It is time

Its been a while since I last updated this blog.  Classes at the universities here just started and that means that I get really busy.  As one of the two guys on the STINT team here, I am trying to connect with all the guys that were involved with the ministry last year and meet new guys this year.  Austin and I are stretched between all three of the Universities, which means I have a lot of meetings with students.  Officially, however, I am assigned to the Freie Universitaet, so I spend a bit more time there than I do at the other universities.  These past two weeks have been exciting though.  God has been so good in leading me to new guys that are wanting to know more about Jesus Christ and the Bible.

One event that I have been a part of planning is the Fall Retreat.  At the Fall Retreat we hope that students will experience community, be impacted by teaching from the Bible and relax by getting away from the big city of Berlin.  The more I plan for the event the more I get excited for what can do through this weekend.  Last year there were 2 students that went to the Fall Retreat.  This year the team and I have been praying for 25 students and so far we have 10 students that want to come.  Already God is at work in the hearts of students.

Last weekend I got to go to the Haarz mountains in Germany and climb the tallest mountain there, namely Brocken.  It was a blast and I had so much fun hiking.  I have some pics to show some of that adventure, unfortunately I just don't feel like they do justice to what I truly saw and experienced.

That isn't much, but it will have to do for now.  Hopefully I can get around to either editing this one or updating with a new post soon because there is just so much I can write about.

My Choice of Words

Its been two weeks since my last post and so much has happened.

At the Schloss

Two weeks ago on Tuesday the team and I left for a conference called the UniMAT. I myself wasn't entirely sure what the conference was about, but I knew that I had to be there and that we would be staying a Schloss (German for Castle/Palace). I was excited to be staying in a castle, but there was more to it than just that. The UniMAT was a conference where I got to learn a lot about what my role in the ministry is going to look like. The big focus of the conference was starting student led movements. This was so good to hear for me because I was once a student leader at Purdue, but now I am a staff member who is trying to find and raise students here in Berlin to lead the ministry. I had to keep reminding myself that I am no longer the student but finding and guiding them. Learning this concept was so good and really set the tone for what my role will look like for this next year. Also the UniMAT was a time where I could meet the other staff members of Campus für Christus that are in other regions in Germany and be encouraged by them. Most of them are Germans that have such an incredible passion to see lost students on the university campuses come to know Christ. I really fed off their passion and now I am just so excited to do ministry on the campuses here in Berlin. Other great things that the Schloss included some of the best home cooked German food I've had and playing ping pong against a German and Irishman.

On the weekend our team went out and took a bike tour around Berlin. One thing I learned from the bike tour is that this city is incredibly big. We biked for a few hours and I would gander that we didn't even see half the city, its just so large.

This past week went by really fast. On Tuesday, the team and I went out to the campuses to go and talk with students in the mensa (cafeteria) with the intent of getting into spiritual conversations. Myself and a few other went to Freie University, which is a great campus and has a really nice mensa. Now this was my first time of actually going out and talking with students that I have never met before, so I paired up with Barbara on my team because she's a pro at doing it and I was hoping she could show me the ropes and how to get into conversation with students in Berlin. So we spot this guy that was casually eating his lunch and sit next to him. We quickly strike up conversation with him, but he tells us his English isn't so great (it was actually pretty good). But anyways we start getting on to spiritual topics and he didn't know all the vocab for that, so he starts speaking in German. This is fine because Barbara is from Germany and speaks it just fine. Meanwhile, I am just sitting there eating my lunch while this conversation is going on in a language that I am just beginning to learn. So I begin just praying that God would work on this guy's heart (at this point I still don't even know this guy's name). About 45 minutes later the conversation wraps up, he apologizes to me for speaking only German, and I finally ask him for his name. He tells me its Tobias, and then we part ways. Shortly thereafter, Barbara informs me all that they discussed. In short, the guy didn't really know much about Christianity but really wanted to know more about it and how it worked. He recognized that the questions that Christianity helps to answer are big and important questions. He wanted to know more about it and so Barbara invited him to a Bible study that we are going to be starting up that is for students seeking to know more. He expressed an interest, but said he knew his friends would make fun of him for going to it. I still think he will come once the study starts up. I share this story with you because it shows that God is working in the hearts of students here in Berlin. They recognize that they need God but don't know where to go or where to begin. They fear the persecution of friends. This city is ripe for the Gospel and I am so excited to be here to share it. So I ask that you will continue to pray for this city, for the students here, and please pray for Tobias. Pray that God will continue to work on his heart and that he will come to desire Christ as his Savior and follow Him.

Hanging out with the team

After Tuesday, this week really sped up. Essentially, Wednesday and Thursday were days where I just moved stuff. It turned out to be pretty exhausting but rewarding. One of the staff members here just got an apartment and needed to move stuff from the previous place she was staying to her new apartment. There were a lot of heavy items that had to be moved and I will just summarize by saying that I woke up Friday morning with my hands calloused and burning, sore arms, and sore legs. Friday, however, proved to be a good refreshing day, as the team went out to a nearby lake and rented some rowboats. The weather was just perfect and we just casually rowed our boat around in the calm waters of the peaceful lake.

That's it for now, again if you have any questions, comments, gripes, or complaints, comment below. As you may have noticed, there are a couple of pictures posted above. The first one is everyone in front of the Schloss at the UniMAT and the second is at a cafe with some of my team members here in Berlin. I will try to post a good picture of the Schloss when I can find one.

Great is Thy Faithfulness

Well I am back to posting again now that I am back on the other side of the pond. This time around I plan on being a lot more committed to updating this blog and keeping you posted on my life and ministry here in Berlin, Germany. I will continue my tradition of naming the title of my post after a name of a song, so if you can name the artist and album of the song then I will give you 5 gold stars for each correct answer.

Anyways, I am going to jump right into what you want...the update! First off, I need to let all my supporters know that I am at 100% pledged of my support goal! God brought 85% of it in just 3 weeks, which is absolutely incredible and a testament to God's faithfulness in provided for the needs of His children. I want to thank you for all your prayers and support through that process. You guys supported me through the it all and got me here to Berlin! So please rejoice with me and thank God for all that He did to get me here because it truly is a miracle for me to have raised all that support in such a short amount a time.

There are some really cool things that happened with support raising and I want to share them with you. Like I said earlier it took about 3 weeks for God to bring me all the way to 100%. It started around August 15-16, with a the prayers of my STINT team at the STINT briefing (i missed the briefing to raise support) and they sent me a lot of encouragement via texts. The next day I woke up feeling abnormally encouraged, motivated, and excited to raise support. I felt like people were praying for me, I do not know how else to express it other than that I felt prayer. That morning new names started going through my head for people to call, and so I made phone calls. That became a pattern for the next few weeks. Wake up, think of names and make phone calls, eat dinner, then make more calls. I would wake up and just pray to God not knowing where the $X/month was going to come from, but I knew He would bring it in. He was faithful and everyday more and more support came in. One night, in particular, I remember making some phone calls after dinner around 6pm. Around 9pm I made phone calls to those in Central Time (1 hour behind me so it was 8pm there), then I made calls to Mountain Time (an hour later so it was still 8pm there time), then I made calls to Pacific Time (again still 8pm there time). I was done talking around midnight and was so tired! But again, I point to God for ensuring that the people I called would be there and willing to talk and making that night very productive. So I just wanted to let all of you know just how incredible it is that I am here in Berlin. I am reminded of Phillipians 4:19 when Paul says "And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus." It is amazing how true Paul's words were in this time.

So some of you may know, some may not, but I left for Berlin, Germany this past Sunday (Sept. 11) and have safely arrived. I told some of you that I would be leaving on Sept. 2 but that was changed because I couldn't get a plane ticket reserved so quickly (thats just how fast God raised the support). I have been living in Berlin for almost a full week now. So far I haven't done too much other than just get acquainted with living here. I don't know the language too well but I can still get around alright without too much trouble. I live in the Stadtmitte district, which literally means City Center. I get around using mostly the subway (U-bahn), tram (S-bahn), or by bus. I live really close to some tourist attractions, so where I live seems pretty safe. I live on what used to be East Berlin, and about a quarter of a mile from where the wall used to be. I have some pictures to show where I live using Google maps. I also provided a panorama from my balcony, which I thought was pretty cool. I am excited to live here in Berlin. Its a really cool place with a lot of history. This first week is really about settling in here and getting used to living here. I think I have definitely accomplished that.

I have been able to go onto one of the campuses this past week. I went to Technische Universität on Tuesday and got to talk with a student involved with Campus für Christus. She was so excited to talk with us and share more about what life is like as a student at Technische Universität. Talking to her really got me excited to do ministry in Berlin. I can see the need for the need to share the Good News here and I want to be a part of that.

Well I think that is it for now...if you have any questions just post them as a comment and I'll try to address them as best I can.

Hang On

Well I know its been a while since I've last updated this blog, I'm sure plenty of you have been wondering what has been keeping you guys updated. To be honest, I've been a bit busy with work and traveling, but the biggest thing holding me back was that this update seemed a bit daunting because I knew it was going to be quite large. I wanted to put a lot of time into editing some nice photos and sending some links to facebook so you guys could browse through all my pictures. In addition I wanted to comment on each picture so you knew what was going on. Suffice to say much of that still hasn't been done, but I think an update is still long overdue, so here it is:

On the 24 of June, Jiang and myself set out for an adventure (the A and B on this picture don't really mean anything, but the blue is what we traveled). We booked a couple of tickets on tour to see France. Jiang arranged the whole thing, which meant that it was through a Chinese travel agency and the entire tour was in Chinese with nearly all Chinese people that only spoke Chinese and some German and maybe some English. So for me it indeed an adventure. Jiang translated for me (and did a really good job of it) for all the necessary information I needed to know from our tour guide. The journey was planned to be a four day tour that departed from Magdeburg then traveling to other major cities in Germany to pick up other people for the tour, so it probably took us an extra 5 hours or so to pick up everybody rather than just head straight for France. After we got out of Germany, our first destination was Lyon, France. It is a fairly beautiful city with a beautiful cathedral sitting on a hill overlooking the city.

By the way, I think it is important to note that the entire first day was entirely a traveling day to get to Lyon. We arrived around 10pm and were going to leave the next morning at 8am. We traveled the "Chinese" style, which means we only stop at important locations stopping just long enough to take a couple of pictures and buy a postcard or some souvenir the rest of the time were are traveling so we can hurry up and see some other city. I felt this was rather advantageous for me since it allowed me to see a lot more of Europe, at a relatively inexpensive price, and only miss a two days of work (we left on a Thursday).
Since we wanted to see more of the city, Jiang, myself and a couple of other Chinese girls that sat in front of us woke up early before the bus left. We left around 6:30am and took the subway and explored the city. It was pretty much exactly what I imagined in my head as a typical French city. Everything just seemed narrow. The streets were narrow and the apartments were all built right next to each other.
From Lyon we traveled to Avignon. It was apparently the location where the Pope lived for some period of time back a long time ago (as you can tell I didn't care much for the history that I was looking at but most of this was due to it being translated to me and my translator had a hard time keeping up). Anyways this near-castle-like area was pretty cool. The cathedral inside was extremely ornate, but rather empty (a description that can characterize nearly all of the cathedrals that I visited). Another interesting thing to not was that it has a rather large and detailed stone crucifix that stood alone in the courtyard, yet seated on top of the cathedral overlooking the courtyard (above Jesus on the Cross) was a golden statue of Mary. I just failed to understand.
Our next location was the "stone city," I'm not sure of the actual name of this place but it was a village/city on near mountain that overlooked the French country-side. Every house and building in this village was made out of stone. It really was quite an amazing feat of architecture. The village and surroundings were absolutely beautiful. The best part of this place was that I got to eat an actual eclair from a french bakery. Definitely the best eclair I have ever had. The area around this city is really famous for its lavender. So we visited some lavender fields. Some of the people on our tour came specifically on this tour to see these fields because they love the lavender flower. However, they seemed a bit disappointed when we arrived to the fields.
For almost the entire adventure I never knew our next destination until we arrived at it. I enjoyed this way of travel because I had no expectations of our next destination and was constantly amazed at everything I saw. It was all new to me and always being surprised by what I saw. Unfortunately for my Chinese friends they always felt like our destinations needed to be more grandeur and extravagant than what they saw.
By the evening, we arrived in Marseille, France. Again we arrived late at night and didn't really have time to see the city. All I really remember is enjoying the croissant and latte I had for breakfast the next morning. After Marseille we made our way to Cannes, France, which unbeknown to me is like the Hollywood of Europe. It does have some hand-prints in concrete of celebrities and a red-carpet which I got to see. However, the best part of Cannes was that it sat right on the Mediterranean. Beautiful cruise ships sat on the horizon and as I walked on the beach I stared into the clearest water I have ever seen for a natural body of water.
Soon after my discovery of such crystal clear water, it was already time to leave. In a short hour or so we arrived in Nice, France and yes it is quite nice. Here we stayed a little longer and Jiang and I decided to go for a swim in the Mediterranean. However, the beaches has no sand just smooth rocks! It was crazy. I have never seen so many people just sitting out on rocks for a beach. Despite the rocks, I managed to enjoy my swim in the cool sea and just relax in the gorgeous city.
It seemed like the place we were seeing kept getting more and more beautiful and the next continued the trend. We arrived in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. Some may compare it to the Las Vegas of Europe. In my opinion, Monte-Carlo is exclusively for those who have bottomless pits of cash for pockets in order to gamble while just about anyone can go and gamble in Vegas. The city/country (yes it is its own country) was definitely one of the most beautiful locations I have ever seen in my life. The city sits in a valley surrounded by golden mountains overlooking the blue-green Mediterranean. I saw 3 or 4 Ferrari's cruising around, a lot of Porsche's, a Rolls Royce or two, and two different Lamborghini's among other very expensive cars. It was insane.
From Monaco, we traveled through the beautiful Alps in northern Italy until we arrive in Milan. We once again arrived very late (~11pm) and just spent the night in the city.
The entire next day we spent traveling back to Germany. However, this mean we got to travel through Switzerland. The Swiss have an incredible country. The mountains get large enough to be snow capped. They have many large crystal clear lakes. The rivers and streams we passed were even more clear than the Mediterranean water. Switzerland is just incredible and stunningly beautiful. It just seemed like after we came out of every tunnel we ended up looking at yet another picturesque view of mountains, rivers, lakes and green, green grass. It is definitely a place I would like to visit again.
After Switzerland, we finally arrived back in Magdeburg, Germany at 1am. It was a fast (yet long) adventure and got to see so much. I thought most of you would like to know about that trip I'll be working on getting more photos up on facebook and link you to them in my next update (which I hope will be fairly soon since there is plenty of other things going on that I would like to keep you posted on).

Well thats it for now since it seemed pretty long. It was written pretty quickly so there might be some mistakes and such throughout but I'll try to edit it at some other time.

Everything in between

The culture shock has faded and I'm definitely beginning to adjust to life here in Magdeburg. I wanted to update everyone on what exactly I am doing here and what kind of research I am doing, now that I have figured that out myself after working for two weeks.

I am researching fuel cells as you may or may not now as my primary field of study. If you don't know anything about fuel cells I would recommend checking it out on wikipedia here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell, its pretty interesting stuff. Essentially, fuel cells are an option to replace car engines and use hydrogen as the fuel with the output as water (not the carbon dioxide and other not-so-good gases that are currently emitted from cars). It is a clean way to solve some energy problems. More specifically I'm researching what is a good way to make hydrogen. I do this by making a computer program using the equations I am given an then let the computer do all the calculations and tell me how much hydrogen I can make according the equations I'm using. That is pretty much what I am doing in a nutshell. If you want more technical details then continue reading on, if not then just skip this section.


Technical stuff (diagram by altfuels.org):
The method by which I am "making" hydrogen is called autothermal reforming. I say "making" because I am not making anything, I am just simulating everything via the computer program called MATLAB. The reforming process is an important part to getting the hydrogen we need to the actual fuel cell. Right now, as a temporal solution to getting the hydrogen to our cars, methane (or natural gas) would be used to be put into the car like gasoline. The methane would then go to the reformer. Here the gas hits the catalyst, mixes with oxygen and about 4 to 8 different chemical reactions take place, yielding about 70% hydrogen and the rest is carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and water. The carbon monoxide goes through another reaction that converts it to carbon dioxide and more hydrogen later in the process to "clean" the gases. Many different equations need to be considered during such a process. This includes taking into consideration heat transfer, mass transfer, fluid dynamics, chemical equilibria, and chemical kinetics. I have to combine all these into my MATLAB code and make it work correctly. Suffice it to say, I have plenty of work ahead of me. It's definitely an enjoyable job as I can see direct application to a lot of principles that I have been learning at college, but its not necessarily easy.


Other stuff:
The weather here has been very nice. Crisp, cool, and clear. The temperature hasn't been above 75 degrees Fahrenheit and its only sprinkled a couple of times. One thing that has amazed me here in Germany is that grass isn't cut very often. Foliage is usually just left to grow wild. However, there are many wild rose bushes and flowers that grow all over. Its not uncommon to smell the sweet aroma of flowers while walking around.


The FIFA Soccer World Cup is like the kind of like NFL Playoffs or even Super Bowl. Everyone gets excited for the games and few aren't behind a T.V. when Germany is playing a game. Its a pretty exciting time to be here and I've definitely enjoyed it.

Away From You

Its been about five days since I've last updated this blog. I've traveled over 4000 miles to arrive in Magdeburg, Germany. Its considered a small city with about 2o0,000 people living here. It is filled with lots of history, most of which I have yet to explore.

From Indianapolis, I flew to Newark, NJ and from there I flew to Berlin, Germany. From Berlin it was about another hour and a half to Magdeburg by train. Once I was shown my room, I took a much needed shower and then fell asleep for the rest of the day.

The next day, which was a Saturday, I met up with the other guy who is from Purdue. His name is Jiang Guo (pronounced Jee-ang Gwa) and he is from China, but he has been here in Magdeburg for two weeks already so he knew the place a bit. He reminded me that I needed to get some groceries because everything closes in Germany on Sundays...everything. The supermarkets in Germany are mostly the same as they are in America but there are a lot of things packaged differently. For example, all the juices are in tall 1 liter bottles and all the milk is in the cartons that soy milk is packaged in and it isn't always refrigerated. Most of the meats I couldn't read so I just grabbed whatever looked decent and was inexpensive. I went a safe route and got some soups and the stuff for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Also bottled water is mostly mineral water, you know the stuff that is like carbonated water but isn't. For breakfast, I opted for cereal and milk, but the cereal here isn't the crispy crunchy kind. It looks something like honey bunches of oats but all the oats are soft and the flakes only have a small crisp to them. Its not bad, just not what I'm used to having for cereal.

Later that night Jiang and I went to "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaft," which in English means Science Night. It is a pretty big deal here in Magdeburg because there are quite a few Universities and research Institutes, which means that there is a ton of science that goes down here. There is also some historical significance to Magdeburg and some fundamental science experiments. I won't ramble into that because I don't quite understand all of it myself. Suffice to say, Jiang and I wandered our way around the city and saw a lot of really cool science exhibits. Luckily for us most Germans in the science world have to speak decent English so once we asked if they could explain all of the details they just explained in German and now in English, they were happy to oblige.

This leads me to something that I have never really experienced before. I am an alien. I don't know the language, I don't know the culture, and there is no one that is really like me here. For the first time, I am quite alone. I may look like other Germans, but I can't really connect with them. Language is a much bigger barrier than I thought. I don't really have friends or family here that I can rely on like I always been able to in the past. Jiang is a nice guy and will surely become a good friend, but there are other Chinese people here that he hangs out with from time to time, leaving me by myself. This has been a good thing though because it has led me to do two things: 1. catch up on some much needed sleep 2. spend time alone with God. The latter has been some sweet time where I have really been able to connect with God. He has shown me what it is truly like to be a "stranger and exile" (Hebrew 11:13), and what it means to be in a world but not of it.

God is good and He blessed me with some time to get to know some Germans. Astrid, who is the Ph D student that I will be working with in my research, invited me to come play some frisbee golf with her and her friends. Finally this was something I was comfortable with, I love throwing frisbees. So it was fun to play and relax for an evening. Later, we got some pizza and ate some chocolate covered grapes on a stick. I know it sounds odd, but it was delicious. Easily the largest grapes I have ever seen.

Five days in and overall I have to say its been good. I'll keep you posted.

*The picture above is of a building that was in the park where we played disc golf. Its apparently filled with all sorts of science and math related activities for kids.

Preparations

Today is the day I leave for Germany. I'm pretty excited since this is my first time leaving the country. I'll be heading to Magdeburg, Germany to research and theorize upon hydrogen fuel cells. Its definitely an honor and privilege to be working at the Max Planck Institute, an institute that is named after such a highly esteemed pioneering scientist.
My hope in this blog is to document my experiences and feelings while in Germany. I also desire to seek to glorify God to fullest in this blog. It is just as much a record for myself and others that want to follow my experiences.
It will be about 24 hours worth of travel for me as I'll arrive in Germany at about 8:05 am (thats 2:05 am for those on eastern standard time).
Well that is it for now...I guess my next post will be in Germany.