Five Years!!!

Today marks the 5-year anniversary of my life in Berlin. My parents arrived in Berlin's Tegel airport this morning, which is so ironic, because they came with me on that monumental day 5 years ago. It's a lot less stressful this time! There aren't unpacked moving boxes all over the apartment. The furniture is all put together. I speak the language (sort of). The list goes on and on . . .
(The top left picture is of me saying goodbye to close friends at the Scranton airport on April 21st, 2004. The top right picture is of my dad trying to navigate with a Berlin guidebook.)

It's 10:43pm (Berlin time) and I'm sitting in my apartment on the couch next to my dad as he looks for pictures for me on his computer from 2004 (I can't find mine.). He found some!

In these last five years, God has exceeded my expectations. I didn't know what to do when I got here, nor how to reach kids for Christ. Today, it's still something I brainstorm all the time, but God has, in His amazing grace, used me to reach many kids & teens for Him. Many have heard the Good News (some for the very first time), many have received Him as Savior, many have been transformed from the inside out and several have even graduated and gone on to college and are faithfully living for God all over the globe (Canada, Australia, America . . .).

I wish I had time and space to type out some of the many incredible stories, but it's more precise to say: "To him who has done immeasurably more than I could ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within me, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen" (Ephesians 3:20, 21).

What a ride it's been and, I'm sure, will continue to be.