There’s a nice article at www.chog.org written by one of the summer interns of 2010 that spent time with the XZ Berlin team here.  The Varners and Philips make up the U.S. part of this German and American community.  The article is here.

Photo: the Newlyweds get harassed.  Below: Aaron and Nicole are “Baby Warner” with Nicole doing the feet and hands and Aaron as the face.

Photo: Marco and Renee think it’s pretty funny to watch Uncle Aaron be publicly humiliated.

Photo: I am not amused by the immaturity.

That’s right, we had a party for Aaron and Nicole this weekend.  A lot of people from around Berlin came to celebrate their marriage.  Kelley and Rhonda Philips did a great job of hosting a wonderful evening.  There were people from France, Chile, Japan, Germany, USA, Czech Republic, and other places.  It was quite the international gathering.

It was pretty neat to meet a Japanese-American jazz musician (currently playing with Christopher Cross) whose father lives in Costa Rica (just like mine).  His wife from Tokyo spent time teaching in Costa Rica and loved it.

Nicole is settling in real well and we’re happy to have her on the team.  She is super sharp.

Well, I must go—we have guests that just arrived to stay with us.

Photo (L to R):  Aaron, Nicole, Ruth (Aaron’s next door neighbor), and German XZ community member

On Thursday, we headed off to the airport with Kelley Philips to pick up Aaron and Nicole Varner.  Aaron and Nicole make up the youngest part of our Three-Worlds team.  Both are in their 20′s and its exciting to see them involved in cross-cultural ministry.  Aaron has been living in Berlin for just under a year, and he and Nicole just got married this past July.  They were kind enough to let us stay in their flat while they were on their honeymoon.

Both of them are highly intuitive, very smart young people with great business and organizational skills.  We’re really excited to have them here.  They will be a part of the XZ Berlin minstry which is based here in Berlin.  This community reaches out to the people of Berlin in love and service.  In addition to that, we will be using them regionally, dispatching them to places like France, England and Egypt to meet the young people and help to create ways to re-vitalize ministries in Europe and the Middle East.  We’re sending them to London in a few weeks to lend support to the church there.

This is an example of the way we are changing the use of our missionaries.  Instead of them being tied to one country or one ministry as the sole gatekeepers, we are instead using our  missionaries to work in some kind of local supportive ministry, but to also have a regional presence where they can help to tackle the CHOG’s most pressing issues:  the lack of youth involved in church and ministry, the lack of emerging leaders under 40, and a lack of inner-connectivity.  Without these 3 challenges being addressed, there’s not much point in doing anything else.  Consequently, we are using all of our missionaries to strengthen these things not only in the area where they serve, but in our whole region of Europe and the Middle East.

We want the actual needs on the ground (and in the region) to drive how our missionaries are used, as opposed to just slipping them into a default model whether that is helpful or not.  We’re excited to have such sharp team members who can not only speak into the needs of the younger generations, but they are from that generation themselves.

Welcome Aaron and Nicole!

Photo:  Arriving at Tegel International Airport.

Photo:  XZ community members decorated their home in anticipation of their arrival.

For those of you that receive our regular newsletter, you may be wondering what happened to us.  Well, the Chinatimes Newsletter has been officially retired and will be replaced by the Three Worlds Journal.

The first edition of the Three Worlds Journal has been completed for over 2 months, however, we have been waiting for our main computer to arrive from the USA and are still facing a few technical glitches.  We are hoping to have those solved within days and the new newsletter should finally go out.

We like the look of the new newsletter and the vast majority of you will be receiving it via email–which is faster, cheaper, and better for the environment.

Slowly but surely, we are starting to get into gear.  We have a big fall planned so we hope to be up and running this week in our correspondence and everything else.   Thanks for being patient.  We’ll get there.

Remember the first day of school?  Until I was a sophomore in high school, I always got real nervous on the first day of school.  The new people, the uncertainty about what it will be like, the fear of not making friends.

Today is Marco’s first day at his new school in Germany and I’ve been more nervous than him.  Actually, he has been a bit uneasy, but he is hiding it well.  Over a year ago we applied to a school called John F. Kennedy which would give Marco  (as a US citizen) free tuition.  Of course this would be most convenient in our situation.  We have been hoping and praying that he would get into JFK.

Alas, it did not happen, so now Marco will be attending a private international school called Berlin Brandenberg International School (BBIS).

Yesterday was the new student (and parent) orientation day, so we took off as a family to begin this new academic journey.

BBIS is a school in a beautiful setting.  It has the largest campus in all of Europe—much of it is forest.  It has a brand new, state of the art gymnasium, and has only been open since 1990. It’s located in a gorgeous suburb about 15 minutes from our house.  There are 900 students from K-12 coming from 50 countries.

Both Jamie and I attended international schools as kids.  For those of you that are not familiar with international schools, they are pretty interesting places.  They are usually filled with the kids of diplomats, business people, missionaries, and others who move around from country to country.  The quality of education is almost always very high and the service is usually excellent.

In Hong Kong, Marco attended an international school, but the student body was about 95% local Hong Kong Chinese.  Here at BBIS, the student body is truly global and diverse.  The list of names in Marco’s class is very exotic.

We went to the orientation yesterday (oh, I was nervous) and we were really impressed.  They did a great job not only telling us about the school but actually talking about adjustment issues for international kids, as well as different learning styles.  This was all very re-affirming for us coming from the more inflexible Asian context.

And then, the best part was when we went to meet Marco’s new teacher.  She’s from Toronto and spent 4 years teaching IN HONG KONG!!!  We were thrilled about this!  And she was thrilled to have a student from HK.  It’s such a unique experience and it has such an impact—the Asian educational system–that we assumed that his teacher wouldn’t get it.  To find out that his teacher not only gets it, but actually lived in Hong Kong was truly a huge blessing.  I think all 3 of us were so relieved. Jamie said she got chills, I got teary.

Then Marco made his first friend, a very cute boy from London who just arrived in Berlin this week.  We let them play on the playground for a while and they really hit it off.

We all came home very relieved and happy. Even though this adds a significant amount to our budget, we did all we could do and we’ll just trust that this is the right place for now.

The cuties.

Spying on Marco and his new friend.  Marco is in the red shirt and his new friend from London is holding the basketball.

Ready for his first day of 2nd grade.  They grow up so fast!  I’m going to cry now.

I love the blue track.  Blue is the school color.

Okay, problem fixed.  You can now check out Episode 2 of Gateway Berlin Radio.

In this episode, host Patrick Nachtigall brings us a blast from the past.

Also:  Remembering Emmy Lou , checking out strange but true headline news from around the world in the “Around the Horn” segment.  In the In-Depth segment: we look at the city of Singapore with our guest co-host and summer intern Jael Tang. Finally, a World-Cup Roundup with Greg Dorr.

Listen Here.

Our days are spent running around setting up shop.  Going to the electric company one day, continuing our futile attempt to get cell phones another day, setting up furniture, looking at cars, sorting through school papers, trying to get our shipment through customs, registering as residents of Germany and walking like crazy.  It goes on and on like this for now.  Each day we know the city a little bit better and my feet get more and more sore.  But nearly everyday it has been sunny and about 75 degrees for the past 6 weeks.  Perfect right?

NO!!!  You all know I hate the sun.  I like clouds, grey, and gloom.  I am assured that this will be the average day in Berlin once September arrives.  Good.

But there’s another reason that I am looking forward to a killer German winter:  Bees.  They are everywhere in this city.  Is it because Berlin is such a green place–full of parks and these obnoxious things called flowers? Is that why?

I don’t know, but a week ago Monday, we were walking by the lake with Rod Stafford when I was VIOLENTLY ASSAULTED by a BEE!   The bee relentlessly attacked me and stung me near my elbow.

We’ve seen so many bees (kind of new to Marco who has been living in a nature free one for 10 years), that I have been sharing with Marco the story of the only time I was stung by a bee.  It was in 7th grade when I had no confidence and was an ALL-TIME LOSER DORK.  I was getting on the bus and a bee buzzed my neck.  I LOATHE insects so I swatted at him and he stung me in the neck.

I was so stunned.  I had never been stung before and it really hurt when I was 11 years old.  So, I put my sky blue jacket (you never forget these things) on my neck and wanted to cry. I got on the school bus and some kid said:  ”Hey look, he got stung by a bee.”  And everyone laughed and the bus driver said, “Are you okay” which only embarassed me further.

It was the longest bus ride of my life.  I remember getting off the bus and running home to my mom.  She could tell I was traumatized and humiliated and poured on the love.  I can still remember how good it felt to have my mom there for me when I came home.  Yeah, I know..what a wimpy loser.  There’s a reason I had no friends in 7th grade.

Well, I’ve been telling Marco this story to prepare him for the day in Germany when he gets his first bee sting (seriously, there’s so many flying around it’s only a matter of time).  Well, sure enough…the bees don’t go for Marco, but they VIOLENTLY, ATTACKED ME IN A VICIOUS MANNER LEAVING ME SCARRED AND WOUNDED AGAIN!

The sting hurt for 2 days, but it didn’t stop itching until a week later.  Nature is overrated.

But seriously, I can’t believe the amount of bees (and insects) here. I thought it would be more like Oregon where you just don’t see the bugs that often.  But here, they are everywhere. Yesterday I was having lunch with some guy in the absolute center of Berlin—the heart of the concrete jungle—and we were being harassed by bees.

I know we need bees for nature, and pollination, and stupid stuff like that–but I hope they all die.  Vicious creatures!

There’s a short little article at Chog.org about two members of our Three-Worlds crew (The Simpsons) who took two of their Bulgarian friends to the International Youth Convention of the Church of God in Orlando.  Check it out! .  It was an amazing experience for the Bulgarians.

Hundreds of thousands of you have written in to say that Episode 2 of Gateway Berlin Radio is not working when you try and play it.  Well, that happens when you have over 1 million people trying to access something on the web.  Anyway, we are on the case.  Hopefully that will be fixed.

In light of the last post about German/Chinese differences and similarities–I thought you might find it interesting to know that I am sitting at a Starbucks in Berlin right now watching a bunch of Germans of all ages doing Tai-Chi in the park.  Weird.  Globalization.

PHOTO:  Marco enjoying a walk in downtown Berlin with his Father.

We are still waiting to get internet in our home…and cell phones…and quite a few other things.  We’re about 5 or 6 weeks into our move to Germany and there’s still a long way to go before our home is truly settled.  In fact, I don’t think everything will be in place for another couple of months.  We had our first visitor the very morning after we spent our first night in our new home.  Our next visitors are scheduled to come in about 2 or 3 weeks or so—so the race is on to get things furnished and prepared for guests.

This is quite different than Hong Kong where within 3 days, you can pretty much have your home functioning and fully operational.  Even more than the United States, Hong Kong demands that things be done very quickly and efficiently.  Of course Germany is also known for its efficiency and organization–compared to the rest of Europe—but Hong Kong is in a league of its own.

There are lots of other differences and similarities between the cultures.  Both German and Chinese cultures like following the rules, like things to be well-organized, and expect a pretty high level of conformity.  Neither culture is known for its spontaneity or fun-loving demeanor.  They are usually considered pretty “Serious” people compared to Italians, or Middle Easterners or most Latin Americans.  It is the South Americans of European descent (Chileans, Uruguayans, Argentinians) that often don’t have the same kind of Latin demeanor of the Brazilians, Columbians and “warmer” spanish cultures.

But there are lots of differences between Chinese culture and German culture as well (obviously), and plenty of differences between Germany and Hong Kong.

The most obvious one is the space.  Most Germans live in pretty rural areas with plenty of nature.  Berlin, which is one of the greenest and most environmentally-conscious cities in the whole world (filled with parks and gardens and land that is kept away from developers) is considered urban and non-green by most Germans.  Yet unlike HK, even the cities here have truly functional nature areas accessible to everyone.

And of course the speed of life here is so much slower.  People ride their bikes everywhere—and a trip to buy food may entail stopping off at a few quaint looking shops in the town square where you get your meats, breads, and pastries at different locations.  In HK, everything is done as fast as possible.  In fact, we are still in the habit of sprinting onto trains as if we are running “the Amazing Race.”  That’s HK style.

Marco is greatly enjoying all of the green space and parks.  I think he also really likes the silence of the neighborhoods.  No jack-hammers here—-just the sounds of trees and birds.  I think he feels very relaxed.

The other day we were in a train station in Berlin and it was QUIETER than the inside of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  It was full, but extremely quiet.  Silence is valued here.  In Hong Kong noise abounds because “loud is happy.”  I just could not believe how incredibly quiet that train station was.

In fact, Americans can stick out like a sore thumb here.  Americans (like the Cantonese but not quite to the same degree) are a pretty loud people and are used to talking at a high volume.  Sometimes on the trains, you can hear Americans speaking way louder than everyone else and people look around and think to themselves:  ”Man, those Americans are loud.”

A big difference that is killing me is that Coke here is made with sugar (like it used be in the USA before they switched to corn syrup or whatever that is they use that’s poisonous and totally bad for you).  I weaned myself off of Coke this Spring.  But I haven’t found any drinks I really like in Germany.  So, I went back to Coke.  It’s so sweet so now I’m going to have to get the coke monkey off my back again.

Well this whole diary entry was just to say that we are still waiting for our internet to get hooked up.  So we will try to continue posting as often as we can.  But it’s not as easy to be online as it used to be. They told us it would take 3 days to get our internet or something—but I think here–it might mean 3 or 4 weeks or something like that.

But what I’ve noticed is not how dependent We have become on the internet—but how dependent EVERYTHING has become on the internet.  It’s the way businesses and people and banks and everything else prefers to operate.  So even if you like life without the internet—and sometimes I do—-nobody else does including the companies and service providers you have to deal with.  So life in this modern world is truly becoming dependent on access to the web to a ridiculous degree.  If the net ever went down or got attacked–a lot of us would be in trouble.  Everyone except the Masai—who, of course, would probably not be the exception because they would be made that they can’t find out the latest cattle prices on their cell phone.  No joke.

Well, time to check my favorite websites while I have limited internet access

Hey folks!  The latest broadcast (#2) of Gateway Berlin Radio is now online.

GATEWAY BERLIN RADIO (EPISODE 2)

In this episode, host Patrick Nachtigall brings us a blast from the past.

Also:  Remembering Emmy Lou , checking out strange but true headline news from around the world in the “Around the Horn” segment.  In the In-Depth segment: we look at the city of Singapore with our guest co-host and summer intern Jael Tang. Finally, a World-Cup Roundup with Greg Dorr.

To Listen Go to the Gateway Berlin Radio page or the front page at three-worlds.com

We live close to a large lake named “Wansee.”  It’s big enough that ferries go across it and there are 6 hour boat tours offered of the lake.  Yesterday we took one of the ferries out and crossed the lake and walked along this path with our good friend Rod Stafford.  We’ve walked down some roads together—some pretty, like this one in Berlin, and others not so pretty.

We sure appreciate all of you that are supporting us here at Three Worlds.  Thanks.  Internet will be a bit hit-and-miss as we wait for installation in our new home.  But we will be up and running soon and it may not seem any different.  Hopefully the latest episode of Gateway Berlin Radio will be posted in the coming days.  Stay tuned.

A photo of our new home in Berlin, Germany. There are 4 families in this building and we’re on the second floor.

Some of you that know Marco, know that he is a talker.  If you’ve only seen the shy Marco, then you haven’t spent enough time around him.  The other day Marco and I were running some errands the other day.  We had a lot of things to do and, as usual, Marco had a lot of things to say.  He talked and talked and talked.  In fact, he talked for 100 minutes straight without stopping.  I mean, there was barely a pause for breath the entire time.  It was amazing.  Sometimes I listened, at other times I observed as an outsider and was just kind of amazed, at other times I tuned out, and at other times I was laughing.  It was 100 minutes non-stop.

At one point he stopped and said, “wow, this mouth of mine doesn’t stop.”  But then he was immediately back into it.  Topics covered were Star Wars, of course, famous monsters, what his monster movie “the Return of the Creature of the Pacific Ocean” will be like, how the  make-up will be applied, and the differences between the Asian school system and the Western school system.

I love my boy.

My little monster in front of the train station a couple of blocks from our new home.

If you had told when I was in Jr. High that in the year 2010 I would be flying in a jetson’s-like spaceship and having robots doing my housekeeping I completely would have believed you.  If you had told me that in the year 2010, I would be living in Germany and watching the 1958 movie “the Blob” on my laptop computer with my 7 year old son—because HE WANTS TO WATCH “the Blob”—-I never would have believed you.  Alas, things in the past are not that different from things in the future.

Marco has been really interested in monsters lately.  His problem is he doesn’t want to see scary monsters which leads him to ask me to find monster movies from the 1930′s, 40′s, and 50′s. So all of a sudden–out of nowhere—I’m becoming an expert on old Dracula films, Frankenstein, the Blob, and Jason and the Argonauts.  Man alive, kids throw such curve balls at you.

We watched Jason and the Argonauts the other day.  Ever since Marco was very young, I’ve shared with him other religions’ myths.  This is a child that grew up walking past Buddhist statues, Hindu Temples, Muslims prostrating on the ground as they pray to Allah—and we have both always wanted him to understand the world around him—not run from it in fear.

Ever since he was young, he could identify key ideas in myths and link them to Christianity.  Whether its Star Wars or an ancient Greek myth, he finds the parallels and can contrast/critique it against Christian ideas.  I’ve always felt that if our ideas are so strong and true, then they shouldn’t cower in fear in the face of other religions or beliefs which is why I wrote my first book Passport of Faith: A Christian’s Encounter with World Religions; the book I am still the most proud of.

The religious stories and myths that people tell do help them makes sense of the world and often reflect past events.  The Ancient Greek myth of the minotaur (half man half bull) and the maze where he killed his captives reflected the suffering that the Athenians had suffered under the brutal invasions of the dominant Cretans that captured Athenians and sacrificed them.  The minotaur story was a way of demonizing their enemies and asserting their power through story.

Even a monster as goofy (but super-cool) as Godzilla helped a society understand its past and form its future.  Godzilla was a monster created as the result of nuclear radiation.  This giant lizard creature comes out of the sea and wrecks havoc on Tokyo–making trains and buildings look like pathetic little toys.  He inflicts massive carnage on Japanese cities.  What’s up with that?  Well, he entered the Japanese consciousness less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely disintegrated by American Atomic bombs.  Godzilla was a way for Japan to deal with the trauma of having two cities completely obliterated.  Think of how 9/11 has scarred the United States.  Now imagine Houston and Denver just disappearing from the Earth in a blink of an eye.  That is something that needs to be processed.  And that’s what Godzilla did for Japan.  In following movies he became a defender of Japan against other terrible, destructive monsters.

In the Bible, there is a story about a funny, strange prophet named Jonah.  It was written in a time of insecurity. As always, Israel was surrounded by hostile bigger powers and these foreign peoples were demonized.  But as is often the case with the Old Testament (Jewish literature), what looks like a typical, traditional story is actually subverted and taken in a completely different direction.

The way the story should go is that the prophet Jonah should go preaching to the people of Israel to follow their God.  Instead God asks the prophet to go preach to the evil people of Ninevah.  But they are not the chosen people and they are evil, so Jonah flees.  As we all know, his attempts to escape are futile and he is even swallowed by a whale who pukes him up on a beach.  When Jonah finally gets to Ninevah, the people actually obey him (as opposed to Israel which often does not), and Jonah then pouts about it. He’s NOT happy that people listened to him and will be saved from destruction.  He was hoping for a Godzilla-like ending, a Tokyo-smashing finale.

The attempt at creating myth to demonize the other is totally subverted in the Jonah story.  And that is often how the Bible works–it parallels the ancient myth structures and then completely takes it into a different direction.  And of course, they are often far more layered than traditional religious stories and myths.  For instance, Jonah very obviously foreshadows the arrival of Jesus who also will spend 3 days in the belly of the Earth before having his message widely accepted by Gentiles, thus bringing the act of God’s redemption for all peoples into a more concrete and expansive phase.

Marco now will be living in a city with every kind of religion imaginable–and lots of people that completely ignore religion.  So we (he and I)  learn about Gods & Monsters and the way they point toward a deep, human need to understand truth and have a concrete moral compass upon which to base one’s identity and choices.  So there’s a place for Perseus, Medusa, Jason, and Godzilla.  We don’t demonize because that would be violating the spirit of the Book of Jonah.  We are not called to run toward Tarshish with our fear, and condemnation, and demonization, but to go toward Ninevah with a great message–a hopeful message.

Now if only we could find deep, existential meaning in the ideas, philosophies, and behavior of “the Blob.”

Yesterday we signed on a new home.  It’s in the Berlin suburb of Nikolasee.  It’s a gorgeous area, full of green areas, parks, lakes and lots of lovely things to remind you that nature is all around.  All three of us love it.  If you look at the picture above, our home is where the yellow tack is located.  Just above that is a green “S” which is the train station and the location of the town’s cute downtown center.  It looks like a college campus.  Although it looks far on this google photo, the distance from our home to that train station/center of town is a 3 minute walk.

To the left of the photo is a picture of  the large lake Wansee that even has beaches.  That is about a 10 to 15 minute walk and the Nikolasee lake is just 5 minutes past the “S” in the center of the town square.  Just to the right of the yellow thumb tack is a large park which you can see if you look closely.  So on our bicycles we are about 5 minutes away from two large lakes and a park.

After living for the past decade in a place with 35,000 neighbora and not even insects to go collecting with Marco, we are feeling pretty happy to have nature in our lives again.  Psychologically and physically it’s a very important thing—and spiritually also.

Care for a boat ride on the small lake by our house?  It’s only 9 Euro for 4 people.

More photos of the small lake by our house.  It would have been even prettier from the other side and with a decent photographer.

Here’s where Jamie and I can take walks everyday if we want.  Does someone want to come over and baby sit Marco?  We’ll miss Grace, Lolo and Louh Ge not watching Marco.  Well school starts soon so…

On Thursday it was time to say “goodbye” to our Gateway Berlin Intern Jael Tang.  For those of you that listened to the Gateway Berlin Radio podcast, you got to hear from Jael as she helped co-host the show.  Jael was here for nearly 3 months and traveled all around Germany learning about the different kinds of churches and ministries that exist in the Church of God here.  I know she absolutely fell in love with this place—it’s kind of hard not to.  She was sad to go and we were sad to see her go.

She did a fantastic job of integrating into the culture.  Coming from a place like Singapore, you kind of have to learn to navigate different cultures—-something we explore in the upcoming Episode 2 of GB Radio.  She had a great spirit about being involved and was willing to help out anyone.

She’s also a cheeky one—-a little smart aleck—so she fit in real well with this Three-Worlds/Berlin team.

Jael was also a good jeh-jeh (big sister) to Marco while she was here and he was sad to see her go.  Jael will go back to the Anderson University School of Theology and finish her Master’s degree.  Of course she is welcome here anytime.

Thanks for setting the bar so high for future interns Jael!

Let’s go back to 1980 when I was a kid—and African-American music was still super awesome.  I loved this song as a kid and still love it now.  It’s too bad that so much African-American music is now dependent on computers and technology doing away with a lot of the beautiful voices, harmonies, and great musicianship.

I have a whole rant about this that I promised to go into at Chinatimesonline.com but I may save it for an episode of GBR.  It’s a sad thing that we’ve lost musicianship from R & B.  It’s a big deal.  At least to me.

A group of teens by the bonfire as the sun gets ready to go down at 9PM.

The blue tent where services are held.

Getting ready to sing a song.

Finally—a nice blurry photo.  He takes after his Dad.

We went to visit the German Teen Camp last Sunday.  It was an easy 1 hour 20 minute ride to Braunschweig where we were met by Pastor Victor and his wife Ute.  He is German, but from Argentina (lots of German immigrants to Argentina), so the bulk of the day was spent speaking in Spanish. I have loved that about Germany.  This language I never get to speak is suddenly everywhere.  Victor and Ute are absolutely wonderful and I always feel very at home at their place.

After lunch we drove by the camp for 9-12 year olds.  It was out in the German woods, but the whole thing was built to look like an old Western town, complete with saloon and jail and all of that.  It was so cute.  The kids and counselors are camping out in the Wild Wild West.

From there we went to the Teen Camp where I got to re-connect with a lot of the teens, college kids, and seminary students I have become friends with over the past 4 years in Germany.  They still remember all the stories I told when I have spoken to them on previous visits.  It’s amazing.  I’ll see many of these kids in September and October when I attend some upcoming conferences.  That will be great.  We’ve invited them all to stay with us in Berlin anytime they want.  Our home will be very open to youth.

Marco had a blast playing with the kids—getting soaked—and enjoying nature.  He was pretty sad to have to leave the camp behind.  I think he is very ready to be settled and have friends to play with.  Poor guy.  Always stuck with Mom and Dad.

The drive out to the camp was lovely.  The roads in the country were so gorgeous—the classic European scenery.  I was salivating at the thought of being able to drive up and down the roads of Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria in the coming year.  That will be awesome.

Jael–our Berlin intern for the summer of 2010 has been helping at the camp and did an awesome job.  Everyone loved her.  Unfortunately, today is her last day.  We will be taking her out for a farewell dinner about an hour from now.  I know she is very sad to say goodbye to this awesome place with all the great people–and we are sad to see her go as well.  It won’t be the same without her.  Oh well—Jael, you are always welcome back.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the “latest” episode of Gateway Berlin Radio.  The 2nd episode is already in the can, but it won’t be posted for a couple of weeks yet.  Sound quality should be better on Episode 2.

The weather finally cooled for a bit here in Berlin.  It dropped to 71 degrees from the high 90′s where it has been since we arrived.  What joy, what bliss to feel my favorite weather—cloudy, cool, with the threat of rain.  Marco’s from Hong Kong so he prefers the heat.

Meanwhile, we are still busy looking for our new house or apartment.  We’ve seen a lot of places.  We lost one that we all really loved.  Oh well.  Now we’ve found another that we all really like and are officially applying for it.  I don’t know if we’ll get it or not.  We’re prepared for whatever happens.  There’s another that’s come online that looks interesting.

It’s going to take a while to really set up home here.  My guess is that it won’t be until October that wherever we live will be truly settled and feel like home.  But that’s okay.  We are wayfarin’ strangers.   So that’s fine.

Marco sure has been patient with all the upheaval.  He’s doing great.

Tomorrow we take a train ride to Braunschweig where we meet up with some friends.  This will be my third time there.  I really like the church there and the pastor.  We will have lunch and then head off to the youth camp.  We’ll see the Philips and Jael and the rest of the team at the camp.  It’s “visitors” day so that’s why we are getting to go.

I know a lot of these kids and the youth counselors from previous trips to Germany.  I think it was last year that I was the main speaker at the youth conference.  That was very fun.  The German kids were just a total blast.  So it will be nice to reconnect with them.  And there’s quite a few Spanish speakers among them, the pastors, and the youth workers.  It’s fun to be able to finally use my Spanish again since that rarely happened in Asia.  Here it is becoming quite common and that makes me happy.

We’ll take some of our usual blurry photos of the youth camp and maybe score some interviews.  Keep us in your thoughts as we look for the right home.

“Live” from the McQuarium Studios in Berlin:  This is Gateway Berlin Radio Podcast, Episode 1.

In this episode, host Patrick Nachtigall and intern Jael Tang introduce the GBR podcast, discuss issues of faith in the multicultural city of Berlin, and check out strange but true headline news from around the world in the “Around the Horn” segment. in the In-Depth segment Patrick and Jael look at a church in Mexico City trying an unusual method to reach youth, and finally there is a visit the Turkish Market.

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Download the podcast here: Gateway Berlin Radio / Episode 1