Being in missions in Europe is weird. I mean, its like nothing else one can experience. One day you can be in Ukraine installing a computer center and just a few days later, you can be in southern Switzerland face to face with a cow. Krista, Alex and I are currently in Switzerland on our “First Termers Retreat”. What this is is a time for us to get away with some other GEM missionaries who have come to the field in the last couple of years to assess how well we are doing in transitioning to living in a different culture. Much of the information we have heard is the same as what we heard in our pre-field training only now it’s in a different perspective as we have experience living in this different culture.

Our group here is made up of people who are mainly living in Germany. However, there is a family who is a living in Ireland. Those of us living in Germany, there are two groups: those that are in Germany because the whole of their ministry is to the Germans and those who live in Germany but whose ministry is all around Europe. We are a part of that later group. Its really interesting as we discuss looking our new culture, those of us who work all over Europe are having to look at all the different cultures we interact in. It is all very brain hurting. Pray for us.

Yesterday, we went to a farm (hence the picture of the cow above) that is owned by the owner of the hotel we are staying in. Alex had a lot of fun running around the barn seeing all the different cows and calves. The farmer did tell us that he was expecting one of the cows to go into labor either tonight or tomorrow. Alex wants to go back and see it.

Well, I’ll blog more about this later. I’ll also be uploading a lot more pictures when I get back home and have my really high speed internet connection. Until then - Tschuess!!!