Chapter 5, in which some stuff happens and I learn some other stuff and am bad at titles

When I first arrived in Kaiserslautern I was surprised by the size of the city and a little intimidated as to how I was supposed to find my way around. Recently, however, I've started to become more comfortable with this place and feeling more at home. This building in which I'm living is starting to feel like my home, but at the same time I'm realizing that nowhere on this earth is really going to be my home. I have a true home to look forward to someday.

Another encouraging thing is seeing people around town that I recognize. There's an Afghan man from Café International whom I've run into twice now in town, and it's really cool to see the way his face lights up at recognizing me, as I'm sure mine likely does too.

Let's see, an interesting story or two from the last few weeks?

This past Saturday we had a church cleaning day, and everyone came together and worked towards a common goal. It was quite a fun thing actually, talking and cleaning. That is, it was fun until someone decided that it would be a good idea to clean on top of the counters in the church kitchen. I don't know exactly why they needed to be cleaned, given that nobody ever sees them, but I dutifully climbed up onto a chair and began scrubbing ... and scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing. See, the nice brown tops of the cabinets actually weren't brown. They were white. Well, they were white after putting some elbow grease and time into it. Despite my misfortune with being assigned possibly the worst task, I still was able to really enjoy working together with the members of the small congregation that meets in the bottom of this building. Combined with the small group that meets on Tuesdays, I feel as if I'm really starting to connect with and get to know these people. They are a diverse group, but they share one extremely important attribute: they are passionate about Jesus.

A while ago I went with Johanna to meet one of the elderly people that she works with, a man named Cornelius. Cornelius loves playing chess, but he usually doesn't have anyone to play with. Johanna said that he taught her, but he lets her win and she thought he would enjoy playing me. So I went along, and we had a lot of fun talking and playing chess, and lo and behold, he beat me, but I feel I was able to give him somewhat of a run for his money and make his day a little bit less monotonous.

An exciting opportunity that might materialize for me is the possibility of working several mornings a week in a Christian school here in Kaiserslautern. I would appreciate prayers as this is not yet set in stone, but I think I would really enjoy the chance to do this and the change of schedule.

I am continually learning to be grateful for all of the blessings that I have in my life, and especially that I know where my next meal is coming from (even if I have to make it) and I know where I am going to lay my head at night. Sometimes I can be unsatisfied with my life and complain about little things, but when I take a step back, I realize how truly blessed I really am.

Some of my friends at the youth center! We built some pretty cool towers and they wanted to pose with them. It's always a joy getting to just play with some kids and be someone who is there for them and who they know cares about them.

This is an enormous church at Speyer, I believe it's known as the Dome of Speyer or something along those lines. On the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the church at Wittenberg, we had the day off, so we got to see some cool German architecture and an impressively large church.