July Newsletter

I hope everyone's summer is going well. And I hope you can enjoy whatever time you have left to summer and ignore all the back-to-school items in the stores.

I feel like my summer just started at the beginning of July when I drove to Indiana to take my dog, Storm, and my cat, Dolce, to live with Adam's parents. They are sweet pets and were good company for me this past year, but I knew it was time to give them up and that they are in a loving home. That weekend was also the weekend of what would have been Adam's and mine 6th anniversary, and my first visit to the gravesite since the burial last April. Thankfully, my mom flew out to Indiana to be with us too and was a good support for me during the weekend.

Today I am going to Germany. No, this is not 'THE' move, this is the summer mission trip my church, Southbrook, is taking to Lich to help Christusgemeinde host their second English Camp. My main role on the team was to put together the curriculum. This was a huge deal for me. Thankfully, I was able to use Greater Europe Mission's ESL curriculum as a base, in addition to the curriculum from last year's English Camp. So, I took all these resources, and put together a Native American themed English curriculum for six to 14 year olds with varying levels of English proficiency. Like I said, it was a HUGE deal for me. And since I was the one putting it together, I made sure crafts were part of the curriculum too!

  Thank you to everyone who has prayed about this trip. Please keep praying, as there are a few last minute things our team needs to prepare for and purchase before the camp starts on Monday (the rest of my team leaves on Friday). And please pray while we are in Germany. For safety and health for all of us (no substitutes are available) and for the camp to go well. German churches, especially those with American connections, have come under some very close scrutiny and skepticism in the last few months. As much as we want to reach out to the children who will be in our classrooms, we need to be extra cautious to not cross any lines or break and laws (it is illegal to witness to children under 13 without their parents present) that would put Christusgemeinde in a bad light in their community.

After the English Camp I will be heading to Hungary, via Vienna, for GEM's annual conference. Then I will come home and pack up my apartment to be ready to go to pre-field training in September. But more about that next month!

A praise! After searching for lost files after my computer crashed in January, and thinking I had lost my address files, I found the lost files in a random folder on one of my flash drives! (And that is why this is the first time some of you are hearing from me in months and months.)

In Christ's unfailing love

Kate