Planes, Trains, and Auto(s)

I've officially been in Europe for over 150 days, more than five months. I've been to eleven countries and have lived/am living in two. What I find even more unbelievable is that I still am going to visit at least two more countries and still have two more months to go until I head home.

In the past 150 days, I feel like my life has completely changed. I've seen so much a world that I wasn't prepared for--a world that has really shaped me in a lot of ways I didn't know I needed to be shaped in. It's still a process, but more and more I'm seeing how much of my life is simply that process of seeing and experiencing things and learning to trust in God. I experienced a lot of that this past week in England and then coming back to Germany.

Previously, I had begun to write and was writing about my train to Westerburg. I was already on the train and was writing and commenting on such things as the nature that I had seen, and lo and behold, I experienced a lot more than I expected. Noise began to gather on the train as we waited to depart and people started to get off, I looked at the guy across from me and asked him "Fahrt der Zug nicht?" and he responded "Er fahrt nicht." We weren't going anywhere. I packed up my computer and got off the train. Thankfully, there was another train at 17.08, so I would be right on time to meet my team. I waited at the station. Five for Eight Past. Eight past. Five after Eight Past. An announcement came on that the train was cancelled. Things weren't looking good. I left the train station and walked into the town. I pulled out my phone, well, not my phone actually, but a phone gifted to me by Hanne for my time in England and here in Germany for emergency situations so that my team could call me. I turned it on. The screen said "Insert PUK." I had forgotten that in London, I had forgotten the PIN code and had entered the false PIN three times and now it wanted a PUK code from the operator. I had none. I went to the Vodafone, hoping that in some way, they could figure something out and help me. I asked him if he spoke English, knowing that my knowledge of German in technical terms was loose at best. He said he spoke a little, so I assumed the worst and proceeded in German, explaining that I had made the mistake of forgetting the PIN and that it was basically useless to me. Worse than that, it wasn't my phone. He asked me who it belonged to, and I told him I only had a name and a birthday. He called it in, but wasn't able to give me any information about the phone or how to unlock it, she has to go in and do it herself. I thanked him and left.

Nearby was a local Internet Café, and I loathed it's seedy existence, but I went in anyways, hoping to be able to go online and get the phone number for Muehltal, so that perhaps I could use a payphone. I succeeded in getting the number and found a payphone and tried to call. Nothing. Tried. Nothing. A girl was waiting outside so I left and let her go in but before she went in I stopped her and asked her if she could help me figure out how these phones in Germany worked and she told me that I had been dialing wrongly, that I needed to dial another way. I thanked her, and then she asked me if she could make a quick call before I tried again. She called. I waited. She left. I went in and tried again, but I messed it up again. Something wasn't write. I went back to Vodafone and asked the guy if he could help me and let me use his store phone; he was good natured and let me, explaining how to call Darmstadt. I called and was mortified to learnt hat I had only received the Muehltal office number, which was useless as it was now 18.00. I was now really stuck. No phone. No train. Nothing. Forty kilometers from Stalhofen in the city of Limburg with limited German.

I went back and hoped that perhaps the last two trains would come. They were all cancelled. There was a strike and due to the strike all of the trains had been cancelled. I happened to meet a man waiting for the last train and I asked him where he was going, and he needed to go farther than I. I asked him what he would do if they were all cancelled and he told me that he had no idea.

Afterwards, he asked if I wanted to split a taxi to Westerburg, the city I needed to go to. I told him I would, and picked up money from the ATM. I came back to the station and we secured a taxi. The driver had previously worked for an airline company and spoke fluent English. I talked with him during the drive to Westerburg, explaining that I was here doing missions work. I was hoping to be able to share more, but nothing came up. We arrived in Westerburg and he dropped us off at the train station, where the other man needed to go. And I started walking.

Westerburg is about seven to ten kilometers away from Stalhofen. I started walking and put my thumb out. At a stoplight, not far from where I had begun, a car stopped. An older lady was inside and asked me where I needed to get to. I told her. She invited me to come in and I was very surprised that an older lady would stop to pick up a twenty-something on the side of the road. But she did. She asked me where I was from and I told her that I was actually from the States, and that I was doing missions work. She told me that she was a Christian too, and pointed out her church to me along the way and invited me because they had "prayer walks" and it actually seemed pretty cool. She lives on a farm right next to the church.

She dropped me off at the house in Stalhofen, and I was very, very thankful. In all honesty, I have no idea whyt I went through all that trouble, but to be sure, God's hand was in it somewhere. Just about everything that could have gone wrong did, but in the end I made it. My conversations weren't deep, but maybe God could even use those things.

I arrived, we ate dinner, and hung out for the night, and went to bed with a 6.30 departure time for the next morning.

The next morning, we hit the road at 6.30 for Mainz. Mainz, as a whole, was an amazing experience. We were there for Jugend Kirchen Tag (Youth Churches Day). We spent four days in Mainz, from Thursday til Sunday. We got there in the morning and set everything up and then started serving ice tea around 15.00. That night, we had a few really great conversations with some people--I got to speak with Johannes to some girls for a while that were really struggling as Christians because a lot of their friends don't love Jesus and it's really hard for them to live as Christians with so much discouragement around them. The next day, Christian spoke to a bunch of guys and three of them decided that they want to follow Jesus, and then another three guys made a decision that day to follow Jesus. The next night, before we packed everything up, we talked to a bunch of guys, and one guy was really interested in what we said, all of his friends left, but he stayed and talked to us. Johannes told him that if he wanted to experience God, he needed to ask him, and God would reveal himself to him--that he needed to step out in faith and put his trust in God, and God would show himself to him. I'm not sure what happened to him, but we're praying for him.

Now we're here in Muehltal until the 11th and another group of us is in Heidelberg doing another outreach. We leave here for Siegen on the 11th I think, and then we're off to Stalhofen for a week, and then we're off to Sassnitz, and we'll be there for 12 days! After that, we'll have about a week and a half free, so we're hoping to do some travelling and take our vacation days during that time, but we'll see. After that, we have about one or two more outreaches in July and then we'll begin to be wrapping it up. It seems quick, but there is a lot going on between all that, but in reality, it's not that much time, so we go to make the best of it!