the adventure continues...

so im leaving today...finally...be back in 2 months...talked to keith yesterday he's doing great and having the time of his life.

its surreal to finally be leaving but we see why we had to stay back this week. all that we learned and needed to be prepared for before we left.

leave your addresses or emails if you want updates from the field. will try to as much as possible...

keep my team in prayers for finaces, heath, provision, safety and UNITY!

i love you all...thanks for all the support....

irish

hiccup in travel plans...

so keith and his team are leaving today, little sad to sad good bye. my team should be on a train to frankfut germany right now to take our flight out tomorrow morning but unfortunately we did not get our visas in time and we had to change our flights til next week. its taking all the money our team had to re book our tickets. so now we will be going on outreach, but with no money for the team budget. god is really gonna have to provide a miracle in the finance department, but i know he will he is always faithful in that. but yea just keep my team in your prayers...we will find out monday what we will be doing all week maybe heading out on little mini outreaches thru the country r one of the close neighboring ones.

so yeah ill still be able to get ahold of for the next week if ya wanna skype and suchh!

irish

last post for a while...

so we've been pretty bad keeping up with this thing, and its probably just gonna get worse. its really hard to put into words all that we have been through. the lecture phase of DTS is over and this saturday we will be leaving on our outreaches. keith and i will not be going to the same countires so we will be seperated for 2 1/2 months. its pretty cool thought to see how God has placed each of us on teams that completly fit who we are in HIM. for safety reasons we cannot talk about where we are going, but when we get back we will be able to share our stories and photos. just know that we are going out to change the world, spead his love and take lots of photos!

thank you all for contuning to pray for us while we are gone, for safety, finances and just keeping our hunger for God. we are gonna have it hard, but man its so gonna be worth it.

we still need lots of money for our outreach, but we still have faith God is going to provide the money we need. you can continue to donate to us thru our paypal if you feel that God has put it on your heart to be apart of our stories.

thanks for supporting us in prayer and faith.

we cant wait to come back and tell you first hand just how unreal these last 4 months have been...

until july ... be blessed...we love you all

keith and irish

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=i%2egrzanich3%40my%2ebrooks%2eedu&lc=US&item_name=irish%20and%20keith%20outreach&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted


oh we are available thru email at keith@keithwhite.name and i.grzanich3@my.brooks.edu

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=i%2egrzanich3%40my%2ebrooks%2eedu&lc=US&item_name=irish%20and%20keith%20outreach&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted

With this link you can help us with support for our outreach. We leave in 3 weeks and need about 5.000 dollars... I know its a lot of money, but God is awesome and raised 7,000 in an hour at our base the other day. We know it will all come in and are really excited to see how its gonna happen. I hope you all can be apart of our story and what we are doing here!

Keith and Irish

keith finaly posts something

So ya, i really dont know how to explaine how life is out here; learning something new about God everyday, living in community with other believers, raising 7000 Euros in an hour for our school from kids in our school that dont have enough money for their own life and planing crazy mission trips to some of the gnarliest most dangerious countrys in the world. I guess its how life should be all the time, I guess we just have to choose to live like that.

Ya its crazy, God is so real its ridicules...man...

i love him, he loves us-periode.

its as simple as that, as stupid and messed up and unbeleivable as that sounds, that is the core and revelation of what it is to chill with God and do His will. relasionship with Jesus.

So ya, thats kinda whats been going through my head lately. The best part is that stuff is real, its not some story read off by a preacher, not some "feeling" in my stomach, its real, its life with JC.

Irish and i still dont have enough money. We came here with not enough and have been provided for in freaking crazy ways! we still need and our fellow students still need a boat load of money. So keep reading to see how god provides the piles of cash for our DTS, wait and see God provide for his freinds. its gonna be AWESOME! GO GOD!

Miss you all. ill try and post some pics ha!

-keith

keith finaly posts somethng

umm today God gave me an ipod.

i was sitting with my satori in front of the penny market and we were having a p b and j picknic out side and i was like man i dont wanna do work duty today because i dont have my ipod anymore...and to my surprise when i got back from doing said work duty and humming to myself i
found on my bed a little heart shaped box with an ipod in it. mine died after romania when i was debating deleting all the music off because most of it was pirated...it died the day after.i had an ibrick from 2004 now i have a lovely little silver nano in color!!! and i only put music on it that i owned...which is about 15 cd's, none that are worship music except 2 phil cd's i have. looks like i need to start praying for some itunes gift cards! but wow, i honesltly cant even express how shocked i am.


GOD IS SO GOOD, and not just cause he gives me stuff. hahaha but beacuse i dont have to sit in my brokenness any more and he constantly reminds me how much he loves me.

The Birth of Team: "Did that REALLY just happen?"

So I finally have a few minuets of free time to try to put into words all that has been going on here in the past month or so. We just got back last week from our mini outreaches. It was such a learning experience for us all. It was time to put into use all that we have been learning during the lecture phase of our DTS. On March 20th my amazing team of 10 other people departed on a train to Romania. The train was 24 hours long and split up into 2, 12 hour train rides. The first train took us to Budapest Hungary were we would stay for the night and catch our train to Romania the following day. We didnt get to see much of the city that night since we got in so late. We stayed at a hostel and ventured back to the train station early the next morning to find a train to Romania. I forgot to tell you the theme for our team was blind faith in God. Boy did he let us experience that. We decided that we would just go and let God lead us a we got to the places he was calling us to go. So we went to find a train to Romania but saw that we had missed it by 13 minuets, there was one more leaving later that night so we had the rest of the day to wander around Budapest (which was a nice little blessing from God) we hung out at the metro station and talked with some homeless young adults. We took photos, sketched drawings, and played worship music with them all right there in front of the station. It was a very liberating experience. After our wonderful day in Budapest, we got on a train headed to Sighisoara Romania, a city at the base of the Traslyvanian mountains. Its where Dracula's castle is (which on our last day we got to go to and it was more like a tower than a castle however it was still beautiful) The next part of the journey can be better explained here in my friend Bethany Nagen's blog...all credit to her on the detailed train experience...

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Birth of Team: "Did that REALLY just happen?"

So I’ll have a bunch of blog posts coming up about Romania, and to start it off I want to start with the beginning, with our arrival in Romania. It was epic.
So by a couple of mishaps which gave us many fun times, we ended up on a night train from Budapest, Hungary to Sighisoara, Romania. It was not easy to sleep, and after going through exit immigration in Hungary, and then Entry into Romania, we were finally able to sleep. Our team leader set an alarm to wake us up an hour before we were supposed to arrive in Romania…

To set the scene:
Compartment 1: Corban, Zach, Ashley, Cassie, Laura, and Hannah
Compartment 2: Jardena, and Bethany
Compartment 3: Irish, Dom, and Angie.

I was sleeping somewhat peacefully with Jardena in compartment 2. At one point Jardena gets up and asks Corban “Shouldn’t we be arriving soon?” He says no, and assures her he has an alarm set. She comes back and we go back to sleep. Not much later Corban wakes up at a train stop, and happens to look out the window and notices the train station sign says “Sighisoara” He yells out in comp. 1 “Guys guys, this is our stop!” The train only stops for about 30 seconds at a station.

Zach immediately turns into a robot and grabs his stuff and heads out. On his way to the door he stops in Car 2 and tells Bethany and Jardena “This is our stop” and moves on, every man for himself, he disembarks.

Corban is trying to corral the people in his car, each person grabbing as much luggage as they can before rushing off the train, but he realizes he is in the way of them grabbing their stuff. He leaves his compartment, and thinks, “If I get off the train, they’ll realize that people are getting off and wait.” So Corban heads towards the door. Cassie is then able to get into the car and sees that Corban has left his small bag which contains all the teams money, his passport, and some of our return tickets. She says “Corban really??” and grabs the bag. Although Corban planned on having the train wait while we got off, unfortunately the train doesn’t care if people need to get off, it will leave anyway. So as the train starts moving Corban and Zach are alone on the platform, watching the train move away. However, Laura, Ashley, Cassie, and Hannah rushed to the door to get off. Knowing time was running out Laura jumped off the moving train. Ashley hesitated for a moment, but as the train began to pick up speed she took a flying leap of faith out of the rushing train. Unfortunately she also happened to take Cassie’s bag along with her. From Cassie’s perspective her bag fell under the train tracks, however Corban in full superman style swooped in and rescued her bags from certain peril and destruction. The four of them stood on the platform watching the train roll away with the other seven members of the team. At this moment Corban realizes, “I don’t have my little bag. You have got to be kidding me. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!” And begins to run down the platform after the train carrying Irish’s camera bag and Cassie’s large backpack.

Meanwhile on the train, Cassie was about to jump off after Ashley, but she was stopped by a train attendant who grabbed her and held her forcefully on the train. Cassie tried to explain to the Romanian man that this was their stop. And by explain, I mean she squealed in a high pitched voice, “This is our stop! You don’t understand this is our stop! The train is early! THE TRAIN IS EARLY!” While the full fury of her panic came out through her shaking hands. Hannah stood behind her, offering the small bit of solace that she could.

While this is going on, Jardena searched the train for Angie, Irish, and Dominic. No one knew where they went. Earlier in the night an angry drunk Romanian family came into their compartment which was next to the rest of ours and yelled at them til they left.

I never really understood that we missed our stop…I thought we were just approaching it. So I’m standing in my car putting my stuff together. Angie, Irish, and Dom’s stuff was all in our cart too. The train stops suddenly, because the train attendant pulled the emergency break. Another attendant came to my compartment and grabbed me and pushed me to the door. I resisted because I didn’t want to leave everyone’s stuff, but he pushed me down the corridor and to the door. As the attendant herded me down the corridor, Jardena came up, still not having found the other three. She began screaming their names hoping to wake them up, as she too was escorted off the train. I climbed out onto the middle of the train tracks. This was the first clue I had that we weren’t where we were supposed to be, when I climbed down the side of the train landing on rocks and saw no train station.

The eight of us who made it off the train began to run up and down along the tracks hoping to see our missing three team members in their car. People in the train were taking pictures of us and we ran around in panic. Finally a train attendant figured out that there were more people on the train and located Irish, Dom, and Angie. He barged into their car yelling for them to get out, (a theme for them for the night) and they in a half-asleep stupor landed on the ground, wondering aloud, “Guys, what just happened?”

The moment their feet hit solid ground the train screeched away into the night. The eleven of us (thankfully all eleven of us) were left standing dumbfounded, with nothing to do but breath, and ask “Did that REALLY just happen?”

Once we collected our wits, we began to take inventory, and give each other the belongings that we grabbed for each other. Irish had her camera which she thought she forgot. Cassie presented Corban with his little bag (that is most defininately NOT a purse) A few girls walked back to the platform where they had jumped off the train and found some clothes and Cassie’s wallet with her passport. After all was said and done, the only things left behind were a water bottle, and 6 return tickets home. Considering we nearly left half the team behind, we all agreed, we did pretty good. We walked into the train station, and realized that there had been a one hour time change when we crossed the boarder. As we sat down to catch our breath, Corban’s watch beeped.

“Hey Guys, it’s time to get up, we’ll be there in about an hour.”

"Did that REALLY just happen?"

Once we collected ourselves and our belongings we found our ride and headed to a small gypsy village called Soard, which would be our home for the next week. We were blessed enough to get to stay for free at the church in the village, the pastor and his wife and thier amazing gyps family opened their home and hearts for us. We didnt just get to stay there we got to experience life as gypsies. There was no running water in the town so we used a well outside our house to wash our dishes and brush our teeth. We didnt shower or change our clothes at all for the week and man did we stink. When we got back to Germany our other teammates couldnt even stand to be in the same room as us and i think on the train ride home we successfully cleared the car of all the other people in it. But that is all a side note...what we learned through this experience was more than we could have ever hoped. Just what God showed us in that week are lessons we will never forget. We spent a lot of time with the kids in town. They are some of the dirtiest poorest love seeking children i have ever see, yet they had so much joy. They took a liking to us immediatly and never left our sides the whole week. The first night we were there we went up on top of the mountain and all the village kids met us up there ( probably about 40 + kids) and we just played and played for hours. No matter how dirty they were we didnt hold back any love. We just poured out everything we had and hopefully what we gave them made a difference. Throughout the week we lead childrens bible school, preached at a hungarian gypsy church service, i gave a message to a group of young adults about finding your value and identity in God. We did other things like washing cars, carpets and painting the little girls of the town nails. It was such a great time. It was definelty good preparation for India and Nepal and just adapting to a developing nation and the things we will face.


I leave for India and Nepal on May 2nd. We have a lot of great ideas of what to do there. Lots of service stuff and seetting up a cafe and darkroom. Hmm I guess not only my photo background but my starbucks experience will be useful in this outreach too. We have a great team and great leaders. I think this is going to be a very fruitful experience.

Its weird that we only have a month left in Germany. Its hard to split of into 3 groups and to have to spend 2 1/2 months away from these new friends. But it comes with the territory here and we know that what God has for us is more important and its the reason why we are here. We come back July 15th and then have 2 weeks left in Germany and then its home sweet home. Which I am so excited for. I cant wait to come back share stories, photos and get ready to see what the next step is. Gods been speaking and there is a lot of exciting stuff he wants me to do, so we will see how long im back in good old Santa Barbara for.

Sorry this isnt very detailed but its something. The photos are what I experienced, there are just a few ... gotta wait for the rest for when I get back...the scanning job was bad so this isnt what my finals will look like when I get home. But they will work for now to give you and idea of our experience...they are all film, shot on my hassleblad, who has become like an extra appendage to me....
















Its easter. I miss home.

help!!

if someone could please send me a few boxes of these special k protein bars i would gladly reimburse you for them. there isnt always protein served at meal and my high blood sugar problem has been starting to be a problem. getting shaky and stuff during the day and all that jazz..im really worried about this when im on large outreach when i wont have access to a lot of food other than rice and starch foods. just wanna make sure i have something on hand when i start feeling woozy. i will gladly send money for them....

here is the address

irish grzanich
JMEM/DTS
Untere Dorfstr. 56
02747 Ruppersdorf
GERMANY

chapter 2

Tonight I went into the prayer room before bed and brought up my computer to listen to this CD the guest speaker gave me last week. After I was finished I decided to listen to some worship music, I came across old recordings of Chapter 2 from the last night that Steph played with the band. This may have been one of the greatest things to happen to me today. One of the greatest little surprises was it has parts where Kenny or Rob would say something during the set or Jon would randomly scream ( gah that almost made me cry!) , it was such an amazing surprise to hear their voices and the group singing in worship. Skype is cool but there was just something about the surprise of hearing it with my headphones on, made it feel like they were in the room. I remember that night like it was yesterday, how so much has changed since then. New faces have come and old friends have said goodbye, it’s been hard at times but man were they some of the best times. My mind stayed a bit from worshiping, however, I know God did that for a reason. YWAM has been the greatest gift ever, I have been learning a lot and have changed so much since I’ve been here, but no matter who I am, I know where I’ve come from and it was that small little shack in the parking lot of the church that drew me in. How each and every one of you has contributed to me getting here and I will always be so thankful for that. I love you all so much; Chapter 2 was one of the best experiences in my life, its what God used to capture to my heart. I have to admit that I didn’t start going for God, I went for selfish reasons, but that first night I came “From the Inside Out” was played and I was never the same again. That song is on this track list, it means as much now as it did then. So thank you, you all know who you are. You have been the most amazing people I have ever known. I’ll see you all July 31st Ive got a wedding to be at ☺

sorry its been so long. life is so busy here. just know that god is GREAT. we are good. life is good. its moving and shaking...

i went ice skating last weekend with my darling kate. this amazing family has kinda adopted us in invited us skating for valentines day. its nice to be around a family, espically coming from living with the jones' i need to be around family. they have an amazing son who just loved hanging out with us.

oh and last week someone randomly left me 200 euros for my outreach and then the next day someone left keith 100. such amazing servants listening to God here. so crazy we both have no idea who gave the moneys to us. but it was rad.

keep us in your prayers and our famalies!

we love you all..

ps chapter 2 maybe we could set up a skype date!?

mini outreach...1 week in budapest...and 1 week in romania!!!

keith will be a week in budapest and a week back in Dresden, Germany.

interesting to see how God is going to use us in these places....please pray for our finances for this! and for the large outreach in may!

and pray for a wide angle nikon lens to fall from the sky. just looked at all the castles in romania mannn im gonna need a wide angle!!!!

love you all.


ps my mail box is still empty. i think im like the only person who hasnt gotten mail yet. wait i take that back i wrote my mom a letter and it came back to me so i got that in the mail :(

Prague from Irish...

View from the bridge

Same bridge from the other side.



Creepy treee
guard in front of the castle/church we went too


rooftop cafe
looks like venice...or at least thats what im told.

I wonder how many times a day they are photographed


My loves Satori and Katie

Good to know I didn't ruin the moment

Street sax player. I love him!

Would have more photos of architechture if my digital had a wide angle lens :( kinda hating my self for selling it but what can I do. Thought this looked like The Magic Kingdom.

$500 Czech Koruins= maybe 20 US dollars


Random Czech dog...

the prague trip from last saturday

taken from my friend bethany(www.bethanynagan.blogspot.com) about our trip to prague... Yesterday I went to Prague.

Most amazing day ever....

We assembled at 9:45am to leave.

We left the castle at 10:15 after figuring who was really going, who was really driving all the way there, and if anyone needed to take the bus.

By 10:30 we had picked up people in town who didn’t know they were going, but then got shanghai-ed into it, and we were on the road.

By 10:45 we were in the Czech Republic, and exchanging money.

By 11:00 we got lost for the first time

By 11:15 we were back at the same gas station we started from

By 12:00 we were turning around and retracing our path, again. (for the third or forth time)

By 1:00 we were somewhere. (somewhere we had been before…)

By 2:00 we were somewhere closer to Prague, we could see the Praha signs.

By 2:30 we were in Prague.

By 3:00 we were able to actually find parking in Prague.

By 4:00 we were able to have eaten and start exploring the city

By 5:00 we made it across the old bridge (awesome) and to a castle (meh) and to the church inside the castle walls (Amazing. Beautiful.)

By 5:30 we were on our way down from the castle, and got a great view of Prague at night

By 5:45 we were eating hotdogs from a street vendor. (So good.)

By 6:00 we were all warm and cozy drinking coffee (at starbucks. Thank you globalization)

By 7:00 we were trying to get back to our vans to go to the airport to pick up our speaker.

By 7:30 we made it to the parking garage

By 7:40 we figured out how to get into the parking garage

By 8:00 we were on the road.

By 8:15 we couldn’t figure out where the airport was

By 8:20 we turned around and found airport signs. Not well marked.

By 8:40 we found the airport. It was not the air port we were looking for.

By 8:50 we figured out we needed to go towards the zoo to get to the real airport.

By 9:20 we were in the zoo parking lot. Oops.

By 10:15 we circled around Prague (a million times) and finally made it to the airport

By 11:00 we thought we were on our way out of Prague with our speaker

By 11:30 we were still in Prague

By 12:00 we were still in Prague

By 12:30 we somehow managed to escape Prague

By 1:00am we stopped at a gas station. This was the 38th gas station we stopped at

By 2:00am we were home and in bed.

The Count:
16 Hours
10 Car Hours
38 Gas Stations
18 times we got lost.
2 hours-the amount of time it's supposed to take to drive to Prague.

Castle life...

I have some time to write now and wanted to update you guys on what a typical day is like for me (irish) here in herrnhut.

First a little about the town, we are about 20 min from the borders of Czech Republic and Poland. The city we live in is called Herrnhut (pronounced HAIRNHOOT) there are about maybe a thousand people who live here…and I think that’s an exaggeration. There are 2 small markets, a german bookstore, a post office, a bank, a toy store and well that’s pretty much it. The stores close at 6 on week days, noon on Saturday and everything in the town is closed Sunday except the one restuarnt we have…the Turkish Doner (sorry I cant spell that word) Herrnhut was the place where the first moravian church was that sent out missionaries back in the day. So its fitting that there would be a YWAM base here. We live in an old castle. Its called the Water Castle for in spring time there is a lake around it. Right now its all frozen and covered in snow. We are in the middle of a forest and to walk to town it’s a twenty-minuet walk thru the woods up a hill called Slow Death. It sometimes feels like that on the way up, so there is definitely a reason for the name. Keith lives in town and has to do that walk many times a day. I live at the castle and do it maybe every other day.

A typical day for the girls here at the castle is getting up around 7 for breakfast, I’m usually woken up by my friend Satori crawling in my bed saying “woman wake up, its breakfast” I love it. Breakfast is usually cereals with nuts, seeds, raisins, cornflakes, and oats…we have a huge basket of bread that is commonly used to spread massive amounts of Nutella on. This is my favorite part of the day. The cereal is amazing and most of the time I wish I could have it for dinner too. I sit with a group of girls in the dining hall and stare up at the wall-sized map we have. We all sit and talk and talk mostly about countries we have never heard of. God has challenged me while here to research a country a day to be more globally aware. Its nice I feel like I’m being prepared for something in it. Who knows but I feel good learning about different nations. After breakfast we have an hour til 830 when we have prayer time. This is usually spent getting ready…showers and such. We are all still in that phase of wanting to look presentable, but I have a feeling that will change soon. Hah. After that there is usually time to read the bible or hang out in the prayer room and just kinda prepare for the day. At 830 we start with some sort of prayer thing for the day, it differs for everyday of the week. At 930 we start with lecture that is lead by a guest speaker for the week. We have been blessed so far with 2 amazing speakers who have really been leading us in hearing Gods voice and The nature and Character of God. I’m learning so much about God and even myself and am already seeing a vast change in who I am. At 11 we have a half hour break for teatime. This is usually spent hanging out in the main hallway drinking tea and eating LOTS of fruit. It’s a nice little fellowship break. We then go back to more lectures til 1 when we go to lunch. Lunch is a nice hot lunch prepared by the amazing kitchen staff. We have had some pretty amazing meals here so far!! That time is used for more fellowship of students and staff and brings time for your one on one meeting with the staff member you’ve been assigned to. They are kinda like your big brother or sister you can confide in and just talk with about stuff that’s going on. 2pm bring work duty time. Everyone is assigned a job to do for 2 hours to help maintain the castle and its appearance. It’s a nice time to kinda just clean and zone out and talk with God. I am assigned the basement and darkroom for 3 days a week, then the other 2 is snow shoveling or gardening ( which there isn’t much of a garden considering all the snow) At 430 we go back for either bible study, small groups, quiet time or art days this goes on til about 6 and differs everyday in the week as well. At 6 we have dinner which are usually sandwiches, which is nice because its doesn’t leave you super stuffed before bed. After dinner we have free time, its usually used for fellowship, darkroom work, alone time and such. I have started to take guitar lessons on Wednesday nights! Usually go to bed around 10 and start the whole thing over again til Friday. Weekends are free days but the town closes early so sometimes we go to the next city over or just hang out. This weekend we went to Prague, Czech Republic for the day. It was amazing. It was one of them trips ill never forget. So much went wrong but we had a blast. Sundays are such peaceful days. There is a church that has a small service that translates into English ( but its still no South Coast ) and after that its just free time. So not what im used to after Sundays in SB always being so busy!!! That’s probably been the hardest part to adjust to. Haha

Today we found out that in March when the last group comes back from their outreach trip, we will be leaving for a 2-week mini outreach. We will all be going to Budapest, Hungary for a week to stay at a YWAM base there and listen to a guest speaker. Then the following week there will be 3 groups and one will stay in Budapest, one will go to Turkey and one to Romania. I know where I want to go but I have to wait for God to tell me. More on that after Thursday. We will be in these places for a week just kinda helping out. Then in May we leave for our real outreach, which we don’t know the locations of yet.

We have been having a great time. Making new friends and starting to develop real friendships that I know are meant to last a long time. The staff is amazing too. Lots of the girls have invited me over for tea and getting to know you time. Its pretty cool.

Don’t really know what else to say. I think Ive said enough for one day.

Xoxo
Irish

prague was intense. more on that later. if anyone wants to send us anything though...we would kill for a bag of blueberry bagles...instant pancake mix and syrup.... oh oh annnnd ranch packets. omg they are so needed. more from us later.

sorry we've been soo busy

Greetings from Deutchland. We are learning so much, making new friends and really growing in ourselves and our walk with God. This is such an amazing experience that we get to be apart of, its still hard to believe its real. Havent been out of the castle much lately, been busy with photo classes and such, but this weekend we are going to Prague in the Czech Republic ( my dream come true ) so expect tons of photos!!! Sorry for the short update but just wanted to say hi, send love and update a bit.

Tonight was rad, we started our first Bible study class. Who knew Philemon had so much information in such a small book.

Well there is so much to say, but Ill save that for another day. If you can just keep our hearts and finances in your prayers it would mean so much. Thanks for the support.

Love you all
Irish

Dresden and Herrnhut

little family in Dresden

"Beer Garden" in Dresden

more of Dreseden

House on the main street in Herrnhut

random old greenhouse in town

lovely Hannah at a cafe in Zittau "drinking" hot chocolate. It was like warm pudding.


Today we had our first day of class and made pinhole cameras. It sure was an experience. Gonna try to shoot with them tomorrow. More on that later. Love you all.

Irish

landscape around the castle in Herrnhut, castle is the tallest building on the right.

Corey, weird guy
dog outside of a tat shop in zittau
Dresden train station, Hauptbahnhof.
trees on the way to the castle

Moving day...

Wow, so much has been going on its hard to keep up with it all. Everyday more and more kids have been moving in. There are about 3 guys and maybe 12 girls here so far. I think there will be 40 of us total. There should be majority moving in today and then class starts tomorrow. I have met a bunch of really amazing girls. I can see so far in every way that God is going to use us in establishing relationships and what each girl can bring to this group. Its rad, I cant believe there are more that are going to show up too. Last night the girls moved their stuff into the castle...the castle is the main base, however there isnt enough room to house all 40 of us, so the boys will be staying in town at one of the flats we rent out. I unpacked today and set up my little room area, I feel right at home. This place is amazing, everyone is so nice and so excited for us to be here. Today we are meeting with Rebecca our Co leader she wants Keith and I to help assist in teaching the classes so she is gonna give us a run down of what goes on photowise here. Pretty intense, but I guess its about time we put to use all that Brooks knowledge and actually be able to share it with others.

Well more updates within the next few days. Love you all and miss you. Thanks for keeping up with us and supporting us. If you feel compelled please pray for our finances. We have enough for the lecture phase of the program but by april we are gonna need anouther 2500 each. I know its possible. All is possible with HIM.

<3 Irish

photos from irrish :)

more to come :)

These are pictures from Dresden, the closest "big" city to Herrnhut. Crazy town, we walked around the whole thing one day. Irish will upload her photos of here too.