Service -- part three
Hay Bales and Farm Fun
July
9 took us to see Ben, who is working at the Schullandheim
in the village of Zöthen. This is the place where SSTers
had their original retreat after arrival in Germany way back in April.
There is lots of work to do at the center, and Ben has been surviving
ornery emus and stubborn goats while baling hay and cleaning out sheep
stalls (Ben feels privileged because that only happens every 6 months
and he got to participate in the summer cleaning!).
Ben now knows more farm vocabulary that he ever thought existed in German. The center has managed to survive the Wende, though it is much smaller now than the original farm that used to house 3000 pigs and 400 horses (now there are perhaps 20 pigs and as many horses). Ben has enjoyed the school groups and others that come for riding lessons and other activities that are part of Germans' love of nature and the outdoors.
- Ben in Ben pen (after a long day?!)
- Ben on the porch
- Ben and goat
Good, Clean Service
On July 10, Alexandra and Ryan took a 20-minute train ride north along the Saale to visit Charity and Juliet. Charity and Juliet, like Megan and Dixie, are also working with the Salvation Army, though they are at home in the community of Naumburg. They live with the Hutter family and have been helping with the cleaning and renovation of a new building that will not only house the Hutters but their congregation's recreation rooms (on the ground floor) and an apartment for recovering alcoholics (on the second floor, rather like a half-way house).
The
Hutters, as frantically busy leaders of a growing and needy congregation,
feel blessed for the extra hands to do the cleaning and yardwork that
are necessary in a building that was not kept up and left empty for
at least a year. Charity is working simultaneously on her SST project
in the garden, which entails designing and laying a brick terrace (she
has been fascinated by German stonework).
Juliet is interviewing members of the congregation about their lives and the changes that they have experienced from the end of the second world war to the Wende. Both report that it has been interesting and spiritually invigorating to live in a family doing "mission" work in Germany.
Charity
and Juliet are also learning more Swiss German than they expected to
in east Germany, since the Hutters hail from Switzerland and regularly
fall into Schwyzerdütsch with their four children. Here,
Charity and Juliet are pictured with Stefan and Myrtha Hutter with 2-year-old
Noëlle (missing are older children Philip, Rahel, and Jonathan).
For some of the students, service assignments have proven to be different than expected, and students reported experiencing culture shock or homesickness in new ways. Indeed, at one time or another, most students felt typically German confusion: one has questions that need an answer, but one never seems to ask exactly the right questions so one never gets the right information, which everyone seems to think one ought to know in the first place anyway without having to ask. The "downs" are balanced of course by some very positive and fun experiences on the up-side. And we found the Germans with whom our students are working to be indeed grateful for their presence.