Hello, all!Well, here we are in northern Berlin, our home away from home for the next 2.5 months. We have been here for nearly three weeks now. I wanted to write a little update post with a few random thoughts and observations about living in Germany, (albeit short term). These are in no particular order. :)
1. I have actually come to enjoy hanging out the laundry. I thought that would be one of the biggest annoyances about living in Berlin, but really, it hasn't been bad at all! Yes, it takes a lot longer for clothes to dry, especially if it's humid out, but somehow the rhythm of slowing down to hang them out and fold them off of the clothesline is something I've rather enjoyed so far. :) I have a feeling this verdict is heavily affected by the fact that I actually have a covered back porch where I can hang the clothes, haha! If I was continually watching for rain, I would have a hard time getting ANY clothes dried, because it has rained off and on nearly every day since we came!
2. Speaking of weather, God has blessed incredibly in that area. It has gotten up to 80 degrees ONE day since our arrival. Every other day it has been highs of 65-70 degrees. SO nice! This morning it was actually 59, with a stiff breeze and high humidity, so it was actually chilly out...in August!? We have no AC, and were expecting it to be miserably hot in the house nearly the whole time we were here, so every beautiful day is an absolute gift that we are enjoying thoroughly.
3. There are some really surprising things that you can't find here, or are expensive to the point of being impractical to buy. Brown sugar. Chocolate chips. Molasses. Vanilla. All of these are things that I totally took for granted as nearly universal staple ingredients! How do they do without chocolate chip cookies?? ;)
4. That being said, the BREAD here is the best I've ever had in my entire life. There is one particular type that is croissant dough, boiled in soda water like you do when you make soft pretzels, then baked. So it tastes like a pretzel on the outside, and the inside is perfectly buttery, flaky croissant. It's every bit as delicious as it sounds, and we are probably eating far too many of them, but they cost around $0.40, so it's easy to justify, lol.
5. We are walking, a LOT. To give an idea, we've been here just under three weeks, and I've tracked nearly 60 miles of walking on my phone. :O We've been averaging 5-6 miles per day all told. Depending on where we are needing to travel, we walk between 1 and 2 miles to get to bus and train stops, transfers, etc. The buses aren't always super reliable, so several times now we have missed one (or it just hasn't showed up), so we ended up walking the route that we would have taken the bus. It's been really good for us though, both Luke and I have lost weight! He actually had to cut a new hole in his belt the other day. Yay for working off all the bread we are enjoying, haha!! :D
6. Berliners LOVE their flowers and gardens, and it is sooo beautiful to see! I love the huge variety of fruit trees, flowering bushes, roses, etc. that we see as we walk. I've been trying to take a few pictures of them, and may make a post with some of those at some point.
7. It's hard to describe how utterly massive this city is. A few days ago, we were out doing outreach, putting mailers and John/Romans into mailboxes. We walked nearly 5 miles going up and down driveways, stairs, streets, etc., and hit about 500 mailboxes. When we finished we were marking off what we had done, and it was a TINY little triangle of space on a partial map of Pankow. Pankow is one district. Out of 12. :O If you start to think about the vast task of reaching 8 million people in the greater Berlin area, it is overwhelming in the extreme. However, God hasn't asked us to personally reach every person, only to do what we can with the resources we have and the strength He gives us. So that's what we are trying to do! We've been busy preparing for a large outreach effort at the end of August, when a group is coming from the States to help. We have been assembling 15,000 tract packets to hopefully get out during those 10 days, at the end of which there will be a special meeting. We are praying for God to bring visitors and fruit from the labors!
8. I FINALLY feel like I'm starting to get the hang of grocery shopping in German grocery stores. It's still a bit of an overwhelming experience sometimes, because most things have no English on them, and the store is laid out completely different than stores I'm used to. Plus, like I mentioned earlier, several times I've searched high and low for something, only to be told later that it can't be gotten here, lol! But I do think I'm starting to get better at meal planning and buying within a good budget here. It's very different from home, because I have almost no food storage in our Airbnb, besides the countertop. So I'm doing what many Germans do, and walking to the grocery store every 3-4 days with my reusable grocery bags on my arm, and my water/juice bottles ready to return for my deposit. ;) When shopping, I try to be conscious of the fact that I have to carry the heavy bags back home half a mile, so I am careful how much liquid stuff or flour/sugar I buy in one trip, due to weight. I think I'm getting it, though! :)
9. A full night's sleep is a treasure of great price. ;) Our boys have taken a very long time to adjust fully to the 7 hour time difference. Also, Nathaniel is naturally an insomniac, and we now sleep in pretty close quarters (his bed shares a wall with our bedroom). So far, we have only had one entire night of no boys screaming or bouncing against the wall. That's been a challenge, for sure, and we actually ended up separating the boys so they wouldn't wake each other up so often. That helped a little, but things are still pretty rough at night for Nate (and us by extension ;). So we'd sure appreciate prayers in that regard!
10. I absolutely love the house we are staying in. It is a fully detached house at the back of our host's property, in a lovely and quiet area of Berlin. It has tons of big windows, a fully covered but breezy back porch with a table and chairs where we eat often, a ping pong table, TWO bedrooms and bathrooms, a nice sized kitchen...it's an incredible place, especially considering that we originally were looking at having to stay in a one room studio apartment while we were here. Our host has been beyond kind and welcoming to us, and is actually interested in hearing more about the work we are helping with in Berlin, so I am very excited to be able to talk with her more about spiritual things! Please pray for Viola and Andre, and their three kids. I am so hoping and praying that we will see them saved, baptized, and growing in The Lord!
11. The coffee here is......sad. :( You'd think European coffee would be great, but it's actually really hard to find a good cup of coffee anywhere! Almost all the coffee shops sell super watery, weak coffee that is from a Keurig type machine. The other day, I took a half hour train trip to go to a shop that actually had an espresso machine like the coffee shops in the states. ;P It still wasn't the greatest, but definitely better than most of what we've been able to get here. I think I miss my coffee machine more than any other home comfort. ;) It's being looked after and enjoyed by my sweet sis-in-law and her husband, so that makes it a little easier, haha!
12. God is growing us in many ways through this trip. The travel itself was truly nightmarish...the boys didn't sleep a wink for almost 18 hours of the 22 hour travel time, and Luke had just come out of a surprise surgery for kidney stones the DAY before we left, so he had a stent placed and was in a ton of pain the entire trip. The adjustment has been challenging. We miss home and family, a lot. BUT, God has also answered so many prayers in so many unexpected ways, and has carried us through every difficulty, and I don't want to lose sight of that! I've been trying hard to be grateful for all the many ways He has provided for us and worked in our lives. I haven't always succeeded in that, and God has really revealed to me lately how selfish I can be as a wife and mother. :( It can be so easy to let my own comfort or convenience become more important to me than training my children well, or cherishing my husband. By God's grace, I'm working on this every day. I know He isn't finished with us here, and I pray we will be open to however He chooses to use us!
That's all for now...I love you all, and am so deeply grateful for each one that has supported and lifted us up in prayer! That means the world to us!
Mykaela
