I’m eating German chocolate right now…eh? Jealous? It’s ridiculous. It’s basically the best chocolate I’ve ever had, and you can just pick it up anywhere for less than a euro. Milka and Pepsi lite….ah yes….

So, Dad, I really appreciate your commenting on the inerrancy issue, and everything. I was talking to someone today about it a little bit, and the answer of just being okay to say, “I don’t know,” just isn’t an option for them. I can understand that there are definitely questions that we can’t answer, and for me for some reason it IS usually okay to just say, “I don’t know.” But, I guess for some people it’s not. And I think in some ways, it shouldn’t be okay to just say I don’t know. Not necessarily in regards to deep, theological issues, but in regards to, “Do you really believe this, and why?” I think that every person, regardless of personal beliefs, should wrestle deep within themselves to discover those answers. It’s not fun, but I think it’s good.

Does “God-breathed” mean that everything is supposed to be accurate? Are there inaccuracies in the Bible, especially when listing out chronology and ages of different men and events? I’m just repeating some questions I’ve heard lately - and if there are these inaccuracies, how do we know what actually happened or what is allegorical? Why are there differing accounts of who arrived at the tomb when and how many angels were there? If humans make mistakes and view things incorrectly sometimes, how do we know that different Bible authors aren’t writing things to favor themselves, and just imposing their thoughts into God’s “voice”?

Those are random thoughts that don’t really make sense, but hopefully you can understand what I’m saying. These are some of the discussions I’ve been having/hearing, and I’m just thinking aloud (except not really)…

Well, let’s see …updates…

Thursday - went to the Uni of Dortmund to see about taking a German class, but it’s not going to work. There’s some other possibilities, but they’re expensive. I had such a great time talking to my friend Tabea, we have a lot of similar views on women and our views of church, etc. It was really a nice time.

Friday - went downtown with friends and hung out for awhile, and then went to a German party in a German basement with a disco and everything, woo! It was actually really fun. I met some really interesting people.

Saturday - woke up after 4 hours of sleep to head off to Cologne again with some of the Goerings, went to an art museum and saw some Monet paintings, walked around, then went with the Goerings to a get-together/kind of worship session with some people that live and do outreach in K? It was fine & dandy, but without getting into an intense conversation, I think there’s just a large difference between my generation and the next, which I guess is normal. I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot, and talking to people about it a lot…
Anyway, I spent the night with Tabea and watched a movie.

Sunday - woke up and hung out with Timothy and Tabea, took a long walk through a forest with Timothy and talked about lot of different thoughts and life issues and questions we have. It was a good and again, very challenging conversation. Went to church in the evening, went back to Timothy’s and hung out until late.

Today - woke up late, ate lunch with Innes, catching up on thinking and emails and reading.

There are just a lot of thoughts and things about yourself that can really come to light that you’ve never thought about when you completely throw yourself out of your familiar world, and enter a different one with different beliefs and cultural understandings. It’s a really crazy interesting experience, and I think you grow in ways you never would have elsewhere. That’s all for now.

Pictures from another trip to Cologne Jana and I being really cold, and rapping about how cold we were.

Some pictures! I shrunk them down, so sorry the quality’s not that great, just click on them to view them. And I should say that I’m going off no sleep, so my pic descriptions are a little blase but hopefully you like them.

Trip to Cologne:

Good ol’ McDonalds in Dortmund, Timothy, Isaac, Andreas, David & kind of Graham

Timothy & David on the train

David in such a great pose

Lynn entertaining herself

The beautiful Cathedral (there’s too many pictures to show everything)

I love this one - you can see David taking a picture at the bottom

Me & David

Prayers

The never-ending spiral staircase to the top, about 500 steps, oh yeah, no problem.

Cologne the Rhine Ruhr

Timothy assisting me in keeping traditions alive

Berlin:

Roz & I, proud that we supplied food and I ordered in German successfully

Sleeping arrangements, night numero uno

Me, right after waking up, wearing the same clothes again, sad to not have my backpack

Brandenburg Gate

The Holocaust museum is right below this city block of well…blocks…used to remember the diverse humanity wiped out in the war. I was here in July 2005, not really knowing what it represented. This shot is from down near the ground, looking up.

I’ll put up some pictures of the last few days sometime hopefully…

Yesterday was quite a day. I woke up in a nursery in the Berlin church, went to a Wall Museum, got some awesome doner, slept in the back of the van all the way back to Dortmund, got made fun of several times for wearing the same clothes 4 days in a row, ran home and showered and FINALLY put some clean clothes on, went to the Goerings, took the train Downtown with about 10,000 other people, and then went to….

The Germany vs. USA soccer game!

It was so much fun, but I don’t think I ever want to be that cold again. I couldn’t feel my toes for about 2 hours. There were 65,000 people there, mostly Germans, and they schooled the US 5-1, and the USA’s only goal was one that bounced over people and just happened to go in..sad.

Then we took the train home, and I stayed up until 4:00 talking with people, and now I’m up, about to head of to the University of Dortmund to look into possibly taking a class or two.

How many of you can say this-

I am in a modern church - Rock Berlin - right now, and last night I had to find a place for 4 kids and an American who has never left the country to eat, order for them in German, guide them around part of Berlin for 2 hours, wait outside in freezing cold for about an hour, then when my ride pulled up, the window where i was sitting was smashed, and only my backpack, out of everything else in the car stuffed with luggage, was stolen.

Yep, my backpack was stolen in Berlin, and I am going to have to buy a lot of new stuff, and i had some special stuff in there also.