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"