The Holla From Halle

Germany Team Newsletter #11
Written by Jennifer Henson
Date: January, 27th
http://germanyyes06.blogspot.com

Dear Family and Friends,
Thank you for all your prayers and support. It has realy been a blessing knowing that we have you all standing behind us.
This past week has been filled with excitment and scares. Tuesday during language study, my stomach began to hurt. By ten that night I was in so much pain I asked (with a little promting form Val and Eric) to go to the hospital.
The Lord got us in and out in a little over an hour. The doctor diagnosed me with a stomach virus. I was on a strict diet of dry bread and water/tea. (Patato chips count as dry bread right?) I am now on my way to being my old self again.
Wednesday we did our team fast and prayer walk around Halle. I stayed home and spent time in prayer for the team and Halle. Everyone is happy that we are doing the prayer walks and fasting. We feel the Lord has called us to continue to do this.
On Thursday, for our team fun activity, we went to the Circus. It was just a small one, but fun just the same. We saw jugglers, camels, horses,and bulls with realy long horns. The best part was when they brought out the four tigers.
They had set up a cage around the ring. Then they had four tigers run in. It was cool and kinda funny to watch the man get the tigers to do their tricks. The tigers were rather sassy and grumpy. They kept going back to their little stools every time the man would turn his back and position one of the other tigers.
We felt bad for the guy. His act was a flop because the tigers would not listen. You could see he was getting more and more up set. We all agreed that to be losing your patience in a cage with four tigers is not a good thing.
Last night was the first night we had our cafe´. Most of us had a lot of errands and preparations to do for the event. Janae was incharge of drinks, Vall and Eric helped where needed, Brent made signs,I baked bar cookies, and Shania was in charge of decorations/set up.
Everything was sehr shön(very beautiful)! We had three people come that are good friends of ours and two girls come that are now our new friends. We taught the two girls how to play Dutch Blitzs. They realy enjoyed the game.
It was a very fun evening! It felt so good to be able to commumicate in German with them. All our friends enjoyed the evening and so did the team.
God Bless, Jennifer Henson

PRAYER REQUESTS:
*For our team to continue to have open doors
* For our team to continue to have protection and health
* For continued discernment and guidance from God
* Phone to be installed in Febuary ( The phone company had moved our date and we missed that in the letter we got from them.)
* For language study and understanding
* That we might continue to make friends

PRAISES:
*Our first coffe house went well
*We have had several team bonding moments
*The Lord has opend doors for us like meeting neighbors
*We are all growing in areas the Lord wills us to
*My health is being fully restored

The Holla From Halle

Germany team
January 21, 2007
Janae Nolt

Hello family and friends!!
Wow! I get to write the tenth letter!! It is amazing to think that we have been here for so long already! Give or take an extra week or two. Weeks just seem to fly by here! As of Sunday the 14th....we had only 6 more months here.
This past week our team had our first team sabbath day on Monday. So I decided I wanted to head down to Market Platz which is the center of the city and we live only 10 minutes(walking distance) to there. I grabbed my colored pencils,drawing paper, Bible, prayer journal, camera and headphones threw them into my book bag and headed down to there. I sat against the one wall of the Market Platz church and just enjoyed my time with God there. It is so awesome and amazing at how many people are around you, but it is still quiet. I loved it! It was so nice to have a day to do whatever and not have to worry about being late for things.
We did our first prayer walk in this city on Wednesday. It was awesome to walk around and pray for all the things that we really never took time to pray for. It opened my eyes to how many bars there are on 1 block.
Thursday Jen was not feeling well so we had to leave her at the apartment while the rest of us we to Sharon and Steve Norton's house for lunch. We had a Swiss/German meal that was very good! Very simple but it tasted good! It was a nice time to talk with Steve and Sharon and get to know them better. We played a game with them and their children and then we had Kaffee trinken with amazing Apple Schrüssel. It has come to be my favorite dessert here. I may come home fat from eating it all the time. Unfortunately I don't know how to make it yet, so therefore I only get some if we go to someone's house for Kaffee. I hope to change that soon!!
Friday we did the hard process of filling out forms for our visas. Wow....I felt drained after that! In the afternoon we had our meeting about all the ministries we want to do or things the church want us to help out with. Next Friday we are doing our first Kaffee Haus. We are going to invite people from 16 to 30 years old from 7:30 to whenever. It is a stretching experience for me. Just keep us in your prayers this coming week as we get things pulled together for it!
We are all doing pretty well! except for Jen's back. Us girls had to much fun clowning around last night instead of going to sleep and Jen suffered the most. Our nights are usually late because we have to much fun in our room together.
Keep us in your prayers! We really appreciate all the prayers we are getting already!! Praying you all have a good week!!
Blessings,
Janae

Prayer requests:
-Jen's back
-Team unity
-That we will be able to form relationships with Germans.
-That we stay focused on why we're here
-That we may all stay healthy
-The Coffee House on Friday night!!!!!
-For us to have good ideas for the valentines thing that we are supposed to plan for the church!!

Praises!!
-We're getting our land line this week for our phone!!!!! Now we can call home!!
-That God is meeting us here and blessing our team and all our needs!

The Holla From Halle

Brent Linde Germany YES TeamJanuary 14, 2007 Team Letter # 9Hello to all the people in America.
Brent linde is this weekly writer
this week our group have
had lots of work but also relaxing time also. This week weather report this,week rain on the 2 out of the 7 days. perfect day to run or get out doors and ride them trams in halle. Our group has baked cookies for our neighbors this way we could show christ love and get to know our neighbors in each flat we are the top there is a indoniesian family under us and they have kids that are just learning englisch in school so we talked about why we are doing this and enjoying ourself with god. we made m and m ´s with dough that looked more like a cake. me and shaina decided to double the recipe to make it go quicker and when this happens it doesn´t turn out to good a little on the dry side so the m and m´s hardly stuck to the dough. then popped then into the oven at 350 degrees to bake cookies we either left them in to long or it was to hat so the next batch we switched somethings. the m and m´s
burnt a little to long this way we could have cracked over cooked m and m´s. this was a funnny act of opening the windows and plenty of jokes to go along with it as we baked and gave generously. the next batch was not so complicated jen and janae did it the slowere way of making one batch at a time which is the better and everthing worked out better then once janae and jen cam into the kitchen. we had music blarring in the background newsboys or kj 52. it is pronounced K J FIVE TWO which stands for the K J means nothing (it doesn´t stand for king james) and the FIVE TWO is when jesus gave the 5loaves of bread and 2 fish and gave generously. to freinds and family. we also did house cleaning and went shopping for groceries. this is fun when you don´t know where everything is. then plenty of german studies alone and with our teacher miriam and I also practiced being teacher a little bit with flash cards and a little game of dutch blitz to learn our numbers. It is fun (i think) without a TV we talk more be more open and pray about it if there is a struggle and our favoite part is listening to the radio or with cds. this weeks main concern was praying for what god wants us to do in halle we had 2 days with prayer not counting our devotions or other reading bible etc. then we prayed aboutr the church and how it wants to grow. this week we were plugged into cell groups with the german families and they have a prayer time and discuss what we can do to grow closer to god. and sit eat lebkucken which is gingerbread. and fruits and a drink then play guitar and sing songs fellowship together and etc. these gruops seemed like a good match but we are just testing which ones we want to go to in feburary we start with the group we pick.
then it happened that eric and val decided to go on a date to the harts mountains and to have relaxing time along. they are suppost to have god ranked first then there relationship between the two of them and then the group and then there missions next. we stuck to our bed times (not the girls but that is ok when you have your room to your self. you go to bed earlier than the reast of the crowds and then i get up at 7:30 or 8 and have quiet times till 10 or eleven. then go on with our dayly lives in halle.
I have been sad that my bike had a flat tire but i got to go running around town.
then last night we ate rabbit a wonderful dinner made by janae and I helped and daryl helped (he is a good cook) and we had rabbit and green beans and I slices potatoes and potato flats with eggs and butter and potatoes fryed. I got full for once in germany. we runnn around and are busy but fun busy when we go
then we take prayer walks around halle for certain places such as bars and people
totles or good bye from brent until next week

Praises
relationships are good
our apartment is perfect place for us
computer service only ablock away
good times in germany
plenty of times to do devotions
fun laughter

Requests
relationships will continue growing
showing others how to grow in the light of christ hallenser people
trials.

The Holla From Halle

Valerie Roth
January 6, 2007
Germany YES Team
Letter #8

Hello again Family and Friends! I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's! We had a good time enjoying the holidays in a different culture and with each other.

This past week was full of ups and downs. The most exciting up was that Loren Rice (Outreach Director for Discipleship Ministries) and his cousin Eric Rice came to visit. We were able to spend a couple days with them before they moved on to Central Asia. They arrived on Tuesday and spent some time just talking with Eric and I. In the evening they took our whole team out for dinner. It was Brent's 19th birthday as well, so that made it extra special. On Wednesday, the team planned a short city tour for them. We went to some of the highlights here in Halle. One of our first stops was to the Marktkirche on Marktplatz. Marktkirche is the big church right in the center of town. We were looking around in there and Loren asked if the death mask of Martin Luther was in the church because they had a postcard of it there. The death mask was made of Martin Luther right after he died, and it's a mold of his face and hands. Anyway, the man there told us that it is in the church but it costs money to go in and see it. We started to leave, but then the man came after us and told us that he would let us in to see it for free. We went into the small room, and there he was. At first it was kinda creepy, but the more I remembered who Martin Luther was and what he stood for, the more amazing it was. They had some history on the wall (in English and German) about him and his death. Martin Luther had preached at Marktkirche 3 different times, and they also had summaries from those, along with the pulpit he preached from. The thing that hit me the most was from his sermon on January 26, 1546. In his sermon, Luther prayed that God would maintain Halle in the love of His Word. It's pretty amazing to think that God has been calling people to Halle and to pray for Halle even since 1546. Crazy--to think that our team could still be an answer to Martin Luther's prayer.

Our team is all moved in to the apartment now and trying to get finally settled in. I think we'll all be happy when there is nothing in our suitcases and we have everything where we want it to be. Our outreach coordinators have been on vacation for the past 10 days, but are home again. Hopefully in this next week we can define some more of what exactly we want to do in the next 7 months.

Praises:
-that we're all living in the apartment!
-that we weren't too homesick over the holidays

Requests:
-health: some of us have had colds, and Janae's back has been hurting her the past few days
-some of us have hit the stage of outreach where we just feel "blah" and don't really feel a passion to be here. Pray for renewed vision and strength as we push though the down days
-learning the language: we like spending time with people, but when we can't communicate it makes us very frustrated
-for more mail : ) some have been feeling disconnected from our friends and families

With love,
Valerie (for the rest of the team)