Laax, Switzerland

Jon and I were at a conference in Laax, Switzerland this week.  While Jon played guitar, I just enjoyed the meetings and the view.  Personally, it was a good time for reflecting, relaxing and getting some perspective and direction.  Here are some photos:

 

Awesome day...

This week we were in Laax, Switzerland at a minister's conference. Our hotel was at the bottom of a ski run in the Alps... Amazingly beautiful! (Robin will post some pictures soon.)

To top it off, as we were driving there I saw what looked like a row of Dragon's Teeth (a WWII tank trap). On the way back we stopped and checked it out. The farmer that owned the property gave us permission to take some pictures of the row of concrete barriers that now serves as his flower garden.

Apparently, even though the barriers were erected to protect against invasion in the 1930s, they are still maintained in various critical areas of the country. In the last picture you can see one of the pillboxes that protects the tank trap.

For a history lover like me, it was an awesome ending to a great week!

For more pictures (besides mine), go to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzersperre.

Dad, Joe & Tom: eat your heart out! :)

Living on the Front Lines

I just found out yesterday that my 3rd grade daughter's teacher was kidnapped and held at gunpoint in the Philippines a couple of years ago.  She was teaching in an American school and some armed gunmen came and took her and a couple of her colleagues and held them for days. 

While this mild-mannered, soft spoken, non-pretentious women was held at gunpoint, she sang songs about Jesus!  It reminds me of Paul and Silas in prison!  Well, the locals took up a collection of money and paid off the gunmen to release them.  This is not exactly the best option as it encourages more kidnappings.

We lost a dear (young) friend a few weeks ago.  He took such risks for the gospel's sake, smuggling bibles into communist countries, teaching locals how to pastor, sharing the love of Jesus wherever he went.  He never even considered the difficulties of where he and his family had to live (which has been all over the world) in order to follow God's plan.  His focus was only on obedience to do whatever God asked....wherever that led him. 

It makes me consider all that we do and how important our friendships are.  It also reminds me that everything we have here is for just a short time.  So, live "on purpose" every day taking every opportunity to share the love of Jesus with whoever will listen!

This is what life is really about.  That's living on the front lines!

Easter

We are so privileged to be serving our Savior on the mission field!  This is my favorite day of the entire year.  I am so thankful that when Jesus died, He rose again. It makes our future so bright.  We will rise again one day too!  I like to picture the day that He rose again and how wild it must have been for all those that saw Him afterwards.  Have a great Easter!!!!

We celebrated Easter with an egg hunt for the kids' friends and neighbors

First visitor

Our new neighbor, Regina, saw us moving in and recognized Ryan.  She is one of the helpers of his Crunch Time (10-12 yr olds) class at church.  She decided to welcome us to the neighborhood (very un-German -- our first such experience in 7 1/2 yrs of living here) by bringing us a fruitcake.  It was actually quite yummy!

To all of the members of Grace Outreach Center (our former church), you know that fruitcake is one of Pastor Brook's mortal enemies, the bane of his existence.  So Robin and I enjoyed this in his honor.

We've moved!

As most of our friends and those that are on our email update list know, we just moved last weekend.  It was an interesting experience.  Since we only moved 3 km (2 mi) away, we decided to do it ourselves rather than pay someone else.  We haven't yet decided if that was a wise idea or not :)

Our new place is over 500 sq. ft (50 qm) bigger than our last house, with another full bathroom (important as our oldest becomes a teen in a few weeks) and is closer to the main campus of the school.  We'll miss the quiet country life, but already we've realized the joys of walking just a few minutes to get to the town square, the grocery store, the toy store and various bakeries.

We are still in the process of unpacking and setting everything up the way we want it.  But it's already starting to feel like home.  The only problem is that the kids are out on spring break, so we don't really have all the time we'd like to setup the new house.

Pictures coming soon (when we've unpacked some of the boxes)....