Christmas

Christmas holidays are over and I am in front of my computer again. The correction phase of the German version of the book "The power of a praying Teen" is lying before me. Christmas was great. Five of my siblings came over to my parents place and stayed over night. Anna and Johnny are still here for a few more days.

On 22 December I finally got all my documents out to the South African embassy to apply for my visa. Let's hope and pray that I can leave to Cape Town by the end of January.

Family photograph – automatic release!

Weekend in Witten

It is always good to go to the place where I lived before I went to the ship to meet a lot of my friends. I stayed with Johannes.Traveling by train I arrived on Friday evening and we were on the go to visit people on Saturday and Sunday.

One of our "games" is to meet new people. On my way to Witten, in Dortmund, there was a lady on the platform. She was obviously struggling with her luggage and she had just missed a train, so I asked her if she needed my cellphone. I found out she had studied in Witten years ago where she met her husband. Now she lives with her family in the south of Germany, but travelled up to meet up with old friends. She was hoping they were still awake and had something to eat left over, because she had been on the go for nine hours. She was very interested in my time on the Doulos and also about my plans to go to South Africa. She asked what motivated me to go to foreign countries to share my faith. I said, because I believe that Jesus truely sets us free. I hope she will remember that.

After chruch on Sunday Johannes and I set off to go to a city nearby (Wuppertal) to meet more friends. In order to do that we had to change trains a few times and train-stations were the best place for our "game". Besides meeting Lena and the odd man with the dog we also met Murat. Murat comes from Tunesia, but he lives in Germany since twelve years. The evening we met he had just escaped a psychiatric hospital. He suffers from panic attaks and feels deserted by his family. They wont let him back home until he finishes his therapy. Now he was on his way to a friend of which he wasn't sure if he was home or not. I asked him what it is that keeps him going. "My friends and a cup of tea", he said. Then came his train.

Picture: Me close to the train-station in Wuppertal-Oberbarmen

Olli Online 3

Olli's new newsletter is out and also he has a Blog now, too. Check it out. Olli finished his theology studies and is now doing an internship in America after which he will come back to Germany to do churchplanting.

My Visa: I still need two documents in order to hand in my visa application to the South African embassy. I hope once I have handed all the papers in that it will go fast and I can book a flight soon. Bless You.

Drydock

I received a mail from Phillip today. The Doulos is just out of drydock in Singapore. For the men this means two hard weeks of 12-hour-days lay behind them. Most women go on socalled landteams. Phillips job is to put those kind of teams together so before drydock he was asked if he rather wanted to join a team. His answer: "A man has to do what a man has to do!” And this is the picture that goes with it (from left to right: Glen, Sam, Phillip). I miss you guys, but not the work ;)

About Blog: I reordered the sidebar a little. To find all the links from before click on (guess) "Links"

Visa and more

I've got almost everything together to apply for my South African visa. The only thing that is still standing out is the invitation from Media Village. I hope to get the visa soon so I can book a flight for January.

"The Power of a praying Teen" was translated into German and I am doing the typesetting of it. I am also working on some other things and hopefully will end everything in the coming month.

What do you think of my new glasses?

Bullauge 09

My new newsletter is there. Just before Christmas so it doesn't get lost in peoples Christmas post. Unfortunately this newsletter is in German and I will not write an Enlish version so soon, but if you want to download it anyway just click the picture above or use the "More Downloads" link on the side. To keep updated with the newest information on what is happening just keep visiting this website.

Preaching material

Johannes Came to me on Wednesday two weeks ago. In our conversation we started talking about his recources on preaching material that he has gathered over the past. He wanted to put it on CD for other youthpastors to use freely. I told him I would do the design of the CD covers and so we got going.
The production was needed for a seminar at our church the next Wednesday and also for the WillowCreekCongress that followed here in Bremen. So I also created a pamphlet explaining all the material.

I had a free ticket for the congress but I couldn't take part in all the sessions. I was very much inspired by an interview by Bill Hybles with Bono.

I have finished the intro of the TeensMag-Bible. Also the set of "40 Days of Love". Now I will start the production of a book called "The Power of a Praying Teen" published in Brockhaus-Verlag.

This week I have to finish my newsletter so it can be in the post before all the Christmas things arrive. Otherwise it will not be read. I will write about my departure to South Africa so stay tuned ... oh I always forget my newsletter is in German ... but I will translate the main points in English and put it here.


Our stand at the WillowCreekCongress.

Update

The day before yesterday I received an email from Media Village. The application is through and they have accepted me as one of their staff!!! Actually this was just an other formality, but with this information I can move on with my visa and other practical things. Good News!

Media Village had planned to move into an other building at the beginning of the coming year. There I would have had an accomodation available, but now I heared that the move has been posponed for the beginning of 2008. Therefor I will need a place to stay. Of course the people at Media Village will help me in this, but still it's a reason to pray.

I have a lot to do at the moment, which is good! The company I worked for before I went on Doulos (click on Bundes-Verlag) has asked me to design the first 35 pages of their "Bible for Teens". Today is a public holiday in that region and nobody is working on the correction at present, so I will work on a DVD-cover for a friend (click on Johannes Müller).

Please also pray for more financial support. At the moment there is still not enough for me to go abroad (click on Support :-)

English Version

Many people have asked recently if could put my thoughts out here in English, too. So here is my English blog. You might ask yourself some questions about some things here so before you get all confused, let me explain.

1. What are you doing and what are your plans?
I left the ship in March not really knowing where to start to sort things out to go to Media Village, South Africa. The two main questions were: 1. Would I find a suitalble Organisation to take over the part of work the OM-Germany did for me while on the ship? 2. Would my church send me out on this next step? Both of the major questions were answered with YES. I finally got these answers in July. So since then I am on the go raising support and informing people. Next to this I am also working for various friends designing flyers and broshures and stuff.

Right now I am waitging for Media Village to respond to an application I sent in a few days ago. Also I still need financial support. Other than that I have just finished the layout of a book (more requests are coming in) and doing some design work for a befriended company.

Please feel free to email me and to download the presentation.

2. What does Bullauge mean?
The name of my newsletter is "Ben's Bullauge". It means Ben's porthole. But Bullauge is also the same word used for bullseye. Everyone who received the newsletter got very much used to the name. So people commented: "When is the next 'Bullauge' going to come?" or "I read your 'Bullauge'." So I – and the person who does the design work for me – decided to keep the name and also to give my blog the same title. The German blog is now found at www.ben.nimmo.de but it is listed as www.bullauge.blogspot.com The English blog is therfore called ebullauge – just to add to the confusion ;)

3. Why is your profile in German?
Because I have not found out how to change it, yet. I dont know much about webdesign.

Does that help? So much for now. Ben

PS: Have a look at the two posts below. I posted them also today!

Greeting Cards

As I also did on the ship I recently needed some greeting cards. So I used pictures that I did during my time on the Doulos and printed them out to be folded (like the thank you cards for lineup). Then I had the idea of putting some of them online so others can download them, too.

Click on "Greeting Cards" to have a look at them. If you decide to download and print the cards, just follow the instructions.

CD Presentation

For a missions day at my church every missionary had a little table to present their work. As I have not got very many things to display I thought of creating a presentation on a CD ROM (similar to the presentations I did on the ship). If you are interested you can download it. It's a 60 MB PDF-file. Just click on the link "CD Presentation".

The presentation mainly contains a movie of the work that MediaVillage does. Also some additional things that I have done lately. Enjoy.