Dear Praying Friends,

Tomorrow, Elissa and I are heading back on the road for a week. First stop is a sleep study for me. Elissa has been concerned about the way I breathe (or maybe don't breathe...) at nights. My doctor suggested a sleep study, and that will take place Thursday evening.

Then, we will be in Detroit Lakes until next Thursday evening - with a full schedule of events! We are looking forward to being there. As we are finalizing preparations, we were realizing again how challenging our job is when we are back in the US! When we are in Germany, we invest deeply in our community (and the community we are growing), get to know them well over time, and develop programs for the people we are trying to minister to. During our time in the US, we are often speaking to people we do not know - and to a really diverse age group! This week we will be sharing with children and retirees, and everything in between! Pray for us - that God guides our words and blesses each interaction.

This morning I led our teams retrospective for 2024 Quarter 3 and 4. It was such a blessing to look back at June - December and see how much we accomplished, talk through what did not go well, comment on lessons learned, and admit things that still puzzled us. We also started to wrestle with how we want to iterate our programs for 2025.

As we do that, we find ourselves also looking back at the programs we have started and asking if anything has changed that would impact how we hold our programs. These are such great conversations! Let me give you just one example. Once a month, we host an English-speaking worship service. As Envision Berlin was launching in 2021, we offered this service to give a place for our interns, residents, and staff to be able to worship in English once a month as a place of refreshment and recharging - especially if their other church experiences were in a language they did not know. As we look forward, for a variety of reasons, we are wrestling with whether that service should be bilingual. If so, what would that look like, and does it implicate some of our other goals (like having a place our interns and residents can learn to lead a service)?

Pray for us as we wrestle with many questions like this in the coming couple of weeks! This is a strong part of our Envision Berlin culture. Questioning our programs is a regular part of our process - but it can be challenging at times.

Some other prayers and praises:

1. Joshua finished his final test for this school block today! He has one more school block and then his final testing before he completes his program in September.
2. Caleb finished a major exam today, and feels good about it. Pray for him as he finishes up tests this week.
3. Pray for safe travel for Elissa and I as we head on the road this week!
4. We have some publishing deadlines we need to hit in the coming weeks. Pray for us as we make edits.
5. Keep praying for our upcoming messages at Crown College!

Thanks for your prayers,

mike