Shaina Stutzman
4/29/07
Germany Team Letter #23
Blog spot: http://germanyyes06.blogspot.com

Hallo euch!! (Hello everyone!!)
Our team got the chance to visit Berlin this week, and a very fun trip it was!! We left early Thursday morning and got back late that evening. Driving around the city seeing all the sites was quite fun and interesting. A couple things we saw were the Brandenburg Gate (basically the symbol of Germany) and the Liberty Statue (I think that's what it's called), which is a big gold covered angel that looks like it's playing Frisbee..kind of..well that's what we thought. It's actually holding a wreath thing of some kind. We had a picnic lunch in a beautiful park in Berlin and then decided to take a free ENGLISH :) bike tour through the city. We had an extremely animated tour guide that made the trip very interesting and I think we all learned a lot. We especially learned a lot about the Berlin wall..how and why it went up and the story behind it falling. It's actually really interesting. If you ever get the chance to hear the real story of how everything came about, do..it's worth it. It's so easy for me to forget how not very long ago it was that the wall came down. And how it was in my lifetime and how a lot of the people that I know here would have been affected by the Wall and Communism.
After we took our bike tour we ate at an authentic American restaurant..McDonald's. (Authentic American restaurant just sounded more important.) Then we had time to hit some..shops..and see the city at night. It was beautiful. I love seeing all the fountains and buildings lit up. Something that I really love here in Germany is all the fountains that they have. They add so much to the beauty of a city.
Us four young-ens had a work day at the Soli Deo church this past week while our diligent team leaders taught English. We are currently working on scraping, sanding, and painting the staircase there. This job is actually turning out to take a lot longer than first imagined it would. And it requires many hours of sometimes tedious work. But we find ways to make it more interesting. One of our Outreach Coordinators, Darrel, helped us this past week and then made us lunch on the grill!! It was a very welcome break and the food was extremely good too!! Grilling is very common here in Germany and I've enjoyed every one that we've been to!! So I'm beginning to feel like I'm rambling so I will bring this letter to an end.
Tschüss!! (Bye!!) -Shaina

Praises:
-God is faithful!!
-the weather is beautiful
-for good friends for all of us here

Prayer Requests:
-Soli Deo had it's last church service today at the church it had been renting for the last two or so years and is moving back to it's original building. Pray that this will go well and that God will work strongly in the hearts of the people that attend the church.
-a passion for all of us to keep pressing on and reaching out to the people here
-that God would work strongly in all of our hearts