What a long, hard road it's been. Yet blessing upon blessing overflows.

Do you know there comes a time when you are so old you completely forgot you ever wrote a blog?  Ha!  Somehow I had a link to my blog up on my bookmarks bar and I accidentally clicked it and found dozens and dozens of entries over a ten year period and then nothing from the last five years.  Wow.  How our lives get complicated and busy and overrun with stuff and we just forget.  

So I'm writing this update pretty much for myself but if anyone is still out there then it's for you too.  

The last five years.  Well, this is it in a nutshell...

Came home in June of 2016.  Stayed at the Snow Mill Guest House for a month before returning to our home in Athens that had been rented the past 7 years.  Spent some time fixing things up, working for the Great Exchange and other volunteer organizations or ministries. Started all the paperwork for fostering, attended impact training, got finger printed and took first aid courses. Did tons of training.  

In March of 2017 Alan started his own business, "Rathbone Home Services" as a handyman, do it all sort'of business.  Our goal was to support our supporters that had so faithfully and diligently helped us when we were missionaries and I prayed we would never have to advertise Alan's services to the general public.  Due to their faithfulness and Alan's hard work and meticulous attention to getting everything just right for his customers the business took off well and God has blessed it.

Fast forward five years.  We just got about a 5 minute breather between the dreaded Covid pandemic and WWIII.  Russia is currently bearing down impossibly hard on the sovereign nation of Ukraine.  The world has implemented sanctions on Putin and his cronies but hundreds of thousands of innocents are being killed to satisfy Putin's one man glory seeking mission.  He wants the old Soviet Union back and he doesn't care who he kills to get it.  The stock market has plummeted. The country is more divided than ever and the churches are lean to empty.  It used to be that people would flock to churches during times of sickness and war but not anymore. I have to wonder why that is.  I mean we can see the devil is crazy busy at his work given he is in his last days but how can people survive in this day and time without any hope?  Without any community or instruction or life giving accountability and praise to the King of Kings?  He's the only one that can fix this mess our world is in, the mess our hearts are in.  

Alan's work has eased off due to covid and the war but like when God provided for Joseph  and all of Egypt with 7 years of plenty, so too has God provided above and beyond what we need to see us through this time of famine.  

In October of 2017 we took in our first foster sibling group which literally kicked our butt's.  The last day of May (incidentally, Chloe's 7th birthday), we joyfully reunited them with their mom who had become like a daughter to me.  Unfortunately it took over a year to realize that things were not nearly as good as we had hoped and we had allowed the kids to reenter her life WAY too soon.  She was not off the drugs and was desperate to attach herself to any man that would take her and so the life of the kids went from hopeful to disaster in three short years.  They missed more school than they attended, never went to the doctor or dentist after leaving us, were always left with their grandma who herself needed rehab and they did without food and housing and attention for way too long before God sent a judge to remove them from the bench again last May.  They returned back to us and on the 21st of this month will have been with us for the second time another 10 months.  

I am 51 one now and Alan is 58 and every day we wonder what in the world we were thinking becoming foster parents.  It is absolutely NOT for the faint at heart but we have learned from painful experience that God is greater than all and any of our shortcomings and He will provide for all our needs according to HIS riches in Heaven. Fostering has taught us so much about the sinfulness of our own hearts. You can read about that in the bible but until you are really taken out of your comfort zone with children from trauma and their drug addicted parents, you never really realize how bad your own heart is. Fostering like nothing else brought all of that to the surface for us. So if you really don't want to learn patience and forgiveness and self control and unselfishness than definitely DO not fill out the application to foster because one way or another God will teach you those things whether you really want to learn them or not.  

Of course it's not all bad.  We are doing something for eternity that actually matters.  Not many people chasing the mighty paycheck can say that.  I know it because I chased the mighty paycheck at Microsoft and Expedia and in the end it left me empty. I did meet some great people and have some good stories to tell but it wasn't kingdom work and so it was always found lacking. 

So here we are.  10 months into our second time fostering these four precious kids.  We love them and they drive us nuts. We want to give them the world and we want them to learn to go after it themselves and really succeed on their own merits. No matter what the bio mom has done to us in the past I still love her and still want the very best for her and I pray God will keep his hand on this family for forever.  I pray they will all give their lives to Jesus and become who God has called them to be and I pray this world will be just a little bit kinder to them than before so they will survive.  It is not an easy time in the world to be separated from your kids and trying to restart your life but if God wants it he will do it.

God willing in July we will head back to England to see Alan's mom and sister and our friends.  We also have a small cruise planned to see the fjord's of Norway for my 50th since our desired trip last year was impossible due to covid.  We made a trip together as a family to New Zealand back in 2018 with Teen Missions and met some really great teenagers - some of which are engaged or married and going on to missions full time in the next year.  It's great to see God continue to work in their lives.

My mom has suffered from Alzheimer's for the past 12 years but she fell in December of 2018 and again in January of 2019 and never recovered.  She has now been bed-ridden for the past three years and two months.  Absolutely heart breaking sadness and depression has overwhelmed our family during this time and yet we just keep going.  One day, one week, one month at a time.  

My dad continues his teaching on Monday nights to his faithful friends, attending his book club and tending to both his garden and his grandchildren.  Moms illness has of course been the most difficult for him and some days I'm sure he wonders how he can go on without her.  They have always been so in love.

Chloe is as precious as ever.  She's a 5th grader at Westminster, moved from Timothy Road Elementary due to our lack of confidence in the leadership in the Clarke county school district during Covid. We also wanted her to have a biblically based education, be really pushed academically to learn cursive writing and Latin and to do more memory work and Westminster has not disappointed.  She has participated in art competitions, safety patrol, quiz bowl, 4H and has had good success at each.  Outside of school she has taken a series of gymnastics and horseback riding classes, some tennis, weekly piano, has participated in the swim team each summer and has been the best big sister to our foster kids imaginable. In the past five years we've had our current set of kids twice, then two single boys one right after the other, then a brother sister pair and another sibling pair but that was just for respite.  We remember each child with such fondness and Chloe has made special memories with them all.  

We pray God will watch over them and their families while they are not with us and may God watch over us all as the current world events swirl about us.

We have killed him you and I - foster care, homelessness and putting things right

I woke today thinking about May being the national foster care month.

As most of you know, our family is marching toward the end goal of adopting from the foster care system.  And while we would love to take in every child that doesn't have a family capable or ready to look after them we can certainly recognize this as an impossibility.  Still, our adopting one or two feels like so little when we hear numbers like nearly 500,000 children in America were in the foster care system at one time in 2016.

500,000!?!

Where do numbers like this come from and is our job really just to deal with the increasing number of children who have been abused, neglected or abandoned or is there something more?
 
Should we focus on making their lives in foster care better or the transition from home to home easier?  Organizations like Together we rise, CASA, Downtown Ministries and Big Brother Big Sister help there

Should we foster or adopt them?  Agencies like DFCS, Bethany Christian Services, All God's Children, Lifeline or Covenant Care can assist.

What about supporting the families doing the fostering?  Chosen for Life and Promise686 have tried to address this in our area.

But even with all of this, doesn't there have to be something more?  Who is driving to the core of why this crisis exists to begin with?

I have been privileged to work with the homeless population for more than eight years in Chicago, Wales and here in Athens and every week I hear stories and struggle to truly help the clients that come in. They are there in great part to have their daily needs met and while giving food, clothing, showers and shelter is a good thing - what I've realized over the years is that like me, most need a complete overhaul down deep within them.  They've lost hope, given up and they struggle to think or plan clearly. They don't follow advice about anything beyond today, they refuse to keep appointments or commitments. They are addicted to anything that will numb their existence and make life a bit easier to cope with and unfortunately too many have been through so much they have lost touch with reality completely.  It can be very discouraging and frustrating.

What amazes me though is sometimes when I feel this way I open my devotional or my bible and God has something specific to say to me about that very thing.

Today in my Apologetics 101 devotional I read:

"For more than fifteen years, British physician and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple cared for the poorest of the poor in London's slums.  He observed in the process that the government's attempts to show compassion to the poor actually worsened their situations. Drunkenness, promiscuity, gluttony and abuse were common, along with all the health consequences you might expect from such lifestyles.  As Dalrymple tried to heal people's wounds, he asked, "Why do you live like this?" Stunningly, he concluded that these vulnerable individuals had simple embraced-- and practiced- the ideas about gender, sexual liberation, and meaning that were taught in theories at top universities and in the media. In his book Life at the Bottom, Dalrymple turns his acerbic wit on twentieth-century intellectuals who "sought to free our sexual relations of all social, contractual,  or moral obligations and meaning whatsoever, so that henceforth only raw sexual desire itself would count in our decision making." Dalrymple shows that the results of adopting these ideas "both literally and wholesale" are horrifying.  "If anyone wants to see what sexual relations are like, freed of contractual and social obligations, let him look at the chaos of the personal lives of the members of the underclass...  Here are abortions procured by abdominal kung fu; children who have children, in numbers unknown before the advent of chemical contraception and sex education; women abandoned by the father of their child
 a month before or a month after delivery; insensate jealousy, the reverse of the coin of general promiscuity, that results in the most hideous oppression and violence, serial stepfatherhood that leads to sexual and physical abuse of children on a mass scale, and every kind of loosening of the distinction between the sexual permissible and the impermissible."  

Around the world, culture after culture including our own has abandoned God and decided they know a better way.  Nietzsche in his book, "The Gay Science" writes the often quoted phrase of, "We have killed him - you and I" (1).  Not that he believed there was a God that we actually killed but that by killing the idea of God the majority would come in great part to a society of meaninglessness and despair.  Today we live relativistic lives where what is good for you is good for you and what is good for me is good for me. Say anything else and you are guilty of the worst crimes. The moral authority that determines what is right and wrong has been silenced and what has resulted are statistics like these -  500,000+ children waiting for their parents to love, care and take responsibility for them again. 

So as Christians, as members of the human race, what are we to do?  Stop volunteering, stop giving, stop speaking out?  Are we to stop trying to house and feed and encourage and love on these children that have been neglected?  Are we to abandon this world as hopeless, Godless and not worth our trouble?  Are we to hide away behind our books, jobs, TV's or phones trying to make everyone believe that at least in our homes everything is beautiful and fulfilling and life giving?  

No, I don't think so.  

I think first and foremost we get on our faces before the King of Kings and we plead and intercede for this world around us.  We need to pray for our children, our husbands and our families - for protection, for kindness and for love to reign supreme.  We need to pray for our churches that the masks would come off so that people could be real with each other about just how broken and in need of a Savior we truly are. We need to pray for those who aren't broken about their sins that God would bring them to a place of repentance and healing and we need to pray for our communities that real change would come from an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Finally we need to do everything we can to be the hands and feet of Jesus to a world that desperately needs Him up until the day He calls us home.

If you will pray and read your bible, God will show you what this means for you but as C.S. Lewis reminds us,  our job is not to shy away. Lewis says, "Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again."(2)

May we boldly proclaim the great news.  He is not dead, you have not killed him.  He is alive and He brings hope and peace and joy in the midst of sorrow to all who seek Him.

(1) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage, 1974), 181-182.

(2) C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 36-38.

A well traveled, experienced but lonely life

Moving back to Georgia has been my dream since I moved away seven and a half years ago to marry my now husband, Alan. A bit ironic as when I was in High School the very LAST thing I wanted was to live in Georgia.  I wanted to see the world, have adventures, be successful and accomplish my dreams. I enjoyed growing up here, loved my family and by all accounts had lots of friends through school but over the years I managed to lose touch with almost all of them.  Now that I'm back in the area, I realize that there were only a couple that I stuck with and that stuck with me during all those years away.  This is not to make anyone feel bad or for people to pity me.  I say this only because I am realizing a few things as I get older.

First - I have had a great life.  Not always easy nor what I would have wanted but a great one nevertheless. Second - I have lived in a lot of places and had three pretty succesful careers.  Third - I have lived in four different countries and away from Georgia longer than I have lived here.  And finally, I have come away from it all (again, family aside) with hardly any close friends.  Oddly I hardly ever felt lonely and my Facebook says I have over 400 friends so how can this be?

Well, I often ask myself that same question.  But when I look closer at the list, each and every person was with me during a special season in my life.  Maybe they came to see us in Germany on a team or we were a part of Teen Missions together.  I worked with a few in Wales or in Seattle, New York or Chicago.  We may have grown up together, gone to college or grad school or been part of a volunteer organization at the same time. Lots were close to me or were family during my first marriage and others got close when my marriage ended. Going to church helped me make friends in Seattle, Birkenhead, Heidelberg and Watkinsville and a great majority are my immediate and extended family. I sometimes contemplate de-friending those whom I haven't spoken to in years (or whom haven't spoken to me), but in a way, those "friends" are for me now more good memories than they are active presences in my life. They help me recall each piece of my journey and what God has brought me through and for that I am thankful.

Still, something for me is missing.

The New Yorker article I just read calls them "intimates".  Those who call you up just to say, "let's go for lunch" or "how are you really?" or "want to come hang out?" And other than my immediate family I can think of only three or four people that have fallen into this category for me over the years and because of distance, only a couple remain. This in a way makes me sad.  You see, a couple of months ago a girl I grew up with but wasn't close to, died.  She was a couple of years older than me and had many very close friends who have stood by her since she was a girl. Mostly they lived around her here in Watkinsville or Athens all these years and they continued their friendship until she passed.  Her funeral was very well attended.  She was loved.

I think it's hard to go through something like that or even hear about it and not think about your own life, your own health and wonder how many more years God will give you on the earth.  Death of someone you knew always makes you value your life more and want to make the most of every day. So I began to take toll of my life and ask myself, "do I have regrets?" (well yes, many)  "What would I change if I could?" (not much, even the regrets) "Is it too late for me to have close friends?" and "Would I even have the time it takes to really foster them?".

Maybe you've asked these questions or maybe you're too young to give them a second thought.  But I have learned, mostly the hard way, that the choices we make have lasting consequences. I chose to move away and to move often and I saw a lot of the world in doing so. I experienced things and places that most won't but I also missed out on a lot - things I enjoy like the yearly fall festivals and family get togethers, the Georgia football games and the various reunions.  I missed more weddings and funerals than I attended.  And in the end I missed out on having really deep, lasting friendships that could see you through decline and even death.  If notice of my upcoming High School reunion tells me anything it is that I have been away a very long time because I hardly remember anyone at all.

So what about you?  Did you also have a well traveled and experienced but lonely life or is it quite the opposite?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

A quick update from England... Brexit, UEFA and us

I've found myself questioning the wisdom of visiting England in June after having to turn on the heat to keep warm and watching it rain nearly every day since we arrived.  I packed shorts and Alan didn't bring a jacket or any long sleeve shirts so we feel a bit foolish in hindsight.  Still, the time so far has been rich and full of good memories.

So far we've focused on being with Alan's mum and family, hosting a birthday party for Chloe with all her aunts, uncles and cousins and having a couple of fun day outs exploring England and Wales. We attended a debrief with Pioneers in Bawtry and have met with nearly all of our supporters around the area. We got to visit with the pastor and see lots of our friends at our old sending church in Birkenhead and we've enjoyed attending church with Margaret in Chester each week at the old Queen's Street location where Alan was a former member.

God has truly provided for us and guided our steps in this move. We've met with friends who have fostered here in England and gotten some good advice from them. When asked about what exactly our jobs will be when we get home we have said we believe it to be multi-faceted at least for the foreseeable.  These things will be our focus:

1. Continue to be good parents to Chloe, get her registered into kindergarten and get involved in ministry with her school, our neighborhood, church and community.
2. Serve on staff with the Great Exchange through a secondment agreement with Pioneers for a period of two years. Our focus will be to engage in gospel conversations with students in Universities across the southeast through the use of spiritual background surveys. 
3. Continue to research and complete the home study required to adopt from the foster care system.
4. Convert the loft space in our home into at least one more bedroom and bath for the child(ren) we hope to adopt
5. Build a part-time maitenance/construction business for Alan to help fund extra costs associated with our adoption

What else God has planned beyond all of this is unclear but we are eager to get home and get started.

So what else?

Well, this last week our downtime included debating the Brexit "leave" vote and trying to decifer what it will mean for us if we ever want to return to Europe and watching a historic Wales football team and the more experienced German team reach the Semi-finals in the UEFA cup. We look forward to attending Bex and Josch's wedding in just a few days and meeting up with our team and housegroup members from Germany before flying out on the 12th to the states.

Here are some pictures of our visit thus far...

In other news...

• After nine months of waiting Nicole has finally been granted her residence visa for Germany. We are thankful that she can continue in ministry in Germany and are so appreciative to those of you who have prayed with us for this. 
• Peter and Tosca Nathan are spending two months in Australia before flying to Germany to lead the team as of August the 6th.  Their initial focus will be on language learning and on refugees.
• An intern from Oxford University will join the team in September.  She will live in the loft with Nicole and wants to work primarily with young people in the church to improve her German and with refugees.
• Many have asked about our needs for adopting and moving home.  Yes, we have experienced lots of extra costs from visa expenses to shipping charges already.  We will need to buy some second-hand furniture for our home when we return and we'll need to do some renovations and repairs on the house after having it rented for the last seven years.  We believe on initial estimates that the cost of converting the loft into another bedroom and bath will be at least $10,000 even with Alan doing 95% of the labor.  Finally, we believe our costs for the actual adoption will be minimal in comparison to an International or domestic infant adoption yet we do anticipate some costs associated. If you would like to help with any of these extra expenses, you can send monthly or one-time gifts to Pioneers on our behalf using our names and account number: 136050

Thank you for standing with us! - Mary, Alan and Chloe

We were made for another world...

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." C. S. Lewis

I look around the main train station in Heidelberg and I snap a picture because on one long bench sits a group of refugees with a drunken homeless man yelling at them as if his situation were their fault.  A little further down is a group of young men who at 11:30 in the morning are on at least their second beer (if they even stopped from the night before). They drink openly and laugh intermittently.  About one meter from them sits two college aged tourists with their backpacks contemplating where they will go next and on the end sits what appears to be a young professional eating a sandwich on her lunch break.  I wonder whether any of them know Jesus. I want to wander over and talk to them and tell them about the hope they could have if only they would put their trust in Him.  

I attend a Mother's group and talk to the ladies about my struggles - as a wife, as a mother, as a Christian. I am more open than usual and I wonder whether I should care more about what people will think or say about me. Still I feel I must be honest and transparent because I want to bring glory to God and not to myself. Me trying to cover up the fact that I struggle - daily (ok hourly) isn't helping me or anyone else.  I look at the tired, over-worked, under-appreciated women in the audience and I see one after the other crying. I am not along in my struggles.  Do they have hope?  

Some days I feel like doing as little as possible just to get through the day. Some days I work so hard  that when I finally lie down my back and feet convulse in pain.  Most days it's just the day in and day out grind of living in a place (Earth) and in a body that makes life difficult, painful, exhausting and frustrating.  I long for something more. I was made for another world.  

I am not the same person I was when I left for England all these years ago.  If there is anything God has taught me through being a wife and mama, it is my utter and complete need for Jesus. I am a sinful, hurtful, prideful, easily angered and selfish person. I need Jesus and His Holy Spirit to heal the broken places in my life and to fill me with hope, joy and peace... DAILY!

When it comes down to it, Jesus is the only thing that satisfies the longings of my heart and He is the only thing that will satisfy the longings of YOUR heart too.  He made you.  He made you to desire a relationshp with Him. If you feel like day in and day out you are just going through the motions and you want something more out of this life - focus on Christ.  Ask him to transform you and to give you hope.  He is faithful.  I hope these lyrics remind you of His goodness and love for you.  I have paraphrased: 

You are good - when there's nothing good in me

You are love - on display for all to see

You are light - when the darkness closes in

You are hope - you have covered all my sin

You are peace - when my fear is crippling

You are true - even in my wandering

You are joy - you're the reason that I sing

You are life - in You death has lost its sting

Oh, I'm running to Your arms,

I'm running to Your arms.

The riches of Your love

Will always be enough

Nothing compares to Your embrace

Light of the world forever reign

You are more - Than my words will ever say

You are Lord - All creation will proclaim

You are here - In Your presence I'm made whole

You are God - Of all else I'm letting go

Oh, I'm running to Your arms

I'm running to Your arms

The riches of Your love

Will always be enough

Nothing compares to Your embrace

Light of the world forever reign

My heart will sing

no other Name

Jesus, Jesus

Oh, I'm running to Your arms

I'm running to Your arms

The riches of Your love

Will always be enough

Hillsong - Forever Reign

Rathbone Spring Update from Germany...

Between crying out to God to ensure moving back to the states and adopting is HIS plan and not OUR plan, sorting through the German paperwork associated with such a move and working with Tyler and Nicole to get their visa's and further integrate them into the German culture and our team, Alan and I have also been busy with many other ministry related opportunities.  This is a short update to keep our faithful and gracious supporters up to date as to how God is using us and your funds to continue the work here in Germany.  From the bottoms of our hearts we thank you for your prayers and for standing with us.

Now for the update...

Tyler, Nicole and Bex all joined us last fall as you know.  Nicole and Tyler (from Maryland and Alabama respectively) came on board full-time and Bex (from England) joined us as an adjunct member until the end of May.  Tyler, applied for and received shortly thereafter a one year language visa to live and study German here until October.  He attends intensive German language school Monday - Friday from 9-1 and then helps do work with refugees and his church at nights and on the weekends. Tyler recently found an apartment near us and is very glad to be setting down some roots. Nicole, already nearly fluent in German, has been granted a temporary visa while her two year visa is under consideration.  Germany is surprisingly not interested in having missionaries or others come to focus on refugee work so we had to minimize that on her application and emphasize her work alongside the local church.  Would you please pray with us that this visa will be granted quickly and for at least two years?  Bex works with us 50% of the time and the remaining 50% she has been working at two different schools in Heidelberg as a teacher.  Bex recently got engaged to a German she met before joining our team and they marry in England in early July.  The whole team hopes to attend the wedding.

This week our team is hosting a short-term missions team through WFBC and the Great Exchange in Georgia.  I have posted another update in our blog about the group and what they have been able to accomplish so I won't expound upon it here but they have been a blessing.  The day they leave Alan and I welcome our hopeful replacement family who are coming to do a survey trip for about 3 weeks. Peter and Tosca are Pioneers workers from Australia, most recently serving in the Philippians for the past 6 years and feel God is calling them and their children to Germany to work with refugees and migrants.  Please pray God would open up doors, build relationships, find schools for their children to attend and give them a real peace and excitement about coming here.  If all goes well, they would move here in August about a month and a half after we depart.

Alan and I have continued to host our Monday night bible study each week which has really grown over the last six months.  We have on average 10-12 young adults that attend and we've been studying I Corinthians together.  Alan spends the remainder of his week either helping out with Chloe or working with refugees.  He helps Tyler twice a week with the children's program at the largest refugee camp, attends a mens refugee night once a week and has also recruited refugees to come to a meal at our church which we cook for and host twice a month.  In addition he is starting this week to help use his extensive construction background to construct a coffee house at our church and he has invited refugee men to come and work alongside him.  I think this is a fantastic way he can use his gifts to also further the kingdom of God by surrounding these refugees with Godly men at our church each week.  Will you pray for boldness for him and the others at the church as they work together?

I spend the majority of my time using my gifts of organization to keep track of my husband and daughter, keep them well fed and in clean clothes and our house not looking like a pit. :)  I like attending MOPS meetings when I can and this month I'm going to be speaking at the group for the Easter meeting on "Hope through the Resurrection of Jesus".  I am also helping with a bake sale to benefit MOPS and our local ProLife organization, participating at a flea market with another MOPS mom and Chloe and I will host our second annual Easter Egg hunt for her kindergarten friends and their mama's.  I am mentoring Nicole as her team leader and working through marriage counseling CD's with Bex each week in anticipation of her upcoming marriage.

Our lives are rich in our every day and in anticipation of whatever God has in store for us next. We are so thankful for God's faithfulness and provision for us.  We are walking in faith that He has the next steps already determined for us and that He will lead us as we trust Him.  We ask for your prayers in this as well.

WFBC Short-Term Missions Team Update

This week Alan and I welcomed four UGA students from Watkinsville First Baptist Church (our sending church in the states) for a week of Great Exchange surveys and refugee work. The team was made up of Lauren Clark, Micah Houghton, McKenna Vick and Catherine Villis.  I have posted some of our updates from the week so you can see what the team was up to and remember to pray for them as they return to their studies in the states.  

Saturday March 5th - Morning

 The Germany missions team from WFBC has arrived in Frankfurt and is on their way to Heidelberg where breakfast is waiting. Please pray for the team this week as they do the Great Exchange Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings and early afternoons. They will also help host a meal for a dozen Syrian and Iraqi refugees Saturday night (tonight!), work with over 100 refugee children Tuesday and Friday nights and minister to refugee men through a game night on Thursday. They join our regular housegroup to share their testimonies with our German/British/American group as well Monday night. It's a very full week. Please pray against too much jet lag and against the spiritual attack that they will certainly feel in this post-Christian country. 

Evening 

We've been very impressed with the team thus far - they dove straight in after a few hours rest at the hostel talking to refugees tonight and getting to know them better at the dinner we hosted at our church. I think it was interesting for them to hear first hand about why these refugees are here and what they have had to flee and also just to sit, eat a meal, sing around the piano, laugh and pray together. 

Wednesday

The team has been here since Saturday and has done great work as God's ambassadors to Heidelberg. The team spent Sunday with our church, enjoying a pot luck after and then we had a meal and prayer and worship time at our house that evening. Monday we kicked off the Great Exchange with prayer and worship and had dozens of gospel conversations with committed atheists, Muslims and even a few Christians (or they claimed that but didn't have any certainty of what would happen to them after they died). One man we interviewed whose mother was Greek Orthodox Christian and whose father was a committed Muslim said he remained uncommitted to any notion of a God. Monday night the team came to our house and joined with other German believers for a time of testimony sharing, worship, prayer and fellowship. On Tuesday when it was time to go, Alan said every single person was doing a survey and it was hard to get them to stop. Praise God! Tuesday night the team went to the largest refugee camp here (a former military camp) and helped with a children's program hosting around 150 refugee children for soccer and basketball, drawing, doing puzzles and playing with dolls. Today the team has the day off to see Heidelberg and to relax before another two days of surveys and refugee work. We covet your prayers for the team - for boldness in sharing, for favor with the German offficials (we've been stopped doing worship music in the streets already once!) and for many to come to know Christ.

The remainder of the week the team did surveys in the mornings and afternoons after great praise and worship led by Bex, Lauren and Micah and a time of prayer.  Thursday night the team went to a church where refugee men primarily come each week to play games and socialize.  They got into many good conversations and enjoyed getting to know the men better.  Friday night it was back to PHV for the children's program and then to our house for a short debrief and a surprise birthday cake and singing for Micah whose birthday was yesterday.  Saturday it was up early to get to the airport and fortunately all arrived home in Georgia safe and sound Saturday night.

We have truly been blessed by the team and their willingness to jump right in, share their faith and their love for Christ this last week.  We pray God will watch over them as they continue their studies at UGA.