Micah's Adventures in K-Town and Other Foreign Locations

During the past few weeks I have really hit my stride here in Germany as I have gotten into a nice rhythm of work each week. I feel especially appreciated and needed at the elementary school, where this past week so many teachers were sick that four grades stayed home and I was given the opportunity to be a secretary rather than a teacher's aide for one day. A cool story from this time was that a few weeks ago the FSJ program took a trip to Augsburg, Bayern to visit a prayer house there. For the Americans among my audience, I suppose this area of Germany would be known as Bavaria. The prayer house there has prayer ongoing 24/7. There is often live music played during the day, and it was an incredibly enriching experience for me and the members of my team. Afterwards I even had a good conversation with Mike about some stuff that I felt God had laid on my heart during this time. We have gotten slightly bigger as well, here at the Elim-Zentrum, as we have some guests staying with ...

The last few weeks have been filled with a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. We had a prayer week, where every evening there was a prayer gathering at a different church in the city. I really enjoyed the opportunity to gather with other believers and just pray for the city and for persecuted Christians around the world. We also prayed a lot for ProChrist, an event that is currently going on. ProChrist is an evangelical outreach event to which many nonbelievers and those questioning whether perhaps God is real have been invited to attend. Each evening a band plays music and there is a speaker who speaks on a specific theme. We are meeting in the Fruchthalle, a large music hall in the middle of Kaiserslautern, and it has been packed the last two evenings. This is something that I have been praying a lot about as it approached, and I would appreciate any prayers by the readership of this blog for the success of ProChrist and for those who may come to faith through our efforts. Our...

I may have not updated in a little while, I apologize to the reading audience for that. On the other hand, nobody felt obligated to keep up with my life while they were celebrating Christmas stuff. I think I have done the general public a favor. At any rate, here are a few pictures and stories about the two weeks before Christmas. My actual activities over the Christmas break are classified and will not be shared in detail here at the present point or likely at any other time. If a reader would care to know and wants to contact me about that time, I may share some information.  For our after school homework help and game time, we decided to have a little bit of a party. Here we decorated and consumed many delicious cookies. With the help of a few friends, we mixed, cut out, cooked, and decorated quite a large number of Christmas treats. I believe that the children all had a blast with the hands on activity, and it was a good way to go out with a bang for the last sess...

I am rather poor at this whole posting a blog on time thing. My audience should just expect these to come when they come, and likely at irregular intervals, and the only sure thing is that they will likely never be when expected. That being said, I have had quite an interesting last few weeks. Thanksgiving was a huge success, with around 60 people coming to celebrate. Unfortunately I didn't get my interview that day, but I was able to go to the school the Tuesday afterward and was asked to begin working three days a week beginning that Wednesday. So now, rather than having hardly anything to do some days of the week, I have the pleasure of waking up soon after 6 in the morning to take a bus and go work with the elementary school, that is, classes 1 through 4. Thursdays I will also be helping out with an after school homework help program in which there are several English-speaking students. I am really excited about my new work, and I have already seen the ways in which I have be...

I know it's been a little bit longer since I last posted than I meant for it to be, but hopefully my audience can forgive me. I knew that we had a church retreat coming up, and I thought it might afford an opportunity to really talk about something a little bit more exciting than my ordinary day to day life. Every Friday we have a believer's course called Al Masira here in the Elim-Zentrum, and a week and more ago, during this course we, the church, invited along any participants who would be interested in coming to our church retreat. Given that it was an invitation, they were invited along free of charge to a weekend of bible study, worship, games, and authentic German food. But I get ahead of myself. Five adults and one girl from the course participants piled into our big white church van Friday evening, and it was off to the retreat. Friday night we had dinner and then a session. There were four such sessions, each including a time of worship as well as approximately an...

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 ...

Wow, a lot has happened since I last posted, and I think that I'm starting to really get adjusted to the idea of living in Germany. From purchasing and cooking my own food to fixing problems with the dishwasher, I've begun to adjust and get used to a little bit of the routine here. A huge part of German culture is obviously soccer, and there are tons of people who go absolutely crazy over it. I don't really care that much, but seeing the defending World Cup champions play is a pretty cool opportunity, so I went along with the hype and watched as Germany beat Azerbaijan 5-1. This was a really fun time and an opportunity to see the German sports culture and to spend an evening doing something with my team.  This was the view at the beginning of the game. Germans don't express a ton of patriotic pride often, but at soccer games they always go all out. There was even a small marching band to the right side of the huge central display. After each goal, the fans lifte...