Sunday, May 5th

Hello!

Yesterday morning we left for the festival, Cristival, in Brenem. Our hour long trip took us along the autobahn before we landed in some huge parking lot among thousands of other Christians about our age. What we thought was a free event ended up being €35 each, but it was money well spent. We started out by going through a large warehouse type room that had a couple hundred exhibits set up from different international and national Christian organizations. I knew that YoungLife was international and in Germany, so I was on the prowl from the beginning to find their booth. Now let me back up...when I was in Dallas about a month ago, I stayed with a family who is very active in their local YL. All three of their kids participated and worked in YL and now this couple still goes to camp and attends club weekly. Their son is planning on coming to Germany this fall to work with YL here for 3 yrs! One of their good friends (from Dallas) now is very active in the German YL as well and I saw his family pic on their fridge...anyways, because of this distant connection I thought I may be able to stike up a convo if I found them. Well, at last! There was the YL booth. It was pretty simple and I started looking at the pamphlets and stuff when a guy named Michael introduced himself to me as the rep. I told him I was interested in finding them since my boyfriend volunteered for several years in college and did all the stuff in high school as well. Then out of the blue, to make myself seem somewhat knowledgeable about them and like I was on the incrowd I said, 'Hey, do you know Dave Martin?' (the man on the fridge of the Dallas family) He goes, 'Yea! That's my boss.' Sweet, huh? Then after Michael told Claudia where he was from, she asked him if he happened to know one of her distant relatives (her brother-in-law's cousin) and he said, 'Yea, he's my roommate.' A few minutes later the roommate-distant relative showed up. It's a small world after all...

Most of the day is a blur to me right now. So much was in German and the group I was with primarily spoke in German. They are very nice and ask me questions and stuff but I know it slows them down to not speak their native tongue. I did go to an English speaking event by myself for 2 hours that I thoroughly enjoyed. If you know me well you will know that I was fine being by myself, so don't think, 'Awww...she was alone.' They had 3 different individuals or couples speak on what they do for missions whether it is in their backyard or across the globe. A young couple from the UK said they spent a year in the Phillippines doing mission work before they started their careers and found several thousand inprisioned children due to petty crimes. With their legal background they were able to help free one young boy who was in jail for sniffing glue. It is obviously a very sad situation but they are still trying to free more.

After that we ended up staying for the Matt Redmond concert even though we hadn't planned on it. After an exhausting day we left and I got in my bed at bout 2:00am. We knew we would be too tired to make it to church today so I slept 'til 11 and got up for a minute and woke up again at 1:30! I don't know what my deal is because I am always tired. But here I go again at 11:45 when I should be in bed. One thing is that if I want to talk to anyone back home I have to stay up and another thing is that I think I relax more away from my daily routine. When I am at my aunt's and uncle's lakehouse in GA, I melt into a blob, and the same thing when I go to Kent's family's house.

TODAY:

We had a BBQ at their home today with all 6 of their children. How cool! The oldest 4 all have are either married or dating and they brought them along, too. The only boy (and the oldest sibling) had his two adorable kids...I don't know who to spell the 2.5 year old girl's name...Carlotta Bella maybe. The 7 month old son's name is Kjeel, pronounced like the ending part of Ezekiel. From 1-8 the house was full and we all ate together outside in the beautiful sun on their new front porch. After the meal we played this give called Wikingspiel or something close to it. It took 2 hours! It's a little like horseshoes, but with no horseshoes...haha, you basically throw wooden blocks and try to hit the other team's. It was very fun but took a while for my team to win! (I was no help to my team...Mr. Spincke takes MVP.) Claudia went on to church and her older sister offered to take me to see the Elbe which is a very big river that goes through Hamburg. It was just amazing. I videotaped a lot, hoping to be able to show everyone the extremely steep and never ending narrow stairs we went down to get along the riverside. Bikers, couples, rollerbladers, walkers, people dining were all around although it was not a busy atmosphere. The property of these homes and apartments must be out the roof! We saw the sun go down and continued our walk back up and went a different route. This time we went up a street called Wereveg (I totally butchered that) that is famous because it is an extremely steep incline and is in a famous bike race in Hamburg. I felt the burn just from walking it!

Well, that is my day. It was fun. How was yours? I love email so please send me something that is going on with you. A day without an email is kind of like a day without food...chew on that. Hahahahha