We’re back in Berlin! The city greeted us with a smile of sunshine… it’s good to be home!

Just 20 minutes after we left the airport on the drive to Haus Nazareth, the airport was closed down for 6 hours because an unexploded bomb from World War II was discovered during some building! If we hadn’t gotten in before that, we would have been rerouted to Leipizig (about 2 hours away)… we’re very grateful to have been spared that hassle!

The remodeling has gone forward step-by-step while we’ve been gone (a couple things went haywire… but they’re pretty easily correctable).

We had a great dinner with the students this evening to start the new semester… more later!

This has been an amazing summer!
After a college mission team from Calvary Chapel Boise visited in June, Emmie and Kaysha, two of the women came back for a month to help us in the mission center here at Haus Nazareth. At the same time, Tyler, a friend from South Dakota, arrived to live and work with us and learn German.
God miraculously provided funds for the next stage of remodeling and work started on the second floor student rooms. Because of fire code the entire floor structure and every non-load-bearing wall had to be taken out!

Emmie, Kaysha and Tyler in the middle of the early stages of the remodel!

We had some wonderful times together… and we’re all missing the two “Idaho girls” with their infectious, friendly laughter and positive spirits.
Warm, positive, Spirit-filled believers can have a tremendous impact on people in this country!
Please pray that the work will go ahead quickly… and that the outreach to the universities and colleges in Berlin will grow. I’ve been asked to speak to a group of students at the famous “Technical University” on September 17th. (The “TU” is considered by many to be the birthplace of modern physics!)

Jesus is risen indeed!

Thanks for your prayers! We had an amazing Seder celebration commemorating the Passover that Jesus celebrated with his friends on the day before he was crucified.

About 55 people were there (with serving help from students!). It lasted from 6:00 to 10:00pm!

New believers, old believers and not-quite-yet believers sat around 5 tables eating the traditional vegetables and a lamb roast. The meal prepartation was led and supervised by one of the student helpers, Jonas. Although Jonas is now on the university, he did a two year training as a cook at one of the finest retaurants in Berlin (he still earns money on the side that way). He sees his work as a help to “Haus Nazareth” and we certainly do too.

Yesterday (Easter Saturday) we had a short “Easter meditation” to prepare for today, Easter Sunday.

Abraham in the Suon

Our thoughts centered on the calling and faith of Abraham… how he obeyed God to leave his homeland and go on a completely wild adventure with the Lord… and how he looked forward to his great son who would redeem mankind. A wood carving of Abraham holding out his arms in prayer provided the center piece of our meditation; when the evening sun caught the framework of the window the light cast a perfect cross behind him!

Part of growing together as a fellowship in Haus Nazareth is discovering and losing one’s illusions about oneself and others.  Jean Vanier, the founder and leader of the “L’Arche” community describes this process:

“Communities need tensions if they are to grow and deepen… (these tensions) often mark the necessary step towards a greater unity as well, by revealing flaws which demand re-evaluation, reorganization and a greater humility… Every tension, every crisis can become a source of new life if we approach it wisely, or it can bring death and division…

There is nothing more prejudicial to community life than to mask tensions and pretend they do not exist, or to hide them behind a polite façade and flee from reality and dialogue.  A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God.” (Community and Growth).

We are all learning that we’re not perfect!  (Now, why doesn’t that surprise you?)  Please pray for us all: that, as a team and individually, we will move into the challenge of transparency and realism on this journey God has called us on: to touch this city and beyond with the Good News of God’s love in Christ, life by life!

I want to share with you a very special note from a woman grad student from South America who met the Lord while in Berlin staying at Haus Nazareth:

Dear Friends,
I really want to thank you for all the support and friendship that I received in Haus Nazareth. I am really glad I lived with you these four months.
It seemed to be a coincidence; however, I know God led me there to experience life in a Christian Community. It was really great.
As most of you know, I was facing a hard moment in my life when I arrived in Germany. I am sure it would have been horrible without your help and friendship.
In the end, I was happy to be in Berlin, and definitely I will miss you a lot.
Have a great New Year. I hope God blesses all of you and gives you what your hearts want and need…

Notes like this are a special encouragement… and part of the fruit of your prayers and friendship!

Thank you!

This Saturday (December 20th), we’ll be celebrating a “Festival of Light” at Haus Nazareth. It is the beginning of Chanukkah, the Jewish celebration of the cleansing of the temple about 150 years before Christ and the evening of the 4th Sunday in Advent. We’re looking forward to having about 60-70 guests in the “garden house” (former kindergarten) in the back. We’ll be considering Jesus’ claim, “I am the Light of the World!” Please pray for an atmosphere of real spiritual openness and the working of God’s Spirit.
My back is not well yet. It has been a little over 4 weeks and I still have some pain and swelling, as well as pain in the sciatic nerve running down my left leg. It is very frustrating and I’d deeply appreciate your prayers that this will heal. We’re scheduled to travel to west Germany next week, where we’ll celebrate Christmas with Daniel’s family and I’m scheduled to speak in a church in the “Westerwald” on December 26th. Thanks in advance for your prayers!
Finally, a news item you wouldn’t probably expect: Berlin has a real problem with wild boars! The city has wonderful green areas and city forest… but that’s opened up the way for the boars to move in REALLY close. (We haven’t had any at Haus Nazareth… yet…). Thought you might enjoy reading about them in a Wall Street Journal article. There’s even some pictures… anybody interested in a Christmas ham?

The past two weeks have been VERY intense, topped by celebrating Thanksgiving last Saturday with about 40 European friends at the home of an American couple who work with Campus Crusade. We were able to help by baking 4 of the small turkeys in the student ovens and making a fruit salad. (Thanksgiving, of course, isn’t a holiday here; so we usually have to organize something either the weekend before or the weekend afterward! It’s a great opportunity to talk with Europeans about living for the Gospel. We’ll also be celebrating again this coming weekend!)

We had some deep conversations with different folk–a student from Uganda who is doing genetic research at the university in Potsdam, a couple from Belgium who want to reach their nation for Christ and a married couple who do professional translation work in the medical and legal fields.

- Thanks for your prayers for us and the Haus Nazareth team. Our times of prayer and planning with Matthias and Sieglinde (the physician and his wife who are our partners in the project), as well as with Michael, a German university professor whom we met through Bob Caldwell have been breaking new ground.

We have two big prayer requests:

- There is an annual meeting of “Philosophia Europa” this coming Sunday; would you please pray that all the key people will be able to come and that God will continue to bring just the right men and women together as part of the future leadership team.

- I’ve managed to do major injury to a muscle in my lower back and leg; it’s been pretty much constant pain (sciatica, partial paralysis, etc.) in one form or another for almost two weeks. Please pray that the irritation will subside and I can get back to full capacity in the next couple of days. I would really like to take off some weight, too!

November 9th is a fateful day in German history: on November 9th, 1918, following the conclusion of the “Great War”, the ill-fated Weimar Republic was born; on November 9th, 1923, Adolf Hitler tried to carry out his putsch in Munich - in spite of its failure, it ominously catapulted him to national prominence; on November 9th, 1938, the Nazi SA and SS stormtroopers ransacked and destroyed Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in a violent pogrom - the prelude to the Nazi’s “final solution” that would end the lives of 6,000,000 Jewish people in the gas chambers of the death camps and the execution trenches on the military front. Finally, on November 9th, 1989, the Berlin wall fell and the East-German communist regime ended up on the trash pile of history.
Last Saturday evening, there was a commemoration of the tragic events of 1938 here at Haus Nazareth. It was part of a memorial march that began at the site where the local synagogue had been and ended in a service at the Baptist church.

Memorial service on the steps of Haus Nazareth

From the steps of the Haus, a saxophone player wailed out a “Kletzmer” melody mourning the loss of the Jewish villages in Eastern Europe and a speaker reviewed briefly the life and death of one of the former residents, a blind Jewish poet.
Appropriately, talking about the Shoah is serious business here in Germany. Nothing touching the subject is taken lightly. I remember a discussion by a panel of “experts” following the showing of the American mini-series “Holocaust” on German T.V. in the late 1970s. On the final evening, the group was discussing, “How can we prevent something like this ever happening again?” One of them, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, is the most influential literary critic in post-war Germany and himself Jewish. After several minutes of discussion, he slammed his hand on the table and said: “I’ll tell you how you can prevent this every happening again! You Christians need to take your religion more seriously. If Christians had taken their religion seriously, the Holocaust would never have happened!” Amen.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in Berlin for 3 weeks… it was like jumping into a flowing river from the moment Sieglinde met us at the airport and we packed our luggage into her car (we then took the bus and metro); that was a HUGE help, since we were carrying more than we usually would, of course.
This past week, a team of workers came from a small church northwest of Frankfurt (the village is called Gusternhain; you won’t find it on a map very easily). They were all skilled in the building trade and put in the paving stones for the back of “Haus Nazareth”. What a neat group of people… we’re so thankful for their help.

The team in action!

The finished pavement

We’ve been meeting with the students in the Haus… and trying to get settled: unpacking, fixing up the little place we’re staying in.
This morning we continued our planning time with Matthias and Sieglinde, trying together to get an overview of all that is involved in Haus Nazareth’s role as an outreach and mission center. We’ve defined 7 major areas of responsibility: student work, seminars & outreach, guests, house management, remodeling coordination, ministry finances and “Philosophia Europa”.
We’re so grateful for your continued prayers.

We’re quite often asked, “What exactly is going to happen in ‘Haus Nazareth’? What will be your initial goals?”

On June 23, six German friends deeply involved in the project met for prayer and counsel together. These are the “core team” of the ministry of Philosophia Europa, the folk whom Ann and I meet with, pray with and dream with in Berlin. I’d like to share the vision for “Haus Nazareth” as articulated by one of the men in the group.

Michael is a businessman and university professor. He and his wife have a very deep burden for reaching Berlin for Jesus. He became acquainted with the “Haus Nazareth” project through an almost-miraculous contact with Pastor Bob Caldwell of Calvary Chapel, Boise. As we met together and shared our thoughts and dreams this spring, it became very clear that God has brought him and his wife to the team “for such a time as this”. These are his thoughts as Matthias jotted them down:

The initial target audience will be the academic community, especially lecturers and professors. That is a group of people that is difficult to reach for Christ and almost no one is doing so. This is a very important part of Clark’s calling and an area that he can fulfill, both in view of his life-experience and academic qualifications. It will be important to have an ongoing contact point, a group meeting, for instance, on a daily or weekly basis.We also want to have a ‘fellowship-church’ in ‘Haus Nazareth’ and begin having worship times, so that thinking people whose hearts have been touched will sense that someone understands them and they can grow in faith until they’re able to start going to an ‘ordinary’ church.

A woman who works on the university underlined how important this is: many non-believers or “church Christians” who are won to faith need a long time to get to where they can return to a church. For these kind of folk, “Haus Nazareth” and Philosophia Europa can be a spiritual home.