The power of a habit... (and our first short-term team was here!)

Dear praying friends,

I missed a week last week! Sometimes people tell me how much they are impressed that I get an email out each week (this is not me fishing for compliments, btw) - but for me, it is mostly a fact that I learned early the power of making some things a habit. My brain just kind of ticks that way. I get things set as a "rhythm", and then it is fairly easy for me to repeat it.

You may have noticed over the last few weeks that my Wednesday email rhythm has been disrupted, and then a miss last week - it is a sure sign of the unusual patterns and stress that we are under when my normal patterns get shaken!

So first, the good stuff. We had a great first short-term team of the year. We had 9 people from Crown College here (8 students and their campus pastor) - and they were amazing!

Also good news - people have been generous and continue to give to the project that we need to fundraise for before the end of the fiscal year (we have just this month left!)

Here is some challenging stuff - after the team left, several of us got sick. This is not completely unusual; often, the schedules are heavy and hours are long, and when a team leaves, our bodies remind us that they have limits. In our case, I think it has just been months of heavy lifting, and that has left us with very little margin. Please pray for health!

Also, with the change to a new giving platform and some staffing challenges at the National Office, it is really hard for us to find out exactly where we are with the funding right now. What does that mean? Well... it means that we likely still have a large amount of money to raise. As generous as people have been, the donors who have not followed through had promised a pretty substantial amount of resources! Please pray that people continue to give! Some of the people who have given are on this list, and we are SO, SO, SO very grateful. We are not asking you to give more! Pray that God makes new people aware of our need and that He inspires them to give to what is happening here in Berlin.

Tonight we are holding another Art O'Clock, and we have several more new artists sharing! We also have more than 16 people registered in advance to attend through an app we use called Meetup. That's a new record for us!

Here are some other pressing prayer requests:

1. Our son Caleb's professors, who are grading his Bachelor's Thesis, have asked for 2 more weeks to finish grading it. Please pray that they can get it done sooner. After they grade it, he will have to defend it, and then it can still take about a month for him to get his degree, and another month after that for the government to recognize him as an official Social Worker. That leaves him hanging for a long time! He is also applying for his Master's, so pray for that process.
2. We are opening another exhibit on Friday night! Pray for the opening.
3. Please pray for health, for us and our team.
4. Right now we have a lot of projects we are trying to work on, while teams are coming, people are preparing for home assignment, we are dealing with the fallout of the fundraising issue, etc. It is really easy for us to feel like we are not enough - or that even our best is not getting everything done (or worse that we are leaving important things undone.) Please pray for us - that some of the tension will lift soon and that we can settle into manageable rhythms!

Thank you for praying,

mike