Impressions

I have heard from several of you that you have been praying for us and we are very thankful. Most of us have been sleeping fairly well and yet, of course, we fall into our beds exhausted at the end of the night because our brains are on overload.

Yesterday, we met with the youth director, Richard, of a nearby church and talked with him about his ministry. Their church is currently changing a few things including their name, website, and the appearance of their church yard to appeal to more people including College students. This church's youth group has about 15 members in the ages of 14 to 24. Richard says their biggest struggle probably is to reach out to unbelieving youth.

We also enjoyed the fabulous hospitality of two youth leaders of the FEG - which the Millers hope to join this fall. They are indeed looking forward to Jim and Lina coming and playing a mentorship role in their lives as they seek to minister to the youth in the church. These two youth leaders live in a very diverse section of town. We went for a walk in a nearby park which was packed with people of various cultures and lots of children.

Today, we visited a church in Gruenau, which is the low income part of the city. "The harvest is ripe but the workers are few" is truly the case at this church. The congregation is about 25 people with few in leadership and nobody fit to offer an ongoing program for the youth (or for children) who have flocked to their many outreach events in the park and neighborhood.

The second church we visited today is located in a neighboring town called Schkeuditz. This church is very active with missions trips, a resale shop, English lesson outreaches by an American missionary, and a new youth group with about 15 kids from the church. It's a family church located just a block from the public high school.

We spend the rest of the day walking through Leipzig's downtown and soaking in more of the culture of this musical city. We were fortunate to catch a choir singing at the Thomaskirche as well as some street performers. We are using this evening to debrief and would appreciate prayers as we process al that we have seen and heard.

Tomorrow, we are going to the church service here where we are staying. We are also going to get a chance to talk to the leadership of Richard's church. We may or may not be able to be a part of a youth event in the afternoon as well. Keep praying for us to remain open to the Lord's leading in our life.

Next Stop: Leipzig

My two days with my family are now in the past. As always, it’s a blessing to use these opportunities to see them. On Tuesday, I got a chance to see two of my friends whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. On Wednesday evening, my extended family came to visit. I hope to get some more up on Facebook when I get a chance.


I am writing this post on the train and while breaching almost the entire widths of this country in about five hours, I had two ladies sit next to me for a stretch of time. As I quickly got a chance to share why I am on the train and what our hopes are for ministering to young people in Leipzig, I have been very encouraged by the positive responses of both ladies. They expressed a need for young people to regain an interest in matters of faith and seemed to agree that initial ideas like camps and music would be avenues to reach young people.

Today, I am meeting the others in Leipzig and our meeting begin tomorrow through Sunday. We look forward to lots of relational time with church leaders and even the opportunity to attend a youth event on Sunday afternoon.

You can pray for us:
Pray for sleep: The Franks are only arriving on this side of the pond today and may well still deal with jet leg. I have personally had a hard time sleeping (not unusual for me) and am pretty tired. Pray for us all to have restful sleep and for God to cover the rest by giving us additional energy and brain power.
Pray for direction: Ask God to speak to our team members as we visit the different churches and seek to find a good fit for them to minister in a church in Leipzig. Again, it is not mandatory for them to make a decision for a specific German church home after this trip but it may help with fundraising and give them a head-start on relationship building with the church  leadership.
Pray for Joel and the kids: Keep praying for Joel who is home with our girls without me this week. Johanna was a little sick but seems to be feeling better already. We have not yet managed to Skype but would like that opportunity if possible.
Pray for focus: May God direct the purpose of the trip regardless of our desires or what we have in mind. Pray for me also as I shift from family time to now taking a lead during these meetings, translating, and getting us where we need to be.

Thank you for your loving prayer support.

Coming up soon..

At this time next week, I (Ellen) will be sitting on an airplane on my way to Germany. I get to stop in my home town for two days before moving on to Leipzig, where I am meeting up with our new teammates - the Frank family and Lauren - as well as a perspective teammate, Kelly.

We are visiting the churches/ church leaders with whom we met last year around this time but now with a new group of the JV Germany team. We hope this trip will once again give us insight into how we can best serve the churches in Leipzig and become a part of what they are doing for Christ. This visit should also be a huge asset for Lauren and the Franks' fundraising efforts. We pray that God will lay a specific church or community on their heart, which may become their German home church in the future. We also hope that God will speak to Kelly through this trip regarding His plans for her future.

We would appreciate your prayers for God's purposes for this time to come through as we hope they align with ours but yet know His plans are higher than our plans.

In addition, I would appreciate your prayers for me as I make this journey without my family and will miss them! And Joel would surely love for you to pray for him as he stays home with the girls!

I hope to give you updates throughout the trip. Thank you for praying.

He is Risen indeed!

Happy Easter weekend!

As we celebrate our Savior's victory over death this Sunday, we are ever so burdened for young people in Leipzig to hear about this good news as well. While many of them are now growing up in a nominally Christian country and thereby with Christian symbols around them such as the celebration of Easter as a national holiday, they have no reference to make these meaningful. Who is this man dying on the cross? What is Easter all about? We remember one pastor telling us of an unbelieving friend who approached him with the question "Is the person who was born on Christmas the same who dies and rises again on Easter weekend?" We long to be with the churches in Leipzig to further the good news of Christ alongside them! We covet your continued prayers to help us get there.

Last Sunday, Joel had a chance to fill in as guest speaker on Sunday morning at Graham Church. He was able to share about Josiah Venture and our plans for a few minutes and we have received a promise to be invited back for a full presentation on a Sunday night in the near future. We would love to see this church and/or members of this congregation become a part of our support team.

Last Tuesday, our team member Jim Miller as well as JV's Partner Relations Director Gord Nickerson blessed us with a personal visit from Illinois. We enjoyed time catching up and praying together and the two of them and Joel were able to have a meeting with the missions chairman of our current church (First Baptist Church of St Johns.) We trust the time served to further acquaint our church with our missions organization and thereby equip them to be even stronger partners. We continue in a missionary candidacy development program with First Baptist and are getting more excited as we build a support team from within the church to encourage us now and on the field.

This has also been Eliana's first week in preschool and we are happy to report she seems to enjoy herself and adjust well. She looks forward to putting her backpack on midday to spend a few hours with new friends and without knowing it, I'm sure, improving her speech and ability to relate to her peers. We are thankful for this opportunity for Eliana and by extension our whole family.

We have had another round of sickness hit our family and would appreciate your prayers for restored health and supernatural energy to continue pushing forward in our missionary candidacy development program, current ministry at the church, and fundraising among individuals especially. We have also been praying about the best way to approach area churches and would love for you to pray alongside this with us. Thank you for your partnership in prayer!!

Say What?!

Here is a picture of Eliana reading. Why is that newsworthy? Because Eliana doesn’t like to be read to or read books. She may look at the pictures but the cadence of reading seems to bother her.

In our last prayer letter, we slid in a little prayer request for Eliana’s speech and several of you caught it and asked for details. Eliana is turning three in April and she is a bright, fun loving girl but we noticed that her speech had not been advancing very much this past year. We brought this up to our pediatrician and within a month, Eliana was tested by a local agency and is now receiving weekly speech therapy at home. Within a week of our first session, Eliana started saying more two and three word phrases without prompting and began using verbs. And today we witnessed her reading to herself, repeating some phrases for each page and even reiterating what she remembered of the few favorite books we read with her regularly.

When Eliana turns three in just a few weeks, she will go to a special preschool for a few hours a day to enhance these skills to soon catch up to an age appropriate level of speech.

We appreciate your prayers for wisdom as we now have several people watching Eliana’s every move and sometimes possible over-interpreting things. We are asking the Lord for insight into our daughter and are thankful in a brand new way that He knows the number of hairs on our head (Luke 12:7).

Pray for Ukraine

I am sure you have seen on the news and on Facebook that riots are breaking out in the Ukraine. Joel has been to the Ukraine and was especially affected by scenes of riots and destruction in places he once visited.

You may be aware that we have a Josiah Venture team serving there. We received a prayer request from them this morning and would like to share part of it with you.

Would you stand with Ukraine in prayer? Two night ago, protesters in our city of Lviv took over government buildings and police buildings. The situation has remained peaceful but police are no longer working and university students stand guard at government buildings.

Our team is not afraid for our safety, but we worry for Ukraine. We are asking God to bring Ukraine to peaceful reform. You can also pray for discernment as we press forward in summer ministry planning; ministry partners are strongly considering canceling summer projects. We know that God is sovereign, and we trust his plans for summer.

We feel that this is an important time in the history of Ukraine. Our intercultural team of 8 doesn't have plans to leave Lviv. We are praying for safety and want to stand with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. You can especially pray for the Ukrainians on our team because this is even more painful for them.

They linked the following video that summarizes the protesters requests:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvds2AIiWLA

Thank you for standing in prayer with our team mates and brothers and sisters across the globe!

Our IL trip

While traveling with kids is hard, we are so glad we all got to visit our friends and new team members in the Chicago area this past weekend. It was wonderful to reconnect with our congregation there and our team mates, the Millers. That time seemed to pass all too quickly!

We also met Reggie and Kim Frank in person and wish we would have been able to spend more time with them. Unfortunately, after two night of getting little and poor sleep, Eliana was a giant mess the whole time and just wanted to go back to the car to sleep. We rejoice in knowing we will get to spend plenty of time with the Franks down the road and are thankful for technologies like Skype.

We also met with another potential team mate, whom we hope to introduce to you soon.

All in all, a worthwhile and wonderful weekend for the Josiah Venture Eastern Germany team. We appreciate your prayers for all members of our team during each of our fundraising journeys which are filled with hope and disappointment, prayer and questions, and lots of other mixed emotions.