Today was one of the biannual Campus Crusade for Christ Worldwide Day(s) of Prayer (what a mouthful!). We spent this morning at the Keltner's with the whole Berlin city team (i.e. all ministries of Cru in Berlin--Family Life, Athletes in Action, Momentum Europe, etc) praying for people working with our group all over the world. Definitely good for perspective to pray for the campus staff in Haiti who are dealing with the effects of four hurricanes right in a row or in the Dominican Republic where they were asking for prayer against the demonic forces that have held that country down so long. The afternoon, I spent with Erin at the TU praying for the city, our campuses, our students, etc. Good times.
And now, for the Pow and Wow--
Pow: Mornings. I can't deal with them. I'm totally spoiled with my job and don't start work until 9:30 every morning (and then, right across the hall for team meetings), but that makes it all the harder to get up at a "reasonable" hour (like 7 a.m.) when we have other things going on earlier. I've always wanted to be a morning person, but it hasn't worked out so far. Usually, I'm up at 8 to shower and have quiet time before staff meeting, but that's the best I can manage.
Wow: Today for Sofa Group, we made use of Jens' excellent new apartment with roof terrace and grilled while discussing protestantism vs. Catholicism. Beautiful weather, good friends, grilled deliciousnesses: bliss.
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Pow: I somehow seem to have gotten blisters on both of my feet (I blame the heels I was wearing yesterday) and one on my hand from where a guy burned me (by accident) with his cigarette on the street the other day. Ouch. One of the girls in my small group told us a funny story tonight about a friend of hers who teaches kindergarten-aged kids somewhere in Germany. On the first day of school this year when she was trying to learn all of the kids' names, she came to one little boy who told her his name was Spiderman. She thought he was joking, but the whole day, he kept insisting that his name was Spiderman. When his mom came to pick him up that afternoon, the teacher and she told her his name really is Spiderman. Actually, it's officially Spider Manfried, since in Germany you have to give your kid at least one gender-specific name. My teammate Andy turned 25 today, so we had a birthday dinner for him with our team. His choice: Que Pasa, the closest thing we can find to real Mexican food in Berlin (it happens to be run by Indian guys, but they produce pretty decent Mexican). The other day, I was walking home through the market on Hermannplatz and, as usual, the Turkish guys were yelling all kinds of things about their products to get people to stop and buy them. One of them got a little more creative than usual and started yelling, "Erdbeeren, zwei Kilo ein Euro, zwei Kilo ein Euro! Erdbeeren macht glücklich!" Translation: "Strawberries, two kilo one Euro, two kilo one Euro! Strawberries make you happy!" It was so cute, I'll let it slide that it's poor grammar. Ok, it's past my bedtime, so just a quick post for today... The Sunday Pow & Wow-- In an effort to actually update my blog on a more regular basis, I have decided to try posting every evening with my Pow and Wow of the day. The Pow and Wow is a tribute to my first Evanston apartment, 718 Simpson, 1E, where we would review our Pows and Wows almost every evening in the kitchen, usually on Danny or Don's insistence (Pow and Wow, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, is a daily high and low). Pow always has to go first, because, as everyone knows, it's better to end on a high note. After adapting the Evolution of Dance video for our New Year's conference, Tomi and I decided that we needed to use our skills to make at least one other dance before leaving Berlin this year. The first thing we thought of: OK Go's "A Million Ways" dance. It took us four months to actually get it done, but over Easter weekend, Jon, Tomi, Erin and I finally pulled it off. Shockingly, it only took us two hours total to learn and polish the dance, but then we had to figure out where to show it. Lucky for us, Northwestern's Cru had World Vision Night this week at Real Life and wanted us to make short videos of ourselves talking about why we went on STINT, how God led us here, what we were like as students, etc. We did them one better: STINTers dancing to OK Go all over Berlin. We made quite a scene filming the video, which resulted in some hilarious people watching us in the background. Check it out on YouTube here. I found this on one of my friends' facebook profiles a while back and loved it. So much so, that I've committed it to memory without even trying and taken to writing it down all over the place. Why not on my blog, too? According to the very non-official source of my friend's facebook page, it was found penciled on the wall of a cell in an insane asylum in California in 1917. Turns out, it's one of the most sane things I've read in a long time. |