Its snowing – yeah

Sorry we don’t have any photos and that we haven’t blogged much but we hope to get our DSL (that’s Internet connection for you non-computer geeks) but I just have to say this area is beautiful with a white blanket. Hope to talk to you more later.

Roes Update – Week 1 – January 19, 2007

Dear friends and family,

We are doing very well here! We arrived Tuesday, January 10th and we’re able to stay at the e-Dot director’s home for the first week. This was wonderful to get over jet lag and not worry about what to cook.

Last Tuesday (the 16th) our container arrived. In one hour 15 of our new best friends had everything placed into our apartment. It’s not a very big apartment (by American standards) but everything we brought fits very nicely. The last few days have been unboxing and running around finding things. Yesterday we went to Ikea and Super Wal-Mart (yes, they have that here) to find wardrobes, and appliances. Our e-Dot team mates have been so helpful taking us around and helping us learn the rules of driving.

Alex had a ½ day try at Kindergarten on Wednesday and really loved it. He’ll officially start next Monday, the 22. He is doing very well and even had a short play date today. He especially loves his new bunk bed that one of the other missionaries gave to us. We are all getting used to the walking and the amount of time that it takes to get anything done – mostly because of a much slower pace of life here and the fact that we don’t know where to find things.

We will be picking up our new (to us) car tomorrow. It’s a Ford Focus Diesel Station wagon we bought from a local dealer who “takes care of the missionaries”. Courtney got a chance to follow behind the dealer as he test drove one of our car options on the autobahn. He got up to 111 mph. That’s not the one we’re buying, but a similar one.

Our phone was installed yesterday but our DSL will still take a couple of weeks so please be patient if we don’t reply to your e-mail promptly… but we would like to hear from youJ.

Overall we are doing well. We are overwhelmed with decisions to make, often with vague or incomplete information to base those decisions on… but we keep on going.

Some prayer requests:

1) We are blessed with a beautiful apartment and know its God’s gift as a resting and re-energizing place for us to base out of. Our clothes washer/dryer combo unit in our kitchen is having problems. It runs for 2 to 45 minutes and then cuts out for no reason we can discern. We are praying that it is “user error” rather than something truly wrong as we’d hate to have to buy a new one at this point.

2) Our landlord’s mother, Frau Vollmer, lives downstairs. She is 83 but lively and loves children (read – can tolerate loud noises). We are unsure of her relationship with God but pray that as we become great friends that we can be a light to her.

3) Alex will start school on Monday. Pray for him as he gets used to language and cultural challenges. There are 2 other MK (missionary kid) boys that go there. Also pray that as our family interacts with the teachers and the parents that we will find opportunities to become friends and share our faith.

4) We will be starting language school in February. Pray that we can choose the right school and that our minds will begin to absorb the language here.

Quote of the week: From Frau Vollmer our landlord’s mother who lives downstairs: “So do you speak Oxford English or American slang?” – She wasn’t being insulting at all, just an honest question that I wasn’t sure how to answer.

Thanks to all of you who give and pray so that we can be here,

Krista and Courtney Roes

Apartment – Empty

Here are pictures of our apartment before our container arrives (which will be Tuesday):

Roes Update 12.1.2007 (That’s Jan 12, 2007 for Americans)

Dear Friends and Family,

Well… we have arrived safely in Germany! Alex watched “Spongebob, Squarepants” in German yesterday. When I asked him if he could understand the cartoon he said – “Their voices speak German but how they move still speaks English”.

Here are some of the highlights of the last couple of weeks:

1) We sold our car before Christmas. We had a wonderful goodbye party on the 7th. Thank you to all of you who came. We had excellent goodbyes with family and friends who will be sorely missed.

2) Yesterday we watched the sun rise over the Swiss Alps as we flew in. None of us slept much – Alex slept for about 2 hours – I think we were too excited.

3) We were warmly greeted at the Zurich airport by our team and then made our way up to the home of E-Dot’s director to spend a few days decompressing and getting settled before we move in to our apartment next week. They have 3 kids (youngest is 8 ) so Alex has had a great time playing and has refused to do any catching up on sleep even when they are at school.

4) Yesterday we registered with the government so that our shipping container can clear customs this week and should arrive for us at our new apartment next Tuesday. Today we spent at the bank and the telephone company ordering our new phone. We also got to tour our new apartment … and I loved it! It’s not big but it is very bright and “open” feeling and everything has been well cared for.

5) One of our team members Sue, speaks Germany fluently and was also the most recent to arrive, so she is our tour guide, helper and translator. We can already tell that we are starting to pick up on things a bit. Our formal language classes won’t start until February.

So overall we are doing really well. Here are a few praises and prayer requests:

1) We are here! What an amazing work God has done and thanks to the many of you who prayed and gave and encouraged us along the way.
2) Pray for the custom’s process with our container. We don’t anticipate any problems, but prayer never hurt.
3) We had asked for prayer about the Euro- and you must be praying because it has dropped a little bit. Keep it up – particularly next week when we’ll need to transfer the money to buy our car.
4) Alex was accepted into the kindergarten next door to us! Pray we’ll have wisdom when to have him begin and that he will transition smoothly. Only one of the staff speaks English so it will be a full immersion class for him.

I know this was long…. Check out Courtney’s bog on our website to keep up with our day to day journey. Our e-mail will stay the same.

Love,

Courtney and Krista Roes
www.roesgarden.com
Courtney@roesgarden.com
Krista@Roesgarden.com

Interesting Facts

In 1981:

• Prince Charles got married

• Liverpool crowned Soccer Champions of Europe

• Australia lost the Ashes Tournament

• Pope died

In 2005:

• Prince Charles got married

• Liverpool crowned Soccer Champions of Europe

• Australia lost the Ashes Tournament

• Pope died

LESSON TO BE LEARNED:

The next time Charles gets married, someone should definitely warn the Pope.

Thanks for the info Tee

Saying “Good-Bye”

It has been an interesting week as we have spent time with friends and family saying “Good-bye”. On Sunday, we had a big Good-Bye party after church where we got to see a majority of our friends. It was so great seeing all of you and we felt so loved and cherished by all who showed up. We know that there were many who wanted to come and be there and we felt your love. It was interesting that as our party was wrapping up, the church was preparing for a funeral. The mother of one of our friends passed away and they were having her memorial service. To me, it reflected some of my feelings. I would not dare to equate the loss of a dear family member to what we are having to do but there is a sense of loss. We know that the next time we see many of our friends, they will have had experiences that we were not a part of. While we will not lose their friendships, they will be different. We will be different. Nothing will be the same as it is right now. But this is the life that God has for us and we have chosen to follow Him no matter what.

In our pre-field training, they said something that was wonderful. They said that as missionaries, we must be able to say “Good-bye” well so that we can say “Hello” well. Life as a missionary is very mobile. People come to the field or leave the field on a regular basis. They say that missionary kids are quick to bond because they don’t always have the time to build relationships as it is extremely rare that they will go through school with the same kids. Just a case in point, on Saturday our team is having a welcoming party for us but it will also be a farewell party for a family that were volunteering with eDOT while the husband worked a job in Germany. Due to some circumstances, they are having to leave and move back to the US. So begins our lives overseas.

So our bags are packed and tomorrow we use our one-way tickets. Please pray:

• that we will have a safe and uneventful journey
• that we are able to sleep on the plane (especially Alex>
• that we are able to have a peaceful and simple transition into the German culture

We will post more when we get a chance. God bless!!

Reminiscing

Its hard to explain but for the past two weeks, every time I sat down to blog – my mind went phizt!! Nothing. Nada. No dice. Its not that nothing has been happening. Over the past two weeks (since our crate left with almost everything we still own) we spent some time with my family in Savannah, GA (where my sister lives), I celebrated by 35th birthday (my son told me that that was really old), we have been running around gathering all the last minute items that we want to take with us, we’ve spent times with friends, and we are currently trying to fix all the things we broke in my parents’ house that we have been living in over the past year (Mom & Dad, just forget I said anything there – ok?).

Our todos are getting marked off the lists but we keep looking at how many days are left and all of our emotional energy leaves us. We have 5 days left before we drive to the airport with one-way tickets. Over the past week, I’ve had to do some driving around Charlotte and since this is where I have spent the last 23 years of my life, I saw a lot of memories. For those of you who don’t live in Charlotte or don’t know the city, please have patience with me – here’s what I saw:

• Great Outdoor Provision Company – This was where I got my first paycheck back when I was 15. Thank you Mr. Mauney for the job and over 2 years of great work.
• The old Forest Hill Church or at least the property. The church was just demolished to make way for condos. This was my childhood church and where Krista and I got married back in 1992.
• I went down near where I first started living in South Charlotte. I originally lived in the boonies off of Providence Road, south of Hwy 51. That area has really changed and is now no longer the boonies especially since I-485 was built.
• I was on Central Avenue twice this week just north of Briar Creek. I worked security for some apartments in that area for a while. Those were some adventurous times in my life.
• I was in the Uptown having lunch with a friend and saw the Wachovia Buildings. I worked for them when it was First Union and even had an office in the Uptown for a short period of time while working on a special project. I also went past their big CIC office building on Harris Blvd where I spent several years.
• I drove past the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where Krista and I graduated from back in 1995.
• Krista and I went to The Melting Pot for my birthday which has been a tradition since before we got married. Any reason for fondue – birthdays, raises, I cut my finger nails – any reason what so ever. We even went there on our honeymoon. Now we will live 20 km from Switzerland where fondue started. Yeah!!
• Lake Forest Church which is our sending church and the church we got to help start. It was a church plant from Forest Hill and just this last April it moved into its first building. When we started this adventure, we didn’t know if we would see Lake Forest move into a building. Now we wonder what it will look like next time we are back as we are sure to have done more construction since they are bursting at the seams already.

Of course, while driving around we noticed all the construction and road work being done. When you live here, this happen so slowly that you really don’t notice the changes on a day to day basis. However, as we thought about it – Charlotte and Huntersville are going to be really different the next time we come back for a “visit”.

But the biggest changes are going to be in the people we know. The teens I’ve known are going to grow up. Friends and their children will change. We will change – Krista says we will be more German and less American next time we come back. We are saddened that we will all be going through theses changes away from each other. But God has a greater purpose in all of this and we are trusting Him.

Sorry for the ramble, just thinking back on some fond memories.