Thomas

Well, I did finally make it back to Ohio...but it was a LONG journey.  Here is a quick overview of my "traveling trauma" but I made it out alive.  

Sat. Dec. 18
I was planning to go to bed between 9-10pm so that I could get up for my EARLY morning flight...but at 9pm, I found out my flight from Basel, Switzerland, to London was CANCELED.   STRESS!  I tried to get another flight...but that did not work...so at midnight I went bed so I could get up at 4am.


Sun. Dec. 19.  
I was up at 4 and by 5am I was at the airport with Taylor (my co-RA) as we both tried to get flights.  I got one for Dec. 20th through Brussels, Belgium and she got one from Zurich, Switzerland through JFK in New York.  Yeah we got flights!!!  That was good.


Mon. Dec. 20
-I was up at 3:30 am and to the airport with 2 other stranded travelers from BFA by 4:45am.  My flight from Basel to Brussels was uneventful.  
-I had a great time in Brussels until I went to my gate to fly to Chicago and they kept delaying my flight.  At first it was 20 min, then 40, then a hour....eventually 3 hours later they fixed the plane and we could go.
-The flight was a normal long tans-Atlantic flight.  But being 3 hours late meant I missed my flight to Toledo.  After I arrived in Chicago, I got to stand in the customs line for a hour and a half!!!  Then I got my bags and I got the LAST flight to Toledo.  I arrived at my gate around 6pm and there was no snow outside.  As I waited we got between 3-4 inches of snow.  My plane came and they loaded us!!! And we finally took off around 8:30pm.  And this is where I met THOMAS (more in a moment).  I arrived in Toledo at 10pm and my Mom and brother Steve picked me up!  I was in my parents house by midnight!


Okay...THOMAS.  He was my seat buddy and we chatted it up on the flight.  I am usually a quiet reader during flights, but it was Thomas' first time to fly and he was NERVOUS.  Thomas is in his 40s, from Georgia, and he was flying to have Christmas with his son.  So we started talking about his life and his family and he asked why I wasn't nervous, and I told him I fly a lot.  He didn't believe me, but when he found out that I live in Germany he was interested.  He asked how I got to Germany and I eventually told him my testimony and how the Lord lead me to Germany.  He thought that was cool and we started talking about God.  He knows who Jesus Christ is, but I don't know if he has a personally relationship with God.  His dad is very legalistic in his faith.  We talked about who Christ is and I challenged him to get involved in a Bible believing church and have good men around him to walk with him through life.


Thomas then told him a friend bought him the tickets for him to go see his son for Christmas because God told her too.  Then he told me he thought that God wanted him to talk to me.  The whole time I was talking to Thomas, I was praying that God would give me the right words.  Please pray with me that Thomas would have a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. 

The Girls are Gone and the Dorm is Empty

Today the girls all left the dorm...there was much excitement and rejoicing as they are done with their exams and now they actually get to go home and see their families!  Whoohooo!!!  Since they didn't have anything to do last night after their rooms were cleaned and their bags were packed...we had a Disney marathon.  We got through 3 Disney movies....I went to bed before the finale since I had to get up at 3am with one of the girls who was leaving early in the morning.

The 3am wake up was as wonderful as expected.  And it dumped a lot of snow in Kandern and Basel...it almost felt like I was back in Juneau, Alaska!  Almost.  Only one of my girl's flights was canceled.  So that was awesome. 

Would you please pray for my girls.  Many of them are traveling to closed countries...where danger is a regular part of life.  One of my girls shared that, not long ago, her dad and younger sister were taking the metro in their city (in a closed country) to choir practice.  A bomb exploded on the metro.  By the had of God, they had left 10 minutes early and were already safe when the bomb went off.  They would probably have been in the area of destruction.  My girl's dad called her mom to let her know that him and his younger daughter were safe.  Please pray for God to protect my girls and their families as they share the Gospel in dangerous places where there is open resistance to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now it is my turn to pack and clean my room....guess I better get to it!

Palmgarten Christms

Part of the joy of Christmas at Palmgarten is to decorate the dorm...which these girls did as they decorated themselves.

They also decorated the tree....very nice.

Here, "N" our youngest girl, is putting the star on the top of the tree with the help of Luke, the Dorm Dad.

Then on the last Sunday of the school year we have an awesome party.  We played "Four on a Couch" and every time the Staff and Sophomores beat the Seniors and Freshman!   I guess when you got it, you got it!!!

Each of the girls drew names and they bought a gift for their dorm sister.  When it is a girl's turn to give her gift, she tells why her dorm sister is amazing and then gives the gift.  It was a good time with a lot of happy smiles and hugs.

I actually think every girl was happy with her gift.  Here they are showing off their gifts...and notice the craziness!!!  I am the calm one in the front and center.  They only got crazier after this point!

Koren Dinner

On Saturday night we had the Won's over.  Samuel and Haesook are in charge of Korean Care at BFA.   They came to our dorm and made some amazing yummy Korean food.

Samuel Won has awesome chopping skills.

Look at all of these happy girls who are so excited to eat the long awaited Korean Dinner!!!!!!

Look at these Americans enjoying the Koren lettuce wrap.  It has beef, rice, and a spicy red paste...yummm. 

These two ladies, "N" and "E" showed the rest of the girls how to eat the food properly. 

Now, Dorm Dad (Luke), is going to try to eat the biggest lettuce roll he can make.

He shoves it all in...in ONE bite!  SICK!!!

And it was a big bite...but he made it.  A success!

Christmas time is here...

 Well, I am back!  I spent the morning rolling out sugar cookies. The girls were in great spirits when they came home from school because Christmas officially hit Palmgarten dorm.  Some girls helped to decorate the dorm and the tree upstairs. 

 While other girls willingly went downstairs to our kitchen to "help" frost cookies.  I think they might have eaten as many as they frosted...but it was all in good fun.

Taylor was in charge of the frosting...while I was STILL rolling out sugar cookies...we made a BIG batch!

Luckily, Anna decided to help me roll out the cookies.  She sure did speed up the process!

Then we all frosted to our hearts content.  I even got in on the action.  I am not sure how many cookies we had originally...but we ended up with 6 1/2 pans full of cookies.

COOKIES...So many COOKIES!

The is a special creation of one of the girls...a boy cookie holding a girl cookies hand.

After a long day at school and then piano lessons after that, "E" is excited to eat her cookie.  What a great way to end the day!

Visiting Poland

 I had the weekend off, and I was able to go and see my friend Dawn Ebbers and the rest of Avant's Short Cycle Poland Team.  I was fun to see how they work together as a team and how they are sharing the Gospel with the people they meet around them.

Dawn and I spent the morning making traditional thanksgiving food. The Poland team invited Poles to celebrate Thanksgiving. They enjoyed experiencing an American tradition without leaving Poland.

Clint, (second from the right) the team leader, wrote a Polish Thanksgiving skit.  It was written in Polish, so I didn't understand it, but Shelly another team Poland member translated for me. It was very funny...at least they laughed a lot.  I also was able to talk to two Polish women.  They were very impressed that I lived in Alaska.  We also talked about BFA and languages.  It was a great conversation.

Since Gdansk, Poland is so far north, it gets dark around 4pm.  Dawn took me to "Old Town" and the buildings were very colorful, but it is hard to see in the dark.  Gdansk is where WWII began, so it is a very historic city.

On Sunday after church in Gdansk, Dawn and  Calvin (another teammate) took me to Sopot.  It is a short train ride away and it is the beach on the Baltic Sea.   This is the Catholic church that Dawn and Calvin sang in with the Gospel Choir they are in.  It was so cold in there when they sang that the holy water was frozen...and it was frozen when I went as well.

The Baltic Sea and me!!  It is gray, just like Southeast Alaska is.  Part of me felt right at home.  I was also able to walk out to the end of the pier. It is the longest pier in the world...it was a very long and cold walk. 

 The sea gulls did not seem to mind to cold weather...I was not quite use to it since Germany is about 10 degrees F warmer.

A famous and well known spot in Sopot is this crooked building...this is actually how it is built...I felt like I was in a Dr. Seuss book!

Shelly, Bonnie, Missy, and Dawn enjoy the evening out.

 Shelly, one of Dawn's teammates, had a birthday so we celebrated at a restaurant in Gdansk.  Here I am with the ladies of Team Poland.

Team Poland has four singles on the team.  They all have apartments in this complex.  Dawn and Shelly proudly show off there place.  This is where they meet and connect with the Poles.  It was a wonderful weekend off for me.  I was able to rest and encourage some friends.

The First Snow in Kandern

The first snowfall is always exciting.  It was even more so for me.  I was my first weekend off in five weeks and I woke up to this!

I love how the snow covers each individual branch.  What a sight of beauty.

All of these shots were taken from my balcony in the dorm.  I have to say, I was glad I was off, so I didn't have to shovel!

The Palmgarten Thanksgiving

Here is the calm before the storm.  On Tuesday November 23, we had 45 people to our dorm to enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving feast.

 As a staff, we started to prepare for this event three days before it took place...we had quite a bit of cooking to do.  I was able to make the potatoes. Here I am using our giant mixer to mash up some yummyness!

Stephanie (dorm mom) and myself worked on cooking 4 turkeys.  Here she is in the basting process.  We had to borrow the oven from the dorm upstairs, so every time we needed to check on the turkeys we had to go up 3 flights of stairs! 

The birds looked wonderful and tasted great.  We used apples, oranges, and onions to flavor the birds.

 Luke (dorm dad) is now carving the birds.  This took a bit of time since there were four of them, but in the end, it was worth the wait.

Taylor (other RA) manned the oven and made sure everything was hot and ready to eat on time!

The blessed event began with Luke telling everyone why he was thankful to the Lord.  We ate our fill, had lots of laughs, and just enjoyed the wonderful environment.

The girls really enjoyed the food.  We had at least three girls who were able to experience their first Thanksgiving.

The Amazing Palmgarten Dorm 20010-2011

This is the amazing group of people that I live with.  They live in 13 different countries and there are 9 different nationalities represented here.  They live in places like Lithuania, Turkey, Jordan, Bosnia, Tajikistan, France, Dubai, Cameroon, Hong Kong, Italy, Qatar, and Azerbaijan.  This year we also have some girls who have mixed nationalities like French-American, Brazilian-American, Australian-American, Peruvian-Canadian, Mexican-American and we also have Americans, Canadians, Koreans, and one girl from Hong Kong.  Which means we have a lot of different languages floating around in the dorm. 

My dorm enjoys having fun and being silly, as you can see from this picture!

"Angel Street" the play

 BFA had the high school play this weekend.  One of the girls in our dorm, "P" was a maid in the play.  There were only 5 characters, so it is quite an honor to be chosen.  "Angel Street" is a mystery.

"P" is all dressed up.  Two of her dorm sisters did her hair and makeup.

Here "P" is with her many fans!

Every dorm sister and staff went to cheer "P" on.

Frockling on a Warm Fall Day

 It was unseasonably warm on Saturday November 13, 2010.  So I set off on a walk with two of my sophomores.

Here they are in just short sleeve shirts...I have more common sense and wore a sweat shirt and a vest to keep warm!

Joy by the old apple tree!

"R" enjoys the grass...she almost blends in!

Silly shadow Girls

"A" and I are enjoying the last rays of sunshine.

"A" found a tree and HAS to climb it!

We walked up to the Kandern Monument to honor veterans who died in WWI.  It is at the top of a hill that you can see from my dorm.

This is the quaint village of Kandern, Germany.

The three of us with Kandern in the background!

As we walked home, we found these horses hanging on the edge of hill.

Beautiful Kandern Sunset!

This nice purple house is on the way home to Palmgarten.  I drive past it every day and decided that I needed to take this picture for my sister-in-law, Amy.  She loves purple, but I am not sure she loves it enough to paint her house purple!