new pictures and weekend report

First of all, I have added a bunch of new pictures for you to look through! So, check those out by clicking on the slideshow of my photos to the left.

This weekend has been my co-RA's weekend-off. Friday night there were class parties where each of the grades have their individual activities going on for 2 hours. During that time I was able to hang out at one of the dorms that are in the same town as the school and chill with some other RA's until it was time to go pick-up the students. After we got back we popped in Father of the Bride 2 to have a bit of chill time before sending the students off to bed.

Saturday morning I had to go pick up a girl from her friend's house in town and run by the pharmacy. We stayed busy picking up from brunch and just organizing everything until the boys' dorm HBR came over in the afternoon. Our seniors wanted to invite them over for a game of flag-football and dinner. Unfortunately, the weather has turned very cold and wet lately, so some still ventured out to play football, but the other half of the group stayed indoors and played group games. We then had hotdogs and brats, veggies, and potatoe salad for dinner with the boys. I had also made two large batches of brownies in the morning for dessert which worked out well because two of the boys from HBR had their birthdays that day. We decided to show the boys how we sing/celebrate birthdays by turning out the lights in the dining room, bringing in the brownies with candles lit and sang very loudly with pounding on the tables. It was definitely the loudest our birthday song has ever been since I've been here!
Some girls went off to play at the school gym for a bit and then we wathced Spiderman at night. I was quite tired by the end of the day with keeping busy and hostessing.

Today, Sunday, we went off to church as normal in the morning and then we had the great pleasure of being guests at someone's house! The family of one of our girls from last year now lives in the area and the parents work at BFA. They were kind enough to invite our whole dorm over for lunch! This is quite the feat when it means feeding about 23 extra mouths! We had amazing lasagne, salad, garlic bread, and apple pie with ice cream for dessert. We all even fit around 1 large table (made up of a couple tables). It was a great time with all the girls and quite enjoyable to be the guests instead of the hostesses!

I hope all is going well for you all wherever you may be!

Back in Deutschland!

I am back in Germany for my second year of being an RA in Witt @ BFA! It is definitely weird to be one of the “returners” instead of a “newbie”. It’s also been surprisingly comforting to be back here and know how to live here and what’s going on. It is sad to not have those who have moved on from BFA here anymore and to not have our seniors from last year, but there is excitement in having new, fresh faces and looking forward to those of our girls who are coming back. My travels went much better getting back here then they went going home for the summer. So, thank you for all your prayers!

When I first got back, us RA’s lived together in Storch dorm again until our dorms were available to move back into. It was fun being with the other returners again and getting to know all the new ones. Unfortunately, the internet was not working in that dorm while we lived there, but now that I’m back in my dorm I have easy access to it. I am all moved into my new room in the dorm and thoroughly enjoying the way I’ve been able to set it up and make it homey. I’m very excited for the girls to get here and see it and hopefully spend lots of good times hanging out in it.

We have 11 returning RA’s and 6 new ones. The smallest girl dorm is short one RA until the new one can raise enough support to get here. Please be praying that her support comes in quickly so that their staff can get the other set of hands that they need. One of our boy dorms is also short a female RA. Please also be praying that God will provide the needed help for them.

I have a new RA with me this year and her name is Amy! She is from Ohio and seems very well fit for this dorm. I’m really excited to see her with our girls once they get back and to spend this year serving alongside her.

I have a friend who was an RA the last two years she’s been here and is transitioning into teaching elementary school for BFA this year. Unfortunately, she is having difficulty raising the new support she needs. Please join me in prayer for her support to come in soon as I’m sure it’s hard to be in the states when her heart is here and ready to teach.

I know I have mentioned many prayer requests in this post, but I do have one more. The burden that is constantly in the back of my mind right now is trying to figure out what to do with my student loan. I would not trade my time at Corban for anything, but it is difficult to deal with the debt I have accrued from being there. I have deferred paying my loan several times out of not being able to afford the monthly payments and the end of my last deferment period I requested is coming to an end in September. Please pray for wisdom on if I should request a longer deferment or if God will provide the money I need to be paying them off. Having these loans definitely plays a part in figuring out future plans for whether or not to stay on the mission field if I can’t be paying them off while serving. Please pray that God will provide the money to pay them, or grant a longer request for deferment, or provide some other solution that I can’t come up with in my limited, human mind.

Thank you all for your prayers and support in what I’m doing here! I love these girls I serve and can’t wait for them to start coming back in less than a week! (Please also pray for us as we prepare for them!)

End of the Year CrAziNesS

First of all, I have added a bunch of new pictures, so be sure to check those out by clicking on the slideshow.

This past weekend has been my last weekend off. Yesterday, though, I was able to go to a special event for the senior girls. It is a mother/daughter tea and all of the senior girls are able to bring either there mother (only possible for a few) or invite someone from the school to come with them as their "mother". I was honored by two of my girls who asked me to go with them. Here is a picture of the 3 of us.


The event was at a Rose Garden and it was perfect warm and sunny weather for it. We had a great time of tea/coffee and little snacks. One woman from the school got up and spoke a little to the group and then each of the senior girls stood up and said where they will be going next year for school and what they would be studying. Then most of us who came with girls took turns giving a blessing/prayer to the group. I read Colossians 1:9-12 to the group.

There are many events like the tea going on lately as the year is coming closer and closer to an end. Graduation is on June 11 and some students start leaving in the days before that. Our girls have been starting to pack all of their stuff too. I'm pretty sure I mentioned before, if not in here then in my newsletter, that our dorm was supposed to be moving to a new dorm next year. I don't think I've mentioned since I got the news that we are no longer moving! God worked a miracle out for us to be able to stay here. It works out perfectly for the school because our landlord dropped the price immensely, so we are saving money and it saves them from having to find a place for a middle school dorm that they are wanting to start back up next year. So, they are going to use the dorm we were going to move to for middle schoolers next year. Our girls, and us as staff, are very happy to be able to stay here and it makes the end of this year A LOT easier then it would have been. I also don't know if I ever mentioned that my co-RA, Cara, has decided that she will not be coming back next year. She is going to move back to southern California where she is from. So, please join me in prayer that God places the right person to work in this dorm with me, the dorm parents, and our girls.

Please pray that we can finish out this year strong and enjoy these last days with our seniors.
I will be home in 23 days! Please pray that my trip goes safely as it will be a very long day with multiple legs of travel.

Don't forget to check out those pictures! Here is one more from the tea with all of our seniors, me, Cara (my co-RA), and Laura (dorm mom).

this past week

We had a busy week this week preparing for and many participating in Candle Light Dinner. Candle Light Dinner is it is an outreach event for locals in our community. The narration was all in German and it was geared towards reaching non-believers. On Wednesday night there was a dress rehearsal that everyone who was going to be helping had to attend leaving our dorm with only a few students left. Many of our girls helped by serving, hosting, and performing in the show. I was able to attend the dress rehearsal since I wouldn't be able to see it during the weekend. Candle Light Dinner was on Friday and Saturday night. They were nights filled with van runs to get girls back and forth, but it all worked out and everybody seemed to have a good time. We heard good reports about how it went from the gal who organized it on Sunday at church.

This weekend was Cara’s weekend off, but we were blessed to have a student teacher, Sarah Sax, come to stay at the dorm to fill in for her. The girls seemed to truly enjoy having her here and getting to know her on a more personal level outside of school. She was a huge help to us as well since it would’ve been only Brant and I otherwise.

We ended the weekend with watching the Canada vs. USA Olympic hockey game. There are many of us from America and some (mainly one) from Canada, so it was fun to let out our patriotism. Those with no loyalty to either country chose a side (most chose Canada). Flags from each country were brought out to represent on either side of the TV and many bore their national colors. It was a great game to watch and a lot of fun with the girls to cheer our countries on.

The biggest change to recently happen is that we gained one more girl! She arrived late Thursday evening from Korea with her mom. Her name is Jeewon (Jessie). She has already finished her freshman year, but will be auditing, in a way, freshman courses for the rest of this year and jumping into her sophomore year next year. At dorm fellowship last night we had a chance to go around and tell her who we all are and at the end she was able to repeat back all of our names! We were quite impressed. The girls are very excited to have her here and have been great at welcoming her with open arms.

Prayer requests:
Our dorm mom is still in the states finishing things up from her mother's estate. Please pray that she can return soon and safe.
The whole high school is off to high school retreat this weekend. Please pray for their safety and for spiritual growth from what they hear from the speaker.
Please also be praying for our new girl, Jessie, and her transition into life here and for us, as a staff, to have wisdom on how to make her feel welcome.

Praying you all have a great week!

Erin

P.S. I have uploaded some pictures from our dorm Christmas party, my Christmas break, and from my weekend off last weekend when I spent two nights in Strasbourg, France with 2 other gal RA's.

Washington State NOT D.C.

I am on the last day of my first weekend off. I have been staying at my friends', Becky and Alyssa, home in Kandern at the same place I stayed over Christmas break. It's been very relaxing and refreshing. They are both art teachers at BFA. Last night I had the chance to go out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Lorrach (a bigger town nearby) with Becky and some of her and Alyssa's German friends from their church. Thankfully there were a few who spoke English which were the ones I talked the most to. Becky is very good in German so she talks to them in a mixture of German and English. It was, sadly to say, the first time I got to meet and socialize with German peers. It was really fun and I hope to get to hang out with them again on a future weekend or day off.

So, for a funny story...Today I went into Lorrach to get my German driver's license. A lady at the school fills out all of our paperwork for things like this and then we just each had to go and pick up our license's as soon as we got a card in the mail saying they were ready to be picked up. Cara (my Co-RA) thankfully came with me because I wasn't sure where the place was and how it all worked and such. Instead of waiting in a large waiting room and then going up to a window like the licensing places in the States, here you wait in line and then go into someone's office. So Cara and I went into a ladie's office when it was my turn and I told the lady right away (in German) that I don't speak much German. She spoke at least a little English which turned out to be helpful. She plugged some of my information in on the computer and was looking at my Washington driver's license and started making a couple phone calls and then went over to someone else's office. I wasn't sure what was going on because I knew that Washington state has full reciprocity for getting a driver's license over here. She came back into the office with another man and they started to say that I needed to take a test. As we start to talk about this, with basic and slow English, Cara catches on to the fact that they are talking about Washington state vs. D.C. Ever since I've got here I'm always careful to say that I'm from Washington state because I know that they will assume D.C. if I just said Washington. But now the lady is saying that they need proof that it is Washington STATE. I tried to explain that because it's the state's name that the license isn't going to say state on it. She starts making more phone calls, meanwhile Cara is on the phone trying to get someone from BFA to explain in German to these people the difference between state and D.C. The lady leaves the room again and Cara sees the guy who had come in to help Google Washington state with a look of "awww" come over his face when he started to understand. Thankfully, when the lady came back in she said they sent a fax or something over to Washington (not sure if she ment state or D.C.) and they confirmed for her that I was in fact from Washington state not D.C. This was a HUGE relief because they were tring to say I would have to take a test in German, which is very expensive, if I couldn't prove I was from the state. During part of the confusion Cara said to me, "you would come from a confusing state" and I said, "I know, I know." All this to prove that D.C. really has made it quite confusing and hard for us TRUE Washingtonians.