Meet Jena

This is a picture of the church we are going to be working with in Jena, Germany. Right now, the church meets in the downstairs of the home of the missionary we will be working with. Rocco Panepinto, our field mentor and missionary to Germany, has lived and worked in Germany for over 30 years now. He first moved to southern Germany and planted several churches there, then moved to the East and has been living and working in Jena ever since. Here is a recent picture of Rocco and some of his family-



Jena has been titled, "The Scientific Capital" of Germany. It is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. With a population of 103,000 it is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt. In such an educated and eastern city, evangelism is seen as very difficult. Here is a quote from Rocco himself speaking about the spiritual state of eastern Germany,

"Recently I received an inquiry from a young German Bible college student asking me to explain, from my perspective, the differences in attitude between the population in the west of Germany and former communist east Germany. One big difference which came to mind-- in the west, where people are at least nominally Christian in name, we were often told: “It doesn't matter what you believe, just as long as you believe something". In contrast, here in the east I can't recall hearing that phrase used once. Here faith is viewed with suspicion and regarded as intellectual laziness, foolish and even dangerous. That's the legacy of 40 years of Marxism we have to deal with."

I hope this helps you understand this mission field a little better. Hopefully, through this blog, we can continue to keep sharing with you little pieces of insight into this city. Let us know if you have any questions or any other thoughts. Thanks so much everyone!

Blessings, Ryan and Elyse

Support Update 2

Guten Tag everyone! Well, we're three months away from leaving for Germany, and three months into the support raising process! Now that we are now half way through this initial journey, we just wanted to give everyone another little update!


So as you can see, we are still a long way away from our total goal of $12,000. We are so thankful for all of you that have given to us so far, and we especially want to thank you for your commitments to pray for us! We have made it to $3,550 because of all of you! With this said, we are still in need of raising $8,450. Please prayerfully consider playing a part in helping reduce this number!

If you were sent a letter from Ryan and I and have not yet responded, you may still have the response card and envelope that you can send directly to the Kontakt Mission office. But if you do not have, or lost that card and envelope, here are some ways you can give to Ryan and I in our work for God's Kingdom:

1. Make check payable to “KM USA” & write “Dillon” in the memo line and Mail to:

KM USA
P.O. Box 825
Humboldt, TN 38343

2. You can also give monthly! (which would be awesome!)
On the response card that came with our support letters, there is a box for you to check if you would like to give to us monthly. Check that box and state the amount, and Kontakt Mission will take care of all of the details!

If you did not receive a letter, or have lost the response card, that's not a problem! We can send you another one, just let us know!

Major thanks to all of you who have agreed to partner with us! We truly appreciate you so much! God has been showing us amazing things about Germany and the church we will be working with! Our field mentor, Rocco Panepinto, has been in contact with us and we can already tell he's going to be awesome to work with! We'll be posting some more info about the church and the city we're working at soon! And again, thank you and God bless you all for your love and support!

-Ryan and Elyse