A loooong trip to Germany

The first week of February I was in Mosbach, Germany for a meeting of Reach Beyond's IT managers and then to attend ICCM. The events were at the OM Germany facility which you can see in two of the photos.

Every two years we try to get together the IT team from our various offices for a time of encouragement and planning. This was the first time in four years that we have met face-to-face. There were two long days of our meetings followed by three days of the ICCM conference.

The International Conference on Computing and Mission (ICCM) is a unique conference focused on techies serving mission and ministries organized by these same people. The Reach Beyond IT group attended the ICCM Europe conference as it provided a more central location for our people coming from England, Spain, Malaysia, the U.S. and Ecuador.

What a great time to encourage each other as we serve Jesus as techies!

The train from Frankfurt was fairly high-speed and we hit 200 Kmh.

I purposely didn't include photos of people in this as many work in difficult areas.

The talk...

We were privileged to be able to have an open door to share our ADHD talk with some of the teachers at the school Joshua and Joel attend. It went quite well and a couple of them were wanting to ask us questions. Unfortunately, we had less than one hour so we will need to follow-up with the teachers at a later time.

It truly is amazing how God continues to open paths for us to share with others.

This week we have another opportunity to share with more teachers. Pray with us that it would be a benefit to them.

Manger scenes...

 The hospital has a competition every year for the best manger scene using materials from the workplace.

This year, the general theme seemed to be "green", as in environmentaly friendly. Pretty much everything was reused from their respective areas.

 Here are some photos of the setups that we judged.

Ministries

 This pas weekend, our church held its ministry fair where there are stands representing each of the ministries in the church. The idea is to make people aware of the various ministries of the church, but also to encourage people to get involved.

When Marlene and I arrived, we each had thought we knew where we were going.

Marlene was going to help with the Evangelism stand and I was going to the Men's Ministry area.

But, God had other plans.

When we found out that the Prayer and Intercession stand had no one there, we went and started praying with the people.

What a time of encouragement. Not what we had anticipated, but we pray that God used our willingness to go where we were needed to bless others.

Us

 Just a fun shot!

Culture day as school

ANAN (the school the boys attend) is very active in multi-cultural things this year. Even though the events are normally held on a weekday, we try to get to as many of them as possible.

It's a fun time for them and us.