I'm in Switzerland!

After our second week in Hamburg, we went to Bautzen, Germany for a week. We stayed in a church (and had to pack up our stuff every morning…) and were part of their ministries. On Sunday, the church celebrated its birthday and we were blessed to be a part of the service. We did a short drama, which I was part of, and some of the guys lead worship. For the rest of the week, we had no lectures and instead had an emphasis on ministry and preparing for outreach. We had great times of intercession and worship. One morning I helped lead worship, which is something I had never done before. I played the piano and it was really great and is something I want to do more of!

On Thursday, I went with five other people to a children’s program. There were children up to the age of eleven and they have a program filled with songs, stories, puppet shows, crafts and snack time. It was very difficult at first, because I couldn’t communicate very well with the kids. But at the end there was playtime and I was able to play with some of the children. It was a lot of fun and I hope we will be able to do more ministries like this in the future!

 On Friday morning, we left to go back to the base in Herrnhut. Our bus didn’t leave for Switzerland until Monday morning and we would have the entire weekend to relax before beginning the next phase.  On Friday, the base was also having a time of worship and they invited us to join them.  At first, I wasn’t very excited about coming back to Herrnhut, but overall the weekend was very good. We all had mattresses and we all could shower whenever we wanted!

Then on Monday, we were all awake at 6 a.m. to get ready to leave for Switzerland! We had our own bus and it was so wonderful to not have to worry about switching trains and buses constantly and to be able to put our luggage under the bus and not worry about it. We got to the church around 7:30 – 12 hours after we left – and got settled into our rooms. The church is amazing….we have all have mattresses, closets for our stuff, showers every other day, and internet access…so we all feel like we are living in luxury!

Here we will be continuing our lectures and this week we are learning about the Holy Spirit. For ministry, we are helping an organization with church planting, so I’m excited about that!

Keep praying us! We leave for outreach next month and we have a LOT of planning and preparing that needs to be done on top of everything we are doing now!

Hamburg!

We left for Hamburg at about nine o’clock Sunday morning (two Sunday’s ago….) and arrived at the church around ten o’clock in the evening, so it was a long day of traveling!

We started back up with our teaching and ministry…the first few days we learned about Hamburg and the different things we will encounter while we are here. We were told specifically about the prostitution and human trafficking problems here in Hamburg.

The first day of ministry we went out in groups of five and asked God where we were supposed to go. My group went into the city and started off by doing prayer walking. There were many homeless people so we bought food for a couple of them and talked and prayed over them. Towards the end of our time, we continued to pray over Hamburg and as we were walking we heard a woman playing the piano in the street. We went over to her, listening to her play. She spoke English so we were able to talk to her and she asked if any of us play and I told her I did. She let me play a song and then she played some more of her songs. She writes her own music and she sang for us. The words to her song were “there will always be a light that shines for you” and it was very beautiful! She told us that she believed in God and we were able to pray for her. It was a good ending to the night!

The next night we went to the Red Light District. We interceded while a few of the ministry leaders went in and talked to some of the prostitutes. We also worshipped in the streets and brought God’s light to the area. I could feel the spiritual warfare and could sense the darkness…but as we prayed and worshipped, I could feel God’s presence and His light spreading over us and the people around us.

Over the weekend I went with a group of people to explore the city of Hamburg and we went on a boat ride across the harbor. Then we went to the City Hall (which is beautiful!) and we just walked around, going into a few shops and taking a lot of pictures. Later in the day, we went to the Dome, which reminded me of the State Fair. There were rides, games, deep fried food, music…we just walked around and enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a fun (and VERY cold) day!

This week has been very similar to last week…we are doing prostitution ministry again and I’m very excited to see what God will do! Then on tomorrow we are going to be leaving again...it’s going to be another busy weekend!