As we head into our fifth week here, Ethan and I have started to narrow in on the most impactful ministry, figure out where to spend our time, and how best to deepen our relationships here 🙂

Since my last update, we have enjoyed trying new things and returning to the others, like packing & distributing food to homeless people, making food at a soup kitchen, working at an environmental market, spending time at a special needs/rehabilitation home for young adults, attending a German-learning cafe, and getting to know people at various community events. We have also cherished many days with the kids at an emergency refugee shelter by our apartment, painting/setting up a library at another mental-institution-now-refugee-shelter, and more recently found another home down the street to get involved at.

Last weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to visit two of my closest YWAM friends (from Norway and Finland) in Norway! My Finnish friend met us for the Norwegian National Day (lots of parades, traditional dress, ice cream, and fireworks), a day in Denmark, and then a gorgeous hike in the West Norwegian mountains and fiords (ocean water that stretches like rivers super far inland)! We’ve also had 2 other YWAM friends (from Germany and Netherlands) come to visit us in Berlin for a few days and loved joining in our volunteering!

We have really found a home at the ICF Berlin church as weekend greeters and mid-week project helpers! The people have welcomed us with such big arms! We have also started to create awesome friendships through the English learning cafe where we teach twice a week, went out to dinner with people from 6 countries the other night, and even had 2 Syrian guys over to make us a traditional dinner last week! These guys are incredible to get to know, hear their stories, and really start to understand the culture and journey here. Ethan had a blast with them at a Hertha soccer game last weekend too! Meeting people here has been so easy and extremely interesting as they are all so different! We have met German residents from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, England, America, Australia, Russia, Singapore, China, Korea, India, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Albania, Turkey, Palestine, and Israel!! Its amazing to watch my worldview being reshaped with all these great people adding such color! In all my encounters and experiences I see God as a more dynamic, yet constant God, so clearly active in every life!

I have completely fallen in love with this city and all the people I’ve met in it. I might need some good reasons to come home in a few weeks or else I might never leave… Haha just kidding (kind of), but really the welcoming, vibrant, diverse culture here is so evident everywhere I go, tempting me to stay 🙂 Excited to see what these last few weeks hold as we focus in on…

• refugee shelters – the kids who run to us with beaming smiles as we come to love on them, the security guards who are for some reason almost as excited as the kids to see us (shouting “the Americans! our latte-skinned friends!”), and the coworkers who have become such great friends with awesome insight into the crisis and personal situations here
• english learning cafés – times of learning, not just a language, but a mutual exchange of culture and perspectives, a door to deep conversations detailing horror stories of losing family members running across borders, lost faith, seeking community, adapting to an opposite environment, and trying to live each day alone, foreign, or simply feeling different
• church – like described before, ICF has fully embraced us and we love helping out however we can, encouraging a body of believers in a city of 1% Christians
• visioneers – an organization providing after-school programs, family-matching, and God’s love to refugee teenagers sent to Germany without families
• who knows what else God will throw our way! amidst our plans, we are always praying for guidance and trying to go where He leads, so I’ll update you soon on how that all goes… 🙂