Several Things

First of all,

You know peppermint patties?

And you know Andes mints?

And you know Junior mints?

Now, please take all of those and mash their concepts into one beautiful idea in your mouth known as Ritter Sport Pfeffermint.

Now that we have that out of the way, I'd like to grace you with my facebook status and explain myself a bit.

Katie Yackley...hass a squash-ed brain and has today much peoples listened to who speak English not zo gut ant vould like to go for a valk after eaten much delisious noodless vith spaicy ketchups. Dee brains off Katie needs somesing to restructuralize zem and valking helps much. She hass spent too many timess writing dees status!

Today, a combination of the goodness of our hearts, an inability to say no, and an actual legitimate desire to learn something here, caused Karlien and I to assist with the administering of exams. The exam was done in pairs. Students read an economist text (for half an hour before the test) and summarized it for five minutes each, and we asked the partner a comprehension question about the article. Then we asked them two questions each about a topic (five mins per question, in theory) (they had picked out six from the possible 13 they had studied), and then we had them discuss a question on a topic they had both picked for ten minutes. Then we asked them about their future plans, sent them out for a few minutes, decided on their grade, and called them back in.

From 9:30 until 5:30.

I discovered today another superpower I have: I can just stay somewhere for a really long time and not think about leaving and just be OK doing the same thing over and over. Oh geez. In REAL English "today" should go at the beginning, not after the verb... *sigh* They're rubbing off on me!

But yeah...it was a bit tiring, especially since the other examiners were Scottish and Irish respectively, and I had to do some extra language processing there!

Last night was my LAST SUNDAY SERVICE in Dresden. :(

Oh, but I figured out the reason why I can't go to the conference,

*goes back and adds*

Ok, so, there's this conference, and it happens 3 times a year, and it's kind of the staple of these brothers and sisters. The summer conference is happening near Berlin from Aug 20-23. It is the deepest, most heartfelt longing of my church here that every brother and sister would go to the conference. Every time they've "given testimony" (more on that later) for like the past week, they talk about how awesome the conference is and how much we can experience God through it and how much he moves and he's the most important thing and stories of people who eat less to save up for it and pray and pray for a visa and spend months' worth of wages on it. Soooo, time, distance, money, and family, are NOT acceptable "reasons" to not go to the conference. God is better than all of them. I 100% agree and yet for some reason I finally figured out why I've been feeling like I'm not supposed to go...

and it's not family or money or time or distance or any of those very human, unacceptable-when-Jesus-calls reasons. It's the fact that 1. I've learned enough to be going on with and 2. sometimes (a lot of the time), walking with Jesus is just that: Walking. Not looking for "high moments"/"mountaintop experiences." Just walking. Coming back for 3 days in August would be pretty barbaric, sure (and if you don't get precisely what I mean by "barbaric" you have GOT to read The Barbarian Way), but it would kind of be like telling God that he hadn't taught me enough and he hadn't done enough cool stuff this summer. It would be biting off more knowledge than I could chew, because one of the best things I've learned this summer (as of like, sometime last week) is

"You can't learn some things by knowing, you have to learn them by doing."

You can listen to the Bible and hear about God's promises all you want but until you start actually stepping out in faith and trusting those promises to catch you, you're not actually going to get it. As boring as it sounds, I need to put some of this stuff into practice before I can go back and learn more. It's kind of like math--you really need to be able to do basic arithmetic in your sleep before you can do algebra without killing yourself. HOWEVER, I might be able to go to the spring conference. I'm pretty sure then I would jump over all those issues and go no matter what.

So as much as it may sound to my dear friends like I don't want God enough, it's more like he's putting a limit on my consumption. It's rather humbling in a way to be told you have to keep walking at _this level before you can start on -this level, but, that's what I've got. *goes back and adds*

There have actually been several humbling things about being with these people, but I feel like they've given up so much for God and have experienced him so vividly in their lives that I'm willing to just sit and listen. And listen. And listen. We (as in, in the rest of my life...I was trying to avoid saying "Americans" but now the sentence isn't clear) are very careful about not stepping on each others' toes, most of the time, but if they smell a hint of not-quite radically trusting Jesus with everything, they're not unwilling to point it out--gently, but it's THERE nevertheless. Hence, the Year of AwkwardSauce. ;)

I myself am super hesitant to say something that might lead someone to believe that I think they're wrong about something--I've been trained not to make people cry/not to hurt people's feelings/not to come off as an intolerant know-it-all. But, I learned first in the classes we observed and then in church that it's really better to just give people the feedback because if they really want to learn and grow, they'll take it and accept it and incorporate it into their further actions. I tend to just stay quiet and smile and NOT nod if someone says something I know they shouldn't, but, I have a feeling the Holy Spirit might prompt me to be a little more direct in the future...so, really, it's nothing personal. ;) And if you just felt attacked or threatened by that, I promise it's directness because I love you (don't be insecure in how much I care about you!...assuming I know you and you're not just creeping on my blog) and you might want to check how much your attitude is willing to accept criticism/feedback. ;)

So, just to close, here is what a normal church service in Dresden looks like:

Setting: Priska&Chang Yong's apt.

# of people: 4-6.

Time: 2pm-6/7:30ish

Enter--Chit chat, "Sister, would you like something to drink? / Schwester, möchtes Du etwas trinken?"

Begin--"Wir singen zusammen" "Let's sing together" "___<=song number"

Sing for 30-45 mins

OR "Betan wir zusammen" "Let's pray."

Pray for 5-15 mins. The norm is that every person prays, Chang Yong, then Priska, then Ke, then one of us 3 non-founding members. :) But if we just stay silent Chang Yong says, "Amen."

Next: Chang Yong preaches, a little over an hour. Usually. I think. Maybe up to 1.5? Am I exaggerating? Maybe. Am I underestimating? Probably not.

Pray for 10-20 mins. Am I exaggerating? No. Am I underestimating? Possibly.

"Give testimony" : Anyone who wants to says something about what they learned in the sermon or something it relates to from earlier in their walk with God or something cool that happened that day...

Pray for 5-10 mins--sometimes just Chang Yong depending on how strong the Spirit is. Sounds exactly like something they would say and therefore feels weird coming out of my mouth fingers, but, truth.

Sing some more, depending

Eat dinner! Usually consisting of some kind of vegetables in some kind of sauce poured over large quantities of rice, sometimes accompanied by salad, usually by fruit, usually by some kind of other snacky thing, and always by juice.

...Sing some more, depending. ;)

Oh and further, no one has any problem repeating/listening to a Bible story that everyone OF COURSE already knows, because they know some kind of exhortation/teaching/encouragement/challenge is coming at the end and the Bible story has to be told to set it up. Falls under the category of being hungry for the word even if you've heard it a million times before.

So...walking by the Spirit, step by step, one day at a time...not as simple as it sounds but quite beautiful.

In other news, tomorrow we're going to the Hygiene Museum with the whole group (who's here, meaning minus Robyn [already back] and Erin K [in England]) and it's my last Tuesday Bible Study.

And I swear, I SWEAR, that sometime in this week I will find time/energy/will to post 1. Pictures of PrisKeYong 2. Pictures from Dresden adventures (which WILL include some of the profile pix Karlien has been desiring).

So, in order to prevent me from getting a cold, I must now conclude at 11:58 pm on this twenty-sixth of July in the year of Our Lord => AwkwardSauce 2010/ -1. ;)

Sleep well, dear readers!

PS: hannah and I merged our schedules (Hannah merged Hannah and my schedules) and it looks like the ECC (English Conversation Club, alternately pronounced ee see see or ECK!) will be at 2 on Tues or Thurs. :-D

PPS: uhhhh...I forget...Oh, we also really need to have a weekly jam night/afternoon/time this coming semester. OK? OK. Cool. Add that to the list of things you're doing this fall. OK? OK. BAM. I'm printing a couple copies of the h2o songbook for maximal ease of playing and singing. :-D

good night for realz nowz! (that was a shout out to the Quester. AKA, Erin K)

tchuss!