missouri, Christina is in Germany with her brother and Sarah is in New York with her friends and family. Despite flight cancellations, everyone is now at their intended destinations. I'll try to organize some more pictures but it's taking awhile.
For now, remember that we're having a recap night Sunday, July 5 at LBAC. I'll include more information later.
Thanks for all the prayers! It was a great trip and God really used your support.

Home, For the Most Part

The dinner Friday night was really nice. There were about 200 people there as a celebration of the end of the school year and to thank us for the project. We had a cool variety of French salads and desserts as it was a pot luck. The theme was cowboys so it was fun to see a whole bunch of French kids line dance (which was choreographed) wearing cowboy hats and whatever Western garb they could conjure. Saying goodbye was difficult but it was a cool evening. The next morning we arrived at the school at 6am to get to the airport in Zurich. It's about an hour.five drive which was a nice goodbye to the land as well. We all checked in and then said goodbye to Erin, Matt and Christina. Erin's flight was a few hours before ours and Christina is staying for the summer. With a couple hours to kill, the rest of the crew hopped on a train into the city. It was cool sorta being on our own as a group and trying to navigate our way through the German signs ourselves. We did some shopping, ate a bit and saw a couple streets of the city before heading back on the train. Michelle, Jon and I got a great opportunity to talk to the girl sitting next to us for about ten minutes about what we were doing there, what we were about, and how Christianity was poorly represented to Europe in times past. We got to share with her for just a minute, but I could tell she was very interested by the conversation. Her name is Doris and if you get the opportunity, pray for her as well. In Zurich that day there was a big recycling/protect the earth gathering. It was so strange! Everywhere we went we were handed free stuff with little tags on it explaining why recycling is necessary, complete with clever quotes. It looks like Green Peace has taken on Christian evangelism tactics. It was sad to see a complete turn-around in values; not that recycling isn't important or is bad, but they have totally lost the Creator in admiration for creation. It actually is what started my conversation with the girl next to us though. I had a bottle of lotion with one of those German tags so I asked her if she spoke English and could translate. She did know English very well (Swiss people-at least in touristy Zurich-speak excellent English) and after translating asked where we were from and such. It was cool that God used the recycling witness for his own witness.
The flight went well as we chased the sun. We arrived tired and sore to LAX.
HOWEVER, Sarah who had left the day before left me a message and got stuck in Washington. I didn't even think any of her flights went there-I don't know if it's DC or state-so I was shocked to hear that. She unfortunately missed the wedding she missed the appreciation dinner/hoedown for. She had to stay over night there and will hopefully be back home soon, but I really don't know. Erin is also stuck in Philadelphia and is in a hotel for the night. I really don't know what's going on; bad weather I guess. I'm trying to look it up but I'm not sure what the issue is. So please pray for their safe returns home and for their energy levels-we're all exhausted and hurting and somewhat overwhelmed-I can't imagine how they're feeling. I'll update this once I find out how they're doing.

Pictures and LAST DAY!

Well, today is our last day! We finished most of the work and now just have to put some stuff back together. Tonight we're having an appreciation dinner so it'll be cool to hear more about the school and what this project did. As for yesterday, we were invited to the home of Laticia and Cedric (the guys' host family) for dinner. They have an incredible apartment; it was a lot of fun. Their friend Agla (sp?) made us a meal from his home country-the Congo! It was an amazing meal and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Laticia decorated the apartment for the occasion and had some African worship music playing. After the meal, we gathered 'round for some worship through music. They played us songs with a few jembes (sp?) and we sang the worship songs we knew with a guitar and harmonica. It was really cool!

Yesterday was miserably hot and sunny and today is really rainy. It's funny how God has given us relief from whatever weather we are having right when we need it. We finished all our work now and are getting ready for the evening's events. We said goodbye to Sarah this morning who is now in the air probably just reaching the Atlantic now. Pray for safe travels for her and for the rest of us. We're going early in the morning so this is our last night. Au revoir!

Thursday!!

I didn't blog the last couple days because there wasn't a whole lot to say. Now there's lots. Tuesday we had a whole array of jobs. We finished with the tractor and are working on mixing concrete and laying foundation for a bathroom and making a walkway the distance of the building. We also finished powerwashing the roof and several other jobs. It's been pretty crazy but in a good way. Monday night was the last night we really had to spend with our host families. It was really nice just to spend time with them and enjoy their company. We came back the next day well-rested for a full day's work. After work, someone from the school brought in food from their restaurant. We had a nice lasagna and then prepared to hike up the hill. Unfortunately there was a miscommunication wiht their host family, so Christina and Erin went back with her. Laticia joined us on our hike. She is so fun and youthful! I really had fun talkign with her. The hike was awesome and beautiful and full of all sorts of nonsense, from black cherry-made blood to zombie videos to scaring each other in tunnels to fallen trees to throwing stuff at each other to putting bugs on each other. I'll put up pictures when I can. It was a lot of fun and had an incredible view of all of our town and the next towns for miles. We could see France, Germany and Switzerland from there!
Wednesday we had off. We went to a castle which was super neat. On the way David, one of the missionaries, helped drive so I got to pick his brain on all sorts of things about missions and the culture in Europe. I was glad for a detour that took us about 20 km out of the way and through a pretty little village just so I would get more of a chance to talk to him. The castle was awesome and I'll put up pictures of that as well. We found a toad that made its way into Michelle's hood but other than that we weren't too nonsensical. From there we went to Colmar, France. It's a beautiful city in Alsace. We had lunch there-Alsacian pizza-Tart Flombee (SP?)-basically a tortilla with cream cheese and then onions and bacon on top. We walked around for a few hours there looking through tourist shops and the church. Tyler and David went through an incredible museum and Christina and Erin took a boat tour. Following that, we went to Kandern, Germany (where the Black Forest Academy is) and went to the Greater Europe Mission headquarters. There we met some missionaries and another EuroTeam. We looked through Matt's office and locked somone in a bathroom for a few minutes. Then we went to Matt's house where his wife, Esther, with the help of Erin and Christina, had prepared for us a lovely meal. There was all sorts of nonsense going on there and we all ate so much we thought we might explode. We drove home through the beautiful countryside with a beautiful sunset over the hills. This morning we're continuing lots of work, which I should get back to. I'll put up pictures later!

New Week, New Blog

Saturday we were given good news-we're renting a tractor to complete the trenches! That really helped us as far as morale goes and we were able to get a good amount of work done. I got really sunburnt from being on the roof all day and everyone was pretty sore and sick of the heat, but otherwise work went well. Afterwards we went to town for our first kebabs. People in France are shocked to hear that we don't have kebabs in America. They're Turkish sandwiches that are similar to corn beef I guess but they pull it all off one piece of rotisserie. Alysha Sbitity, a girl our age from my host family, joined us. We appreciated her help ordering and even more her company. What was cool about that evening is that to get from the school to the restaurant we broke into groups and took different routes. We did a prayer walk and just prayed aloud for the people and places we were passing as a small group. That was really cool-praying aloud with no shame (mostly because nobody could understand us) was really different but awesome. When we came across people that looked easy to talk to, we would. We asked them questions about Christianity in the area. Tyler, Erin and I arrived at the meeting spot pretty late because we ended up talking to three groups of people. The first was an elderly lady who spoke English well enough but could hardly understand us. After a lot of digging and misunderstanding each other, she said she was a Catholic and she thinks religion is necessary for young people to learn good character but that you didn't need it as you got older. She said she is distant from Catholicism. When we asked if we could pray for her she looked shocked and asked why we wanted to do that. We explained a little and she asked for prayer for her family. We did that after saying goodbye. We approached a group of three elderly men who spoke no English whatsoever. We didn't really get much across except that two of them were Italian (which we didn't realize until after we tried all the French phrases we knew and then recognized some Spanish-like words) and one was from Algiers. When he smiled at us his dentures fell down a little bit. They were an awesome group of men but we didn't get to witness to them at all. Finally we talked and walked with these two French women. They said about the same thing about being raised Catholic but not going to church anymore. Everyone kept trying to point us to a concert held at the Dominican church. We were a little depressed that this beautiful building that once hosted worship now is a fancy community center. I hope that those who go to it are somehow reminded of the original intentions for the building and consider the God it was built to honor. We prayed for those women. They asked for prayer for their jobs and for their husbands. I got the impression that they were divorced or else had broken marriages. The language barrier (and etiquette) made it difficult to ask those questions but we prayed for them. They were really polite and friendly. If you remember to pray for them, their names were Anna and Gabby. Other groups had similar experiences. Altogether, it was an awesome evening. It was late by the time we finished eating (though it was still totally light out) so we decided to postpone our hike up the hill.

Each of us spent yesterday with our respective host families. It was nice because we all had different experiences. Coming together the next day was a lot of fun-we all had stories to share of our time. They boys all went to a charismatic church with their host family. It was really absurd and they were all stretched when considering their church tradition compared with this one. That was followed by a very strange lunch-hard boiled eggs and vegetables floating in clear, plain gelatin. They went on a hike up a hill after that. Christina and Erin went to a Mennonite church and then had a really nice lunch complete with delicious sausages. That gave them a good avenue to speak with their unbelieving host mother. They went to a mideval walled city after that which was cool for them. Christine and Sarah went to the church Michelle and I attended last week. They really liked the message which was translated for them by their hosts. They had a large lunch afterwards and then went to Vosges, France to see the WWI trenches. They were totally amazed by that and even brought back some bits of barbed wire and shrapnel. They had the opportunity to crawl through some tunnels used during the war. Michelle and I went to Europa Park, a large theme park in Germany. We went with our host family (British Christians), their family (British Muslims) and their friends (French Muslims). It was quite the multi-cultural experience. The park was fun and a lot different than Disneyland. It was a good day for all of us. Today we rented a tractor (HOORAY!) to do the rest of the trench. That's been fun for people to try out. It's been raining pretty hard all day but it just stopped but that hasn't been much of a hindrance for us to work. Matt's wife and daughter arrived today to see all that's going on.