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!

Hope you’ve had a wonderful Christmas-tide and a super start to the new year!
Report on Pre-Christmas: The “Festival of Light” went wonderfully! We had about 50 people in the Garden House (former kindergarten building) as we explained the Jewish festival of Chanukka and its connection to Jesus’ claim to be “the Light of the world”. Some deeply personal conversations with several “not-yet” believers resulted. Please pray that God’s Spirit will use the love and friendship these folk sensed together with the content of the message and questions discussed to move them closer to Jesus!
Three days later, we traveled to the western part of Germany to celebrate Christmas with Daniel’s parents (Erich and Doris) and family and to speak at the home church of his mother in the Westerwald (”Western-forest”).
It was a wonderful time: these are the folk who sent a team of professional tradesmen from the congregation to lay paving stones for the back area patio here in Haus Nazareth. They are warm, transparent people who have a deep desire to do things for God’s Kingdom.
I preached on the three sermons of the Apostle Paul in Acts 13-17… focusing in particular on the reason why Paul gave so much background information to the non-Jewish audiences to whom he spoke.
This is an important topic for people working in a post-Christian environment like Berlin, with only 1.5% church attendance. The simple reason is: the story of Jesus and His life and sacrifice for us is only truly understandable if you have what the film industry calls the “backstory” of the reality of cosmic evil, creation, the fall of the human race into enmity with God and the divine initiative He took to reclaim and redeem His lost creation.

Clark visiting with some of the tradesmen and their wives after the service

More good news: Our boxes from the U.S. arrived today! Since my back is also doing quite a bit better, we were able to get them up the front stairs into the building!

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.

Remember the sensation of being cranked up to the start of one of the wild rides at Disneyland (or… your favorite childhood theme park…)?
We’re feeling that way right now as things wind up for our departure from Boise on October 16th and flight to Berlin 4 days later.
The final packing, sorting and discarding is proving more time-consuming than we’d thought it would: I guess when you get down to the core of things it just takes longer.
So… we’d really appreciate your prayers as we try to wind things up, see friends and family and stay sane.
Thanks for being there and holding the ropes!

Jesus was an intense realist about the way the world system works. That is comforting in the light of the daily headlines about financial crisis and systemic meltdown in the banking sector. His early followers recalled clearly His encouragement to “seek first the kingdom of God” and the promise that if they did, “all these things [necessary shelter, food, clothing, etc.] will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33)

In interaction with some friends about the current situation, the name of Noriel Roubini has kept coming up and I wanted to pass along a couple of links that may help in clarifying the factual side of what’s happening:

Roubini is an professor of economics at New York University that has been predicting for five years or more exactly the scenario that is now playing out.

The New York Times ran an article on him recently. It makes for bracing reading.

Two articles by Glenn Beck summarize what Roubini is driving at:

This one was written on February 28th of this year.

This piece came out a couple of days ago.

In all of the turmoil, I’m comforted by Jesus’ words: “Peace I leave with you… my peace I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid!”

Shalom!

Wow! In the midst of all the chaos on the financial markets and with the banks tightening the loan market down to a trickle, God brought our “little elephant” across the bridge and we signed the final papers for the sale of our house!

We’ve now booked our flight to Berlin: we depart Boise on October 16th and fly from Los Angeles on the 20th.

Please pray as we are in an intense process of the final packing and cleaning of the house - especially for strength and safety as we wrestle furniture and boxes back and forth to a storage garage and prepare to ship a few things.

We are immensely grateful for your prayers and encouragement during this long process. Thank you!

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted… packing and trying to get our house sold so we can make the final move to Berlin has been crazy!

There is only one final hurdle: the friend who is buying our house needs a signed lease agreement for the bank to prove that there will be a rent stream for the next year until he moves to Boise. A young couple who are friends of Charissa and Davin is very interested, but the details still need to be worked out. Please pray this will go quickly! Then we can order our airline tickets!

Thanks for your friendship and prayers!