More recent stats

I apologize for posting a similar post just a week later. Upon further examination of the recently published study, I found more recent stats from surveys taken in 2008. Here is some interesting data:

52% of Eastern Germans do not believe in God and only 7.8% say they believe God really exists and have no doubt about it. Almost 60% of Eastern Germans say they don't believe in God and never have, while 13% say they believe in God now and always have. 8% believe in a personal God. 2.5% consider themselves to have a strong belief in God while 46% consider themselves strong atheists. Over the last 10 years, the number of people who are certain about God's existence is slightly decreasing.
 
Please, continue to pray for us as we seek to move to Leipzig and minister in this highly atheist region of the world. We are excited to go but need your help!


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Stats and Numbers

Are you a number and stats person? Between the two of us, we like looking at survey outcomes and statistics from time to time even though we realize there is bound to be a margin of error with these.

The University of Chicago just published the results of a survey on religious believes across the globe. Their recent survey focused on the US but they compared their outcomes with various intentional studies.

I took some time to look through their findings on Eastern Germany - believe it or not, many studies consider Eastern and Western Germany separately because the culture is still very different in the two parts of the country.

Here are some numbers:
In a 1997 study, 59.7% of Eastern Germans said they do not believe in any God- far more than in any other country involved in the survey!
In a 1998 study, 68.7% of Eastern Germans said they are not part of any religion and 82.4% of people under 30 said they have no religious preference and only 7.3% in this age group said they believe in God without a doubt.
In a 1999 study, only 5.6% of Eastern Germans said they attend a church service weekly - and only 2.3% of under 30 year olds. 15.1% of youth under 30 believe in life after death.

Overall, articles concluded that faith in Eastern Europe is on the rise. That is encouraging and we hope to hear the same become true for Eastern Germany one day.

We appreciate your prayer and support as we plan to minister in this part of the world!

Birthdays and Family

Last week, we had the privilege of visiting my (Ellen's) family in Germany to celebrate my Mom's 70th birthday. We enjoyed our time with them very much! Eliana proved to be a great traveler - she did great on the plane, actually seemed to enjoy the landing, and only suffered from jet-lag induced poor sleep for the first two nights. Looks like she is born to be an MK :-)

Today we are celebrating Eliana's birthday with Joel's side of the family - his Mom Lorel, and sister Val and her husband Job and baby Jasper are coming to visit us for two days. Both Eliana and Jasper are turning 1 this week. What wonderful memories!

In the weeks prior to our Germany trip, we began calling many of you to talk with you individually about our missions plans. We have enjoyed each of those conversations as we love to connect with our brothers and sisters in Christ and talk about the mission God has laid in our hearts.

We are currently at 26% of monthly support and 28% of one-time support raised. We are blessed by your donations and commitments to pray for us and continue to trust the Lord that He is able to provide all the need to move to Germany this calendar year.