be still and know.

"When I cannot understand my Father's leading,

And it seems to be but hard and cruel fate,

Still I hear that gentle whisper ever pleading,

God is working, God is faithful, ONLY WAIT."

-Streams in the Desert

go!

my nephew's latest documented trick.

friends.

to celebrate our "last" day of summer [before semester work begins], my friends Andrew and Miriam hosted a barbecue yesterday!

about 12 of us enjoyed a feast of meats, salads, bread, apfelschörle, birne-melisse wellness getränk, and homemade banana bread and s'mores. so lecker.

afterwards with our coffee and tea we had a great time of prayer for the upcoming semester. it's such a blessing to be part of the Body of Christ, and especially to have friends like these! i love you guys. :) i also was awed by how the Lord put the exact same things on each of our hearts- twice i was going to pray about a specific thing, and someone else did it! sabine said the same thing happened to her. how cool that our God loves to bless us as we seek His face together!

here's a few pictures of the girls. [the boys were busy at the grill. go figure.]

love!

bini and miri!

the kathas!

dear deutschland.

It's been awful fun over here. Everyone is excited to see each other again.. our little "family" here is such a blessing!

Basically I've been hanging out with friends [and working on staying awake] for the past two days.

This weekend I head to Austria! Salzburg on Saturday, then head out Sunday to the Castle in Milstatt for the Missions Conference all week.

hooray!

And, if you haven't seen them yet, or noticed Jessica's blog, you should definitely check out 

The Official Madden Wedding Pictures at maddenwedding.michaelspotts.com. :)

p.s. Excellent German Find of the Week: they sell kefir here. amazing.

p.s.s. ich habe gelernt zu schalten! 

i made it.

i've safely arrived in Germany. thanks for all your prayers. the flight was thankfully quite uneventful, and my dear friends were there to pick me up. i am quite tired but can't really sleep, hungry but can't really eat, and i think rather dehydrated. but i'm here, hooray!

tonight is worship night at cc siegen. then sleep.

i'm thankful.

blessing.

Once upon a time, perhaps a year or two ago, I had a slight desire. It was for something that was very handy, and shiny, and nice. Yet it was not necessary, and I found that I had lived all my life [until that point of realizing my desire] without it; therefore I decided that I ought to be able to get along quite nicely without it. Besides, I couldn't really afford it.

Time went on. I applied my hand to the proverbial plow, and earned an honest living. Yet I still found little justification for making the aforementioned purchase; it was still desirable, yet remained unnecessary and rather frivolous. Such an amount could do much greater good elsewhere. No sleep was lost over this decision.

Fast forward to this evening. Following a nice family dinner and my brother's birthday celebration, I spy a certain young nephew of mine running toward me with a small, shiny object in his hand. He drops it at or around my feet, and I stoop to pick it up. My mind tells me that he should not have this sort of shiny object, then moves to bewilderment as to where such an object might have been procured by his 20-month-old hand; meanwhile, my mouth is asking him the same sort of question. Next I see my name on the screen, and hear a voice telling me, "It's yours, Annie!" 

My mind at this point is thinking several things, such as "I don't have one," "Whose is this?," and "It's not my birthday, it's Tyler's!"

After a few such seconds of such perplexity, the realization sunk in.

I almost cried.

My three brothers, plus Mary and Bryce, pitched in together to get me the very thing I supposed I would never have.

Currently feeling: grateful, undeserving, blessed, amazed, and still somewhat bewildered.

Thanks family. I love you.

And so, the Lord reminded me in a very tangible way of a particular promise in His Word which I read this very morning:

Delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. -Psalm 37:4

For in so doing, we shall all live happily [and contentedly] ever after.

The End.