May 1

Every May 1st is a holiday.

Before you ask, yes we know, Germany has A Lot of holidays. In some states, people get to stay home from school and work for Mary´s ascension, this is a day we never knew existed, or that anyone celebrated it.

However, May 1st has been a traditonal holiday in other places, including the US ( anyone remember learning about children dancing around the May pole). What is celebrated though, we can´t tell you, only that people go to the forest or somewhere out of the cities to grill and relax.

Calvary Chapel Dusseldorf spent their May 1st together grilling in the garden of the Mendes Reis family. Marcelo and Sylvane have been a part of the church since we started 2 years ago, and they own a garden outside of the city where we all met for food and fun.

Marcelo enjoys the fruit of his labors.

The weather was perfect, the meat tasted great, and after an intense game of boys verses girls soccer, we all sat down to some sweet fellowship.

Please pray for Cornelius. He is a friend of Marcelo and Sylvane that came for the day. He is seeking God, and believes in Jesus, but has no relationship with Him. Anne was able to talk with him for a long time this day. In his own words to Edmund,`Your wife preached to me, but in a good way, sometimes we need to be preached at.` He said he had a lot to think about. Please pray that the Lord would bring an end to his search... `Seek Me and you will find Me when you search for me with your whole heart.`Jeremiah 29:13

We have not made plans yet, but this Sunday will be Pentecost, we get Monday off from school and work, Karis`school gets Tuesday off as well, for good measure. Remember, the tenth commandment, `Do not covet your neighbor...`, or your friends in Germany when they get so many holidays.

We are Celebrating!

We have now been married 10 years! That is something to celebrate.

We have become so keenly aware in these last years that every day is a gift from God, especially every day that we wake up in love with the person next to us.

What is exciting and a little bit scary (in a cling to the Lord sense), is we know that the best, most exciting, and extremely challenging years are yet to come.

10 years...still laughing! (Do we look older?)

Make new Friends...Keep the old...

We have been praying recently for friends for our kids.

Karis always has some one to play with. She talks to any child that she has met or has seen with someone she has met, and has many kids that she likes to play with.

However, that is not the same thing. We have spent some time praying for a friend for our kids that is also a good influence on them.

They met some really cool kids recently (cool in our definition, nice, polite, fun)

We went to the leadership conference in Siegen and they had tons of fun. What was great for us is that Kaleb met Eddi. Eddi is 6 and seems to like to play the same stuff as Kaleb (boy stuff).

There is a catch, Eddi and his sister, who Karis loved to play with, live in Kaiserslautern, about 3 hours drive.

C'est la vie...

We forgot to be specific about where we needed friends for the kids, city and street names.

On the other side, this is another reason we love these conferences, not just for ourselves, but our kids get to meet friends that they look forward to seeing again every year.