Heimweh!

Hi Everyone!

(Steven has Irish teabags again! Nambarrie! Yeah!)

So, the last two weeks went grand! Work-wise things have been fine, as usual, though a bit disappointing has been the numbers attending things! Youth Group, Kids Club, SNL have all had low numbers over the past 2 weeks. Hopefully things will puck up again soon!

I organised Schulandacht in the Hospital this week! See, there's a school attached to the hospital we live at which teaches people to be nurses or old-folks-home-nurses, and every friday at 7:15am (!) they have a wee service. The thing is, barely any of them are Christian, or from a chruch background, and therefore are only there because they have to be. Tis interesting doing a little 15 minute long service for people who just aren't interested! But it went fine, I did a wee talk about 1 Corinthians 13v1, one of my favourite verses of the bible. And it went ok, I had some funny stuff at the start and actually got them laughing a bit. And afterwards one of the students said that she thought it was a cool sermon. Who knows, maybe something got through!

Then, from Monday to Wednesday of this past week my Mum and Dad were here. That was great! They brought me some things like extra clothes, a pair of football boots, my iStation, my shaving kit, football and movie magazines, a few books, some nibbles, and perhaps most importantly, TEABAGS!

Twas lovely having them here too, they're so encouraging and it was just nice to have some more familiar Northern Irish input for a few days. I showed them around a wee bit, and they got talking to Gillian for a little bit, and we went to the Italian restaurant, my favourite restaurant in Chemnitz, which we found together when they came over last year!

But, alas, once they left on Wednesday night, I started to get really homesick. That's why I entitled this Blog Heimweh, the German word for homesickness. Well, there were a few factors: I'd already been feeling a little down cos a friend of mine's having some problems and I'm not able to be there for her, then Mum and Dad reminded me of how I missed them, then a good friend of my sisters passed away at just 26-years-old on Thursday and my sister's struggling with it and I can't be there for her either. And there's Autumn Soul coming up and I haven't missed it for years. So I'm a little down at the moment, just cos of the homesickness.

But, work goes on, and life goes on here. On Thursday we're going on a trip to Auschwitz. It's like a Young Adults trip combined with visiting the Concentration Camp. So we spend a few days together doing a plan along with spiritual teaching, then we visit the camp, then we have another couple of days with more teaching to help us digest what we've just seen. Should be both a fun but very challenging trip.

I played for FC Arche again yesterday. We drew 1-1, though we probably deserved the win. I was a bit slow to start but had a much better second half. My Dad says it's just lack of match practice.

Played football tonight too, found it amusing how silly some people are when they're trying to be cool: one guy went and changed kit half-way through! He started off in Bayern Munich and when he came back after the drink-break he was wearing Brazil. Why wear two different kits?

I'm now going to go enjoy some of the tea Mother and Father brought me, along with the last of the Dairy Milk they brought me!

God bless you all, wherever you are, whatever you're doing!

Love, your favourite Ginger Nut!