Wasserkuppe ist nicht ein Schwimmbad.

Sometimes I wish there was a pause button in life. It seems like time goes so fast and sometimes it is hard to live at that pace. This last weekend I went to Fulda, Germany for an All Germany Campus für Christus conference. It was good, but extremely tiring at the same time. The entire conference was in German and I mean there were people that could translate, but like I have mentioned before it is so distracting to have someone whispering in your year for a long period of time. Because even if it is being translated, at the same time I am reading the PowerPoint’s in German trying to see what I know and if it matches up to what the person is whispering. Then on top of that I am not even getting to process what the speaker is talking about because it is like a German lesson rather than learning about the topic of choice from the speaker. Not sure if you follow me on that, but all in all it takes double the brain power to listen in German and because of that I get exhausted. There were roughly over 100 staff from all over and it is mostly families that go to the conference. We had an entire hostel in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. It was a beautiful view though and I mean it was fine, other than my bed being too short for me it was manageable.

Didn't get a good picture, but you can kind of see
what we rode down on the slide and the view in the back

I thought I could just go under the radar at the conference, but who was I kidding. Of course first thing they do is have all the “new” people come up front and the speaker starts going on in German about what we are supposed to say. Not to mention my good ole’ director Kevin fed me to the wolves. Right before we were supposed to go up on stage, I say, “Kevin, I am not going to have to speak up there. Right?” well of course he wasn’t telling the truth. I figure out that we are supposed to introduce ourselves and tell who we work for and where. Which honestly I can do all that in German, but let’s be real I don’t even like to speak English in front of people, let alone German in front of 100 people that it is their mother tongue. So when the microphone gets to me I just stare blankly into the crowd and go “Uhhhhhh…I don’t really know German.” Then they told me I could just speak in English. Luckily because otherwise I would have had a minor panic attack. I don’t know why because I know quite a bit of German, but I get terrified to speak it. It was like at the grocery store last week a woman came up to me and started speaking in German and I just kind of looked at her and then said “Noch einmal.” And she said it again, but it seemed as if she literally was not speaking German. All I made out was the word, “Groβ” and pointing to the top shelf. So I started getting down what she pointed to on the top shelf and then she just started yelling and pointing to two things saying “dem” and “den”. Come to find out she wanted the entire case of cat food from under the top one even though the top one was full. Who knows? I just did what I was asked I guess.

Back to the conference though, so most nights we all sat around and drank a couple beers, which is so different from Campus Crusade in the states, but it was fun. Two of the nights we found this huge bonfire pit, which is something I definitely miss being in Berlin because you aren’t allowed to have fires. So we just sat and talked at the fire, etc. It was a good time. During the day we usually had a talk in the morning and then small group time, which was disastrous. I went to my group and one woman offered to translate which was fine until she was literally talking as loud if not louder than the actual person talking. I was embarrassed. We all had to go around and say our strengths and weaknesses in ministry and what not. Then all of a sudden she got up and left, so I assumed she needed the toilet, but then she never came back so I just sat there the rest of the time. I think they were arguing/friendly discussion over something, but I wasn’t sure. I was just hoping they wouldn’t call on me for something. In the afternoon we played soccer, which was fun. Except it was like hole central so I more just walked around. That night was fun we had this game night with everyone and it was a popular German game show. I don’t know the name still and I didn’t help my team much except for the active ones. They had this one relay race that everyone had to run down and spin on a baseball bat five times. I mean some of these people are pretty old and so people looked wasted from being dizzy. One old man ran into a child on a chair that started crying and there were snacks and glasses everywhere and one person ran into a table and glasses fell and broke. It ended up being a disaster, but I was laughing really hard and most people were except for those that thought it was unsafe. I mean it wasn’t the best idea but still humorous. My team made the final round and for that we had to take on the director of CC of Germany. One of the rounds was this game where we had four buckets in a square and you had to throw a mini basketball into the other persons and I got voted by my team to do this. My long limbs did come in handy, but I whacked the director in the face on accident, but I did win at least. I think people like me a little more after this.

The Wasserkuppe is the big ball in the back.

During our free time one day we went to the Wasserkuppe. Which here I thought we were going to a pool or lake or something, but as you can see in the picture it is a big ball that does something for the weather. It was a cool view up there and the highlight was going down this really long alpine slide like thing. It was so much fun. And a beautiful view. I think I got a dud though because the girl behind me caught me and I thought maybe it was because I am big, but “supposedly” that makes you go faster. The girl behind me wasn’t fat though so I still am unsure why I was going slowly. There were lots of people parachuting and hang gliding too. I wanted to, but I mean it wasn’t like I was going to ask a random person.

The weekend was refreshing though. I got to have a few really good quiet times and just sit in God’s creation and pray/journal/read. I really needed that though and the Lord has been teaching me a lot of tough stuff and I have been learning a lot about myself. Seriously I suggest that everyone should read “Changes that Heal” by Henry Cloud. It is a hard book to read, but so good. You will learn a lot about yourself. So if you have time and want to be challenged, you should read it. I will write more about what I have been learning later in the week. This is a long post already. I stink at writing short posts. Boo. Oh well.