Christmas and Outreach

Christmas was great. Chris arrived looking studly and magnificent and acting the part as well. Then mom, Carly, and Brock came bringing me my new camera: a Hasselblad 501cm! Read about it here: http://photo.net/equipment/hasselblad/501cm-kit-blumenthal

So Brock got way sick and couldn't go to the Opera or to Prague or to Herrnhut. But Brock is super rad and didn't complain about it.

So I leave in about 12 hours for poor and remote places and peoples and getting their stories. I will need lots of prayer and I probably won't be in much contact with the Western culture. I will be back in Germany March 13th. I posted some photos so you guys can check those out in the usual place.

Love,
Bryn

HUNGARY

So I think mini-outreach is a super secret that the staff must keep from the students - it's an incredilbly joyful experience. Soooo fun. My mini-outreach team consisted of twelve disciples. My teammates names are Aaron, Cory, Corban, Doris, Mindy, Natalie, Tamara, Thomas, Ulla, Willy, and Zoltan. Here's what we did:

Nov 15-18 Budapest Lots of prayer and talking to people
Nov 18-20 Gyor Working with kids and teachers in schools and cleaning up dirty area in town
Nov 20-22 Budapest Team bonding :) and working with YWAM Budapest



That's the basic breakdown. The reality was that our team almost never stopped laughing. Doris, who is from Germany and Hungary bought these famous tasty treats for us called "Pottyos" and the Americans couldn't stop laughing. This may be my favorite photo of all time:

Jesus for President!

First, a quick history lesson. America was NOT founded on the principals of the bible. If you learned this, it is a lie that can easily be learned with very little time and research. The founding fathers of the United States were NOT christian. They were deists, but most rejected the bible, Jesus, and the church. Most of the Americans here in germany with me had learned that the founding fathers were christian and most of the laws we have are because of our christian foundation as a nation. I had never even heard this theory until last week and I was shocked that most people here believed this and that America has been a successful nation because of its christian foundations. However, the nations foundations were built on the ideologies of the time and most of those came from France and were in no way biblically based. And the USA has been largely successful by exploiting other people (native american indians, chinese, immigrants, slaves) which is really not a very christian thing to do. Go ahead and do your own research if you don't believe me. Please. Research your beliefs people! God gave us a brain for a reason.

I finally finished reading "Jesus for President" by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. I loved this book. The Introduction states that it is "a book to provoke the christian polital imagination." It's divided into four sections with the first section discussing the politics of the Hebrew people and how God set them apart from the world they lived. The next section talks about Jesus and how he came and set them even more apart from the worldly politics all humans were stuck living in. The third section talks about how the church went from being persecuted to persecuting others and the current politics of the United States. And the fourth section discusses some practical ways to work with politics as a christian.

This book has confirmed my pacifist stance. Violence begets violence. Jesus would not be proud of America going to war in Iraq. Jesus would not drive tanks into Baghdad. Jesus would not assasinate Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, or any Islamist extreme terrorist. Nor would he have done nothing. Jesus is love. Jesus loves his enemies and asks God to forgive them. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says, "Love your enemies. Return good for evil." Jesus didn't fight against Rome or against his enemies. When he was being arrested, Jesus disarmed Peter and healed the soldier's ear. If ever there was a time for violence against authorities, it was at that time. But when Jesus disarms Peter, he is disarming all christians. We are to lead a non-violent life. Being Christian means we act like little Christs. And Christ didn't have a flame thrower.

So here's where people might get even more upset with me. Another issue that has been upsetting me lately is the issue of gay marriage. Last week voters chose to change the California constitution to ban gay marriages. This breaks my heart. The bible never talks about Jesus taking away the rights of sinners. And if God is love, and I know He is, then how are we loving gay people by taking away their rights? Won't christians reach more gay people by treating them equally and with love rather than creating laws that make them hate the church? What about divorce? Maybe we should make divorce illegal for christians. It's clearly a sin in the bible, right? So why is the divorce rate among evangelical christians higher than the rest of the population of the United States? Evangelicals are getting divorced and gays want to get married and "christians" are saying that gays are destroying the families of america. Wake up America.

OK, back to Jesus for President. This book filled me with hope and new creative ideas for the life Jesus wanted us to live. New ideas on saving energy like hooking up a stationary bike to the washing machine and letting it run off the power gathered by the bicycle as I excercise. Ultimately, this book filled me with the hope that giving is more contagious than hoarding, love converts hatred, light overcomes darkness, and there are loving solutions to all problems. I'm very hopeful for my outreaches and the effects we will have as we fight extreme poverty in the slums of India and in the remote villages of Ethiopia and Nepal. I leave Saturday for Budapest, Hungary and I will also be traveling around the town of Győr in Hungary. I'll try to post more photos next time. Love you all! If you hate my opinions and even if you don't, pray for me.

More good things

Oh yeah, frost on the ground in the mornings. Snow is not far behind. I think I'll enjoy it.

Dierk came this weekend and brought me a HUGE pumpkin! It's around 30 pounds I think. Ooooohhhh I'm excited to dive into those guts and toast some seeds. Whooo hooo! Thanks Dierk! In return I gave him many apples from our garden. :)



So our speaker Rogerio was really awesome if I didn't say that already and our speaker this past week couldn't get her VISA and our speaker this week had an emergency so the poor staff has been having an interesting time here. I think I'll have a lot more to say starting this week since I think we'll be finding out more information on Monday and Tuesday.

DTS Week 2

Pretty much more Youth Without Any Management. But lots of meetings. It's ok.

So I'm really enjoying my time here. I absolutly love Germany and I love experiencing a real Fall. Leaves crunching under my feet everyday is sweet. I'm super bad at speaking German still, but I'm having a great time trying. We have different speakers each week. Here is our list of speakers:

Rogerio Santos (Brazil)
Colleen Milstein (S. Africa)
Edwin Filles (S. Africa)
Lisa Cuellar (USA)
Wilson (S. Africa)
Dan Baumann (USA)
Susanne Merz (Germany)
Mike Oman (Zimbabwe)
David Gave (USA)

So maybe Jamie (my cousin) has heard of some of these people, but I haven't. I'm sure I'll learn all about them soon.

But yeah, things are great. I don't see how they can be bad when you are fed and have a bed and live with nice people and work in a castle in a forest taking photos.

I had another interesting thought. So my mom has a child in asia right now (Brock is in China for the next 2 weeks) and a child in Europe (me!). Way to go Mom!

Blessings,
Bryn

DTS starts

YWAM - Youth without any management.

So I know Jamie can appreciate that acronym. I moved into town which I'm grateful for and I'm very excited about my roommate who is a sweet 31 year old German chick from Saxony. Nice. I think we will learn a lot from each other.

Not really much to say except I've been really busy moving and preparing for the 50 more students who arrived this weekend and I've been busy avoiding them as much as possible - there's just too many people and too much excitement for an old person like me.

So I spent some time with my pinhole camera this weekend. I made it from the beautiful package of glowsticks Chris sent me. And I got some exciting results so I think I'll do more of that tomorrow.

Alrighty, love all you guys!

<3 and peace to you

A good week

Hello again, dear readers.

This week I had my first night time Ultimate Frisbee game thanks to my amazing boyfriend, Chris Bishop, who sent me three pounds of glowsticks in the mail (You need glow-necklaces and bracelets so you can see the other players at night). It went really well. There were 15 people that came and everyone had a good time.

Thursday was also interesting because a tree fell over right as we were quitting work duties.



We still need to finish cleaning that up. It rotted from the inside.

Thursday we also got our first major assigment: 3 perfect portraits. At first, Jan, the main photographer guy training us, told us it was due Monday. That was totally unrealistic since 20 people were going to be on a field trip to Cologne this past weekend and wouldn't have time. So they gave us Monday off too and it's now due Wednesday morning, but it's been a little stressful with too many people in the darkroom and not enough time/space/training.

But it's fun and I learned a lot. My roommate Mindy asked me to be a model for her and this is the photo she took:




I really like it. Also, I made a new pinhole camera, but I haven't gotten any good shots out of it yet.

Alrighty, the regular DTS students come by the end of the week and our school is short 25 beds. So if you want to pray for that, please do. Mom, I'm praying that you get your passport and that you are working on your house and not doing so many errands all the time. Everyone reading this should pray for my mom too. Thanks!