Garage Sale Coming up!!

Please remember to put our garage sale on your calendars! And tell everyone that you know to come as well! We are going to have a TONNNN of stuff there! Remember that the sale is happening the weekend of May 28-29 (Friday and Saturday) 8:00am- 1:00pm at Ryan's parents' home; 3204 Easton Court, Springfield, IL.

Please come and help us raise the funds necessary for us to be able to go and serve in Germany! We hope to see you there! Danke!

be blessed

What a wonderful life I have. Over the past few months, through our support raising journey, I had been finding myself more and more unhappy. I know that a lot of things going on in my life have been often times been weighing me down; a crazy hard semester of school, some family issues back home in CA, work, but most of all... Germany stuff. Just the combination of my heart breaking everyday for that place combined with the stress of making sure we get the funds and the support needed to head out there in just a short couple of months, had been a bit more than I could handle. After causing maybe some concern for my husband and family here, I felt like it was time to just give up. I was done trying to look not stressed and worried when in fact it was eating a way at me. Instead of holding onto resentment and worry, I have been trying so hard everyday to give everything over to God. I mean, I had been saying during the last 5 months, that I had been trusting God with everything.... but I knew I was not. And since I have given up on trying to be in control.... God has been showing me great things and blessing me immensely!

Just a couple of these crazy blessings have happened just in the last few days! First of all, on Sunday afternoon we went over to the Mudrik's home (an awesome barn in Springfield) to have lunch with them, and it was amazing! Elaine and Marek Mudrik have been the missionaries in residence here at LCU over the past year and we have been trying to get together for so long! They live and serve in Prague, have 5 amazingly sweet children and are just all around awesome! It was so great to talk Europe and missions with them! We're even planning on going to go visit them in Prague while we're in Germany because they will only be a couple hours away from us!

They were so fun to eat with, drink tea with and listen to James Taylor with :) Ryan and I both agree that they have a special talent at making people feel comfortable and blessed!

Also, got to speak with the director of our mission organization, KontaktMission, on the phone yesterday. Well, Ryan talked to him anyway... as I laid on the couch trying not to itch my allergy infested eyes :( Anyway.... it was really good to hear from him and get some encouragement about our progress with the whole support raising thing :) It was just more affirmation from God to let go and let Him take care us us!

ALSO.... it was graduation this past weekend!!! Not for me :( but for a lot of my friends! So we just went from grad party to grad party all weekend it felt like, but it was really fun. I even got to go out with a few of my girlfriends Sunday night to celebrate! Here are a couple of pics from my friend Meg's party! Congrats to all who graduated!!!


Yesterday I was on my way home from work and decided to stop by this garage sale going on (I know, the last thing I need to do is load up on more junk just as we're trying to move out of our place...). I started talking with the cute older couple who were having the sale and ended up telling them about Ryan and I moving to Germany soon, I don't really remember how it came up but I'm sure glad it did! The woman ended up telling me that she had been a missionary in Africa for 35 years! It was so great to hear encouragement from a total stranger, but also a fellow believer, a sister in the Lord. She had a cute little collection of antique plates with different states on them and let me have a California one for free saying that it should act as a reminder to me that she will be praying for us :) God is so good!

Well, hope that gave you a little insight in on our crazy lives right now! We're so excited for the different opportunities coming up for us like our garage sale!!! Hope you stop by and buy a lot of our stuff!!! Haha :)

Anyway, until next time... be blessed.

-Elyse

Preconceived Ideas Pt. 3

And probably more than anything, your wondering why we are going to a country that is not in financial poverty. Germany is a wealthy country with a fairly stable economy and whose cities and towns look a lot like ours in America. But is it really the financial wealth of a people group that we as Christians should be MOST concerned about? In a study done in 2005, teenagers around the world were asked if they believe that the Bible is in fact the true word of God. In Israel 50% said yes, Poland 49%, and then there was Germany with a staggering 2.3%. For most Germans, God isn’t even on the radar screen anymore; in one survey Germans were asked who they find most trustworthy. At the top of the list were gas station attendants and store workers… at the very bottom were politicians and the church. When looking at eastern Germany we see even more of a spiritual poverty, as a whole in Germany 27% claim to be Atheist, but in Eastern Germany by itself over 50% claim to be Atheist. This is how we know that there needs to be a renewal and a revival in Germany. For we are not our own, we belong to God and are his treasured possessions (Deut. 7:6)!

This concludes my little series of Preconceived Ideas blogs, but PLEASE feel free to ask us for more info or ask us questions! Danke!
-Ryan and Elyse

Preconceived Ideas Pt. 2

Another preconceived idea that you may have about Germany is that since it is so beautiful, it doesn’t need missionaries. True, Germany is a very beautiful country and some of you may have visited Germany before and were impressed with how majestic their cathedrals are and how old and charming their buildings are. Notice this picture of the inside of one of these beautiful cathedrals, and now notice how many people are in there worshiping...


The fact of the matter is that the seats in these cathedrals are always empty and if there are people inside, they are probably tourists. And even if Germans did attend church in these cathedrals they would be facing the danger of being taught false theology for the majority of the ministers of these churches are state paid men who may not even actually believe in the Bible, they just want a pay check from the state. And let’s look back and Germany’s past one more time. The storybook almost fairytale picture of Germany that a lot of us think of, wasn’t always what Germany looked like. Germans carry a lot of baggage with them in their hearts and in their history. World War I, the treaty of Versailles, WWII, the holocaust, the third Reich, and then communism, a split right through the heart of Germany with the Berlin wall, Marxism…


All of these things loom in the hearts of Germans and were the front runners in killing any kind of spirituality in Germany. Many Germans put their identity in their horrible and heart breaking past. This is why we believe Germans need a new identity! An identity in Christ, not their past! They need to be freed from the oppression of their past, and only the blood of Jesus can do that.

-Ryan and Elyse

Preconceived Ideas Pt.1

With these next few blogs posts we do, we want to maybe address some of the preconceived ideas that a lot of people have about Europe, and Germany in particular, being a mission field. I hope that this series of blog posts helps you realize why God has placed such a special country on me and Ryan's hearts! Here we go!

when you first think of Europe and Germany specifically, you probably think of how beautiful it is there, vacationing, German sausages and gorgeous cathedrals. Some of you may be wondering why we are going to go serve in a country that s already Christian. This mentality couldn’t be farther from the truth. Germany was at one time a very Christian country; just think back to Martin Luther and the reformation. But the fact that right now in Germany, 98% of the population does not know Christ just shows how far away this nation has drifted from it’s Christian past. In fact, Christianity as we know it practiced here in the states, is seen as a cult in Germany and is looked down upon and even feared. In the Message, James 5:19-20 says this, “My dear friends, if you know people who have wondered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wondering away from God.” This is exactly why we want to help be a part of a renewal, revival and transformation in Germany. We are not just writing them off, we’re going after them.

-Ryan and Elyse