April 2009

A good neighbor

I hope you all are having a wonderful Easter week. We are throroughly enjoying having our kids home with us all day. I wish spring break could last a month.

God has called us to love our neighbors. We generally apply this to everyone we know, but today, I would like to take a minute and apply it directly to our physical neighbors. Of the many different neighbors we have had in Germany since our arrival 14 years ago, we have only seen 5 of them come to Christ and only one is currently attending our church. At present, we live in a 7-apartment house. Ours is on the bottom floor which means we have a lot of contact with all of the other neighbors. One family in the house is open to the Gospel and has visited our church a couple of times. Four others are friendly, but not open to any discussion about faith and the last family is hostile towards us. Our prayers are two-fold. We would love to see our neighbors get saved. We pray that our witness would be consistently God-honoring. Secondly, we pray that if the hostile neighbor continues to harden his heart, that the Lord would remove him from our apartment building. We have lived here for 10 years now and he moved in 3 years ago. He visited our church soon after moving in and started disliking us from that day on. His hostility has only grown with the years. Please pray that his hostility would not be a daily burden for us. There are so many other positive things that could use our attention. May the way we respond to him be a witness to the others in the house.

Please pray for an openness of the German people towards the Gospel. Just the mention of faith causes most eastern Germans to turn and walk the other way. This is a very strongly atheist area. Pray that the children here will receive a clear presentation of the Gospel. Pray that God will call Germans into full-time Christian service and burden our lay-people to serve more faithfully.

We are currently trying to acquire German New Testaments that we can distribute. Most East German children have never held a Bible, let alone read one. We were successful in obtaining 12 copies of the Gospel of John to give away at Easter, but our city has over 40,000 people. It will take much more than that to make an impact. We are praying for the blessing of the loaves and fishes with these Bibles.

Thank you again for your faithful prayers.

Blessings!

Chelli Sudbrock

writing for Paul,

Skyler, Samantha, Serenity and Sadie

Palm Sunday

Today was crazy this side of the ocean. How about your day?

We were at the church until 7 yesterday getting everything ready and then up until after 1 am at home. Around 8 pm last night Paul started sneezing and got really sick with a sore throat and headache and just achey all over. So, at 12:30 I finally got him talked into taking a pH bath. He wasn't much better this morning, so I gave him some vitamins and med and prayed for the best. I actually dreamed that he was too sick to go to church this morning and that I had to apologize to everyone for his abscence. So, I was really thankful that he wasn't that sick. We ended up getting out of the house late though and then we couldn't find the keys. We finally pulled out the extra set and headed off for the church. We got there at 9:15 and there was Johannes' car. Oh no, we thought he wasn't going to be there this morning. Paul was late. Johannes had been waiting for us. When we got half way up to the door, Johannes greeted us. He asked if we knew what had happened at the church last night. - No. What?

Then he asked us if we had been there cleaning up yesterday. - Ya, until late actually.

Well, he said, we had an overnight guest. At first, I thought he meant the mice we have been fighting.

No, a vagabond found his way into the church and ate and slept there, making a mess of the kitchen, cutting a hole in the brand new (bought it yesterday) tablecloth, and ate up the strawberries and some of the grill meat. Melted a spatula on the stove and made an oily, stinky mess. When church started at 10:30, it still smelled like burnt Bratwurst. Yuck!

You see, the keys were left hanging in the door. That is why we couldn't find them this morning. This man, whom we think has probably slept in the church yard before, found the door unlocked and just made himself at home.

What a mess. I was late, the church was a stinky mess, we forgot to pick up the palm branches, and Paul was sick.

Now, are you ready for the really cool thing? At just about the same time as this guy found his way into our building, on the other side of town, Paul suddenly got sick for no apparent reason. That meant our plans got changed. I had planned on taking the car over and being there at 8:30 so that I could finish getting the food set up and the bells set up. Paul was going to take the kids on their bikes and be there at 9 or so. If I would have gone over at 8:30, it would have been Sadie and I who walked in on this guy! Not a good thought. God kept that from happening. Instead, it was Johannes who confronted the guy and everything turned out well. The little bit of damage and loss that we experienced was nothing compared to what could have happened.

So, we are thanking the Lord for an unexplained sudden illness and a late start this morning!

By the way, we had 36 people in church, 2 first time visitors. The children's bell choir did a good job and our Brunch was a delicious success.

I hope your Sunday was twice as good and only half as exciting!

Chelli