Time for an update!

So, travel weekend was a lot of fun. I stayed at the Bode, but when on a day trip with my friends Christine, Amy, and Susannah, to Konstanz, one day. Another day I just had a quiet day to myself since all my roommates were gone, and another day went and hung out in Friedrichshafen with another group of friends and got coffee. Every night, a group of us would drag our mattresses into the lecture hall and watch a movie till really late at night. One night, we watched all of Lord of the Ring movies and went to bed at 5 in the morning. It was sooo much fun! We also had a worship night one of the nights and that was a lot of fun too. It was so good to get to hang out with a smaller group and just get to know them better. Don't get me wrong, I love the big group as well!!!

Fast forwarding a little bit...we've had a couple crossings since then and they've been really good! Sonja's come to visit me both times and it's been so great to talk to her and spend time with her. You would think living so close to her, I would see her more often, but she and I have just been way too busy to do anything lately. Hopefully we'll be able to hang out one last time before I leave. I think she will be coming to church this weekend though so that'll be fun! I'm really looking forward to when she and my cousin Lars come to visit me in Texas this summer. She's already booked her flight and my family's already thinking up cool things to do with them and to show them.

Also, a couple weekends ago my sing team went on a weekend outreach. It was so much fun and we really got a lot closer. One day, we went to a school and walked around to different classrooms and gave our testimonies, answered some questions they had, and sang some songs (obviously). That was a lot of fun. In the evenings, we would sing at the church services and then afterwards, hang out with some of the teens from the church. One night, at an evening service, I gave my testimony. It was so cool because I wasn't nervous after I prayed for peace about it and I knew the whole time that God had a plan for my testimony that night. I was chosen at random to give my testimony and no one had heard it before. The topic to be preached that night went along with my testimony and then the drama that the drama team put on right before I went up to share, was basically my testimony in a nutshell! I knew it was all apart of God's will. Afterwards, a lady came up to me and thanked me for sharing my testimony and told me she could relate some to it and asked me to keep her in my prayers. I told her of course I would and hugged her. I told her that God is all powerful and is able to do anything and is able to rescue her from anything she's struggling from as long as she's ready to need Him and admits that she can do nothing apart from Christ and needs Him to help her. The next day, a few ladies came up to me and thanked me for sharing my testimony and told me that no one has ever been that brave to share a testimony like that in church and she told me that it was really encouraging to hear how God helped me through all that and brought me to Bodenseehof and how much I've changed. She told me she hadn't known me for very long, but could tell that I'd changed so much and that I have a genuine heart for the Lord. Then another lady came up to me and told me that right after I shared my testimony, a lady went up to her and asked to pray and talk to her. She told her that she had been dealing with a lot of the stuff I went through and made a lot of the same decisions I had made and she needed to change her life around and said also that she wanted to live for God and not for herself or to please other people. She had been struggling with not feeling loved and she realized after my testimony, that it is possible for God to love her and to give her a second chance. She isn't too "dirty" for God. God loves and forgives her no matter what she's done, or who she's been in the past. I was so thankful that God made me get up there and share my testimony. I was definitely taken out of my comfort zone that night, but God showed me that it was for the best. It was also really encouraging to see once again, how God can take our past experiences and bad choices that we made in the past and help others going through the same thing and see how He uses that for His glory and in bringing others to Him. What an awesome and loving God He is!

Last Sunday, my sing team went on another outreach. However, this one was only for a morning. We went to a little kid's Sunday school class and sang some songs for them both German and English songs, and acted out a story about the Good shepherd and some of my friends on my sing team were the sheep. It was so much fun and the kids loved it! The kids were from ages 3-8 and they really liked everything we did. I think it was probably because we were so much older than they were. Then, after that, we played a game with the kids and our sing team guys really got into it. After the game was over and the parents were starting to pick up their kids, the kids didn't want to go home. They were wrestling and rough housing with the sing team guys and were laughing and giggling their little heads off! They were sooo cute! The mom's would be trying to get their jackets on and the kids were crying and trying to pull away so they could all high five us and give us hugs. It was supposed to be our last outreach as a sing team, but we kept begging our leader, Barbel, to go back and hopefully we'll be able to maybe next Sunday or something like that. We loved it!

Well, there's 3 weeks left of school, 18 days to be exact...and I'm really sad about that. People get mad and won't let anyone talk about how many days we have left because we all love it here and don't want to go home. I miss my family though, because we're so close and my good friends, but I will miss everyone here as well. Everyone here is like a tight family as well and it's going to be hard when it's time for us to leave. I'm excited though, because we're already planning a '08-'09 reunion, and then the Texans are planning a Texan reunion when everyone gets back from traveling or Spring school. Also, my friend Lindsey is getting married, I think June 28th and a lot of people are going to her wedding. I'm not sure yet if I'll be able too, but I think it's awesome how we are all trying to figure out ways to hang out after school's over. The people here are my family, no matter how different or annoying some of them may be, and I'm going to miss every single one of them!

I hope everyone's having a good week! Thanks for reading!

Love in Christ,
Jill<><

p.s. If ya'll could be praying for me, that would be great. I guess just so that I will be able to stay focused while I'm here and get the most out of the time I have. Also, just so I have a safe trip home and that I will have an easy transition when I get back. I hear it can be quite a culture shock in so many different ways and I hear it's easy to be pretty depressed after such an awesome experience like this and then go home and no one around has had this awesome experience or learned what you learned and they all think you're like an alien by the way you think. Also, all my friends are going back to their homes all around the world and some of them I'll never see in person again...and that's a hard thing for me to think about.