The Mayer Family

…Holy Spirit in Missions Conference
The main reason for our trip was to go to this conference. It was a very neat experience to meet together with believers from 24 different countries. The worship time was incredible. During and before our trip to Germany, I (Wendy) had been reading the book The Heavenly Man, an intense and inspiring story of some Chinese Christians (a book that I would highly recommend). After arriving at the conference, we found out that one of the men in the book was scheduled to speak! We were thrilled for the chance to listen to the testimony of Peter Xu, and challenged by the commitment and perseverance of these Christians.

Kevin with Peter Xu. Part of his story is also written in the book Back To Jerusalem, one of the most incredible books we’ve ever read.

Worshipping God together at the conference

We enjoyed learning to know a local family who hosted us in their home during the conference. We found out the first night that our hostess, Margarita as well as her husband (who we didn’t meet since he was out of the country at the time), both attended Goshen College at the same time as Kevin did. They didn’t remember each other, but it was neat to make that connection. Kevin only attended Goshen College one semester before switching to Cedarville University. Margarita and her three children were wonderful hosts to us! Evan and Ellie thoroughly enjoyed playing with their children and Evan didn’t want to leave.

Jessica, Sabrina, Sebastian and Margarita

Margarita and her children took Evan, Ellie and I to a park close by one day, which the children loved, as well as a driving tour of the city, a little shopping and our first Pizza Hut since leaving the US! Yum!

Ellie being her cute self

...thoughts
Being in Germany made me miss Spain. I guess that’s a good thing. It’s frustrating to be in a place (again) where you can’t understand hardly a single word that anyone is saying! I have such a long way to go in learning Spanish, but at least I can understand some things. I’ve read 1 Corinthians 13 several times in the last week, and one thing that keeps jumping out to me is that speaking unknown languages isn’t something that will last in eternity, but love will. So I guess while I still want to master speaking Spanish, I want to “master” even more ways to show the love of Jesus. It looks impossible to be all of the things that chapter describes. I’m glad I’m not doing it alone.

-Wendy