No, this is not us breaking in or out of someplace. This is us spending the morning working on “The Barn”. What is “The Barn” you ask? “The Barn” is an actual barn that was built in the 1800’s that we are now converting to our new offices and short term living apartments. We currently rent office space and we also have a need for apartments for people who come over on short term projects (3 months to a year). Its very hard to find apartments (especially furnished apartments) for those that come over for these shorter periods but we really want to encourage people to come over and help. We also figured out that we can save money if we were to own our office space so that is why we are doing this.

For me it was a great time (although I am a bit sore). I got to hang out with some sophomores from Black Forest blowing holes in the walls (which are over a foot thick made of stones) where there will be windows put in. It was kinda cool as one guy’s family lives in Italy and the other’s lives in Sweden but here we were in Germany with jackhammers, sledgehammers and crowbars working together.

There’s a lot of work to be done. A lot of the major items are being done by contractors but we are trying to do as much as we can to cut down on costs. Would you be interested in coming over and helping? We are looking for people to come over and help. You can have construction skills or not. We have projects to be done that require all types of skills. But what we really need is people willing to work. Teams can come over - teams of all sizes from one person to 15 or more. If you are interested, check out this Barn Project PDF for more information or contact me at Courtney[at]RoesGarden.com.

Also, be sure to check out pictures of the progress of the Barn Project at our EuroTeam website

Well, actually its not my first Thanksgiving in Germany. Last year I spent the Thursday with my family in the States before jumping on the plane and heading to Germany just in time for the festivities here. It was a year ago that I came over to find an apartment for us to live in. While Thanksgiving is a US holiday, many Americans outside of the US still like to celebrate it.

I talked with my parents, my sister and my aunt and uncle who were all celebrating together. My parents said that many people had asked them if we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving. So let me just tell you about how we celebrated it here.

First, I have to say - its not a holiday here so we had to go to work and Alex went off to school. After Alex got back from school, we did up our dishes that we were taking to the dinner and headed off. Last year, all of the Greater Europe Mission missionaries in the area got together in one place on the Saturday for a full dinner celebration. This year, we were too many to fit in one place so we divided up into small groups for dinner. We also are celebrating on the actual Thursday as there was a special event already scheduled in town for Saturday. We got to celebrate with a family here in town who work with GEM and Alex’s first grade teacher and her son. Afterwards, all of the GEM families got together for dessert.

For me, there will always be three things that stick out in my mind about this Thanksgiving:

• This is the first Thanksgiving I have had away from my family. I don’t say this to be a downer or anything, but just stating it as a fact and something I’ll always remember.
• At our dinner table this year, we had several GEM-K’s (Greater Europe Mission Kids) who have never celebrated Thanksgiving in the US. They have lived their whole lives in Europe but are Americans. It was fascinating to hear the questions they had about different traditions that we would think any American would know but they don’t as they have never truly experienced them. This was a great reminder to me that Alex will be growing up in this same manner and his experiences will be so much different than my own growing up.
• I found out that Hannah Montana is extremely popular in the US. One of the guys at the table had recently gone back to the States and that was all he heard about from his nieces. Apparently her concerts are really expensive but are selling out. Hannah Montana has just come on TV here in Germany (in German of course). Don’t know why this was such a great source of conversation at our dinner table but I think we were all wondering Why is she so popular? Maybe its lost in translation.

Well, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US (and really belated Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in Canada). Take care.

On January 8th, 2008, our mission (Greater Europe Mission) is having a Day of Prayer for Europe. To prepare for this day, many of us are taking the next 50 days getting our hearts and minds ready.

Why have this day of prayer?:

• Less than 2% of Europeans would say that they have a personal relationship with Christ and would want to tell others about Him
• The history of Christianity in Europe is full of abuses in the name of Jesus Christ which have nothing to do with Jesus. This makes many people here want to distance themselves from anything done in the name of Jesus, legitimate or otherwise. They can be very cynical of anything concerning God.
• The churches in Europe are the slowest growing churches in the world. Some estimates are that Africa is growing 50% faster than Europe and Asia is 43% faster.
• Because of the costs to live in Europe, fewer missionaries are coming to Europe and many of those that are here are having to leave because of financial reasons.
• With immigrants from many countries residing in Europe, this continent is an intersection of cultures that, if touched by God, can change not only Europe, but the world for Christ.

Would you be interested in participating in this day of prayer with us? For those of you who choose to take this journey with us, I would ask that you commit to these things:

• To listen humbly for the voice of the Lord;
• To embrace the process with the spirit of Paul in Romans when he declares “putting off the sin that so easily binds, I run the race in such a way as to win the prize;” and
• To share your experiences honestly with family, friends, and ministry partners.

You can sign-up for a free devotional and more information at the GEM website. Please join us in this time

[Update:] For those of you with a high-speed internet connection and an eagerness to get started, there are 5 messages on prayer by Louie Giglio on this website. I think that you will find them to be encouraging, challenging and well worth the effort of downloading them.

Its been a little bit since my last post. No, I haven’t been traveling to a place with no Internet connection and no I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth. Instead, I ran out of time - repeatedly. I know, that’s no excuse as we all have time restraints but that’s the honest truth. And there have been so many things that I have said - “Oh, I should blog that…”

So what’s been happening since coming back from our trip to Switzerland:

• Had a parent/teacher conference and got Alex’s 1st First Grade report card - I won’t divulge all the details but my son is smart! With me being his father, that should make any atheist believe in miracles
• I’ve been helping some of the other missionaries around here with some PC (and Mac) issues. I have to say, hard drive failures are not fun and digging for files on a drive - I feel so CSI’ish. Remember to do backups - learn from others experience
• I got to be on a conference call with a group of other people from around the world who use computer centers to help those in need and to share the love of Christ.
  (Do you want to learn more about using computer centers - check out the US based ministry called TechMission as they know a lot about this)
• Been working on building a blogging community for helping us run short term teams into Ukraine for the purpose of installing a computer center and teaching basic computer skills. This online community is based on WordPress MU. What I have been learning in developing this site is going to help us in developing many more blog communities in the future. Its been awesome.
• Developing a better way to work with, organize and recruit eDOT volunteers. We use volunteers for a lot of our technical work and we’re always looking for someone who wants to partner with us for 5 or more hours a week from their homes. We need people with all sorts of skills so that they can develop courses for teaching software use, design and develop websites, design graphics and print material, manage technical projects, write manuals and project documentation, design networks, administer websites, etc.
  If you are interested (even if you don’t think you have skills that would help but have a heart for using technology to reach Europe), contact me at Courtney@RoesGarden.com
• Krista and I have also been working on sending out a newsletter to all of our partners out there. You can get it in PDF format by clicking here. Roes Update - November 2007
  If you would be interested in getting our newsletter, drop me a note to Courtney@RoesGarden.com saying you want to me on our mailing list. Let me know if you want it sent electronically or via the post office.

Well, I have a back log of blogs to write. I hope to get them up soon.

This last week we were in Switzerland going through a “First Termers Conference”. Basically, it was a bunch of us who are in our first few years of going to the mission field and we get together to help us understand the adjustments we are making and get any other help that we might need for making this transition.

Anyway, above is the photo slide show I made for our last night as a group. When I showed it, it had music but because of copyright laws, I can’t use the music that I had used.

I also promised that I would upload all of my photos (about 359 of them) to my website so that they could get them. A lot of them are not very good but ya know, if you take enough of pictures you are bound to get lucky every once in a while. Anyway, you can check out my photos here in the Photo Album.

If you are wanting to download them to show around, you may find its easier going directly to my Flickr Account. Remember, you have to be logged into Flickr to be able to download my photos but to get a login is free.

To all of those at the conference, it was great being with ya’ll and can’t wait to see you another time.