Restoring Hope for a Better Tomorrow

We have been blessed beyond words by your prayers and provision for our medical and ministry needs. There is no way to adequately express our gratitude other than continue to be faithful to the mission God has given us to do. We have been blessed to see this beautiful country of Germany, but there is a great spiritual void among the people. There is an understanding of religion, but not a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and therefore you do not see the joy of knowing Jesus in many of the people.

It was our joy on our first day in Frankfurt to get to witness to Wolde. He is well educated, originally from Ethiopia, and has several children. He shared that he brought his family to Germany so that they could get a good education while he continues to work at the hotel where he is extremely overqualified for the work he does. I loved his servant heart and when he said he was from Ethiopia the Lord kept reminding me of the Ethiopian in the Bible that was traveling and needed the Word of God. We began to talk at length regarding Jesus Christ and the Gospel. When I asked him about why God should let him into heaven, he said, because he has trusted Christ personally as his Lord and Savior.  We rejoiced together that we are brothers in Christ.

The next evening we had dinner at the hotel and our waiter’s name was Mathias. He was recently married and is a young dad with a two year old son. I thanked God for my sons and daughter who know Christ and had a deep burden to share the gospel with Mathias so that he could train his own son up in the ways of the Lord. The next day I returned to the restraunt to see if Mathias was there, but they said he would not be back until Monday. We were leaving Sunday for Heidelberg, so I began to ask God how we could share the gospel with Mathias. The answer to my prayer came quickly. I wrote a note to Mathias with a gospel tract and a small gift for his son and placed it in an envelope. Then I gave it to Wolde to give to Mathias so that he could have the oppurtunity to share the gospel with Mathias. Please pray for Wolde, this amazing Christian servant leader, and for Mathias and his family to come to Christ.

We arrived in Heidelberg on Sunday afternoon and had a wonderful family devotional out of "Streams in the Desert”. It was unbelievable how the Lord was confirming, through our devotional time, every step we have taken to be here in Germany. The clinic and Dr. Kief are wonderful. Monday I went through my first treatment of oxygen/ozone/vitamin C and took my first shots of the vaccine prepared for me using my own blood that I will be taking over the next six months. The shots are filled with antigens and killer cells to work with the Tarceva to help my body naturally kill the cancer. The doctor is very hopeful about our case and shared with us several other cancer patients who are now, by God’s grace, completely cancer free.

While there the first day, I was preoccupied with giving myself the first shot and the treatments and did not pray with the staff. I was very burdened for them and Monday night I asked God to open the door for me to talk with them about the Lord.

This Tuesday morning while receiving my treatments Maya, Dr. Kief’s daughter who manages the clinic, walked into the room and said, “I am very encouraged by you”. I didn’t quite know what she was talking about. She said that she had looked up our website (hisbridgebuilders.com) from a business card that I had dropped when leaving the clinic the day before. She said in Germany we are all either Protestant or Catholic, but that is only on Sunday and other than that there is no Spirit led living through the week. She said that she felt as though she and others were trapped in a Golden Cage in the churches. This struck me as I go to magnificent churches in every town, but there is so little effect on the surrounding community. This is the country of the great reformer, Martin Luther, and now the churches are “golden cages” that have a form of religion inside their walls, but no demonstration of God’s power and grace in the culture. We must all be on guard or during the next generation our own churches may become golden cages unless we break out of our comfort zones and share the hope of Christ with the least and the lost around us. Comfort is a deadly enemy of the Christian, and the prettier and more magnificent the cage the happier we are to stay in it and watch the world around us decay. I am encouraged to pray more now than ever for my own faith to be God’s light and salt to the culture in which I live. Gratefully we had the opportunity to share the gospel with my nurse Christa and Maya and they both shared that they are already Christians. I asked them to prayerfully consider ways that they could use their clinic to help serve the least. Maya told me the next time we meet would be to visit, as she believes the treatments will be used by God in a positive way, and to discuss ways that she could serve in ministry. We thank God for the opportunity to spur one another on in good works.

I feel great and thank God for your prayers. Pray for us as we go back to witness to several shop owners in Heidelberg that we have met over the last couple of days. Pray that we will never be content to just live in our golden cages, but to live by the golden rule to love others more than ourselves. You are in our prayers of thanksgiving.