Aaron & Sadee dot Com

 Hi there! We hope you have had a very Merry Christmas! We spent the last couple of days with our American teammates. We actually laughed a ton - which was really refreshing!

We went to our Anglican church on the morning of Christmas Eve. As I have mentioned before, there are always memorable things happening at our church…the kids acted out the Christmas story from the bible. However, there were able to make some "revisions" to the story….Mary was a student nurse. Joseph was an airplane mechanic. They were heading to Bethlehem in their Porshe, went they were stopped by the American FBI for their driver’s licenses. Since they didn’t have them, their Porshe was confiscated and they had to trave by mopeds. (They actually had little scooters up front with them!) The shepherds were "punk shepherds" who had their hair done up all crazy. The 3 Wise Men were George Bush, the president of France, and of course, the German Chancellor - who is a woman. It was sooooooo hillarious! I took a few pictures to capture our Christmas experience in Europe on film! We’ll post them soon!

We did a small gift exchange with our team here. We also bought some stocking stuffers for each other. To my complete surprise (and sheer joy!) I received the complete 2nd season of The Cosby Show on dvd!!!!! I was thrilled to say the least! AVR got some very special notebooks (he loves to keep everything organized!) that he had hoped for and even an I-Tunes gift card!

We read the Christmas story from the bible - we all took different parts, like a little play. We had a friend from Indonesia and a friend from Mexico with us as well, so it was cool to hear the story with different accents. (Amazing to think that God isn’t American and He doesn’t just speak English! ) AVR also played John Piper’s "The Innkeeper" on his computer for all of us to hear. It is a very moving poem. Email AVR if you want more info about it. We sang Christmas carols - acapella, of course We had a special time remembering the true meaning of Christmas. Immanuel - God is with us!

And, my ramblings wouldn’t be complete without mentioning how our hearts are doing….while we did laugh a lot, we were also sad. We miss home. We miss our families and our friends. We miss America. We were at our friends’ house til really late, so we didn’t get to call people back in the States that we had hoped to talk with. I did get to talk with my dad briefly, and AVR did get to talk with his parents for awhile on Christmas Eve. But, I had also hoped to talk with AVR’s family, and Tari and Jim, and some friends….and it didn’t happen. At about 2am last night, AVR said "I’m sad." He doesn’t often express thoughts like that out loud. So, I knew he really meant it….So, yes, we have laughed a lot, but we’re also sad….just wanted you to know.

We will be leaving tomorrow morning for a German Campus Fur Christus conference. There will be around 80 people there. (In Indianapolis, there will be about 2,500 people! That’s just students from 4 states! This is the whole country of Germany - that’s why we are missionaries here right now!) AVR will be leading worship with some other people from our team. He is also leading a seminar about ministry philosophy. I know he’s gonna do a great job!

Guess what I’ll be doing? Cooking ALL the meals for the conference! 5 American girls (including me) are cooking all the food…..promises to me a good time had by all! I pretty much hate German food, can’t wait to cook up vieners for everyone….yummy! Please pray for the conference….please pray that all of our hearts are open to what God wants to do in our lives.

Please pray that we meet with Him (even though we won’t "understand" most of what is said in German!).

Please pray that we’ll be able to communicate well with Germans, in spite of the language barriers.

Please pray that German students will love Jesus more deeply and will experience the full life that He promises!

Thank you for caring about us. We are so thankful that you want to know what’s going on with us! And, we’re sometimes slow to get back with emails, but we always love to hear how people are doing! And, phone messages are ALWAYS fun to hear! You can leave one at 309. Bye for now!