Another Away Message

Dearest Friends and Neighbo(u)rs and Occasional Lurkers!

Well, it’s that time of year again, when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of cleaning cars and slinging a baseball across a field….

Oh— …Wait a sec….. Wrong season. It’s still winter. And wrong gender, considering the fact that I’m female.

Okay, so, I’m writing this to let you all know that I’ll be without Internet access from tomorrow until next Saturday. Tomorrow, after worship service, I’m taking a train to Bremen, a city in northern Germany. Jim and Elsa Springer, who’ve worked with the church in Bremen for about thirty years, offer a Christian leadership training program in German, with one class in the spring and one in the fall. Ed and I took their introductory course last fall, and I’m now taking one of the advanced courses.

Every spring course is different; this year’s happens to be Church History of the First Five-Hundred Years. The class officially started two weeks ago, and we students have been working on assignments at home. During the coming week in Bremen, we’ll have class with Jim eight hours per day (probably about four hours on Saturday). It’s called an “intensive week.” Hmm, I wonder why. ;o) I’ll return back to Chemnitz on the train next Saturday evening.

So far, the at-home assignments have been challenging. For one thing, I’d planned to get a head-start on the reading (a 350-page church history book); on the 50-word glossary we have to compile; and the leadership interview we have to do. But when I was sick for two weeks in February, my brain just wasn’t functioning well enough to do anything intellectual. Thus, I’ve spent the last two weeks frantically trying to catch up, and I’m still not finished. Hopefully, I’ll be able to complete my glossary on the train tomorrow, provided reading-while-moving doesn’t make me sick at my stomach.

For those of you who are the praying type, I’d appreciate your prayers—not just while I’m in Bremen, but also for the duration of the course. Please pray for my health, which is a near-constant trial to me, and for my clarity of thought, so that I can make the most of this opportunity to learn. Over the last few years, I’ve discovered that I enjoy and covet the challenge of being a student, and I’d like to be able to learn this new material well enough that I can use it to help teach more people about Jesus and the truths in God’s Word.

See you on the other side of the week!