Hi Praying Friends!

Thank you SO much to those who have written to me over the last couple of weeks to let me know that you were no longer receiving my prayer updates! About 1/3 of the people on my list got "optimized". I started using a really good service to send out these emails, but added a list for our gallery work that I had not used in 5 years. So many of those emails bounced, that the service put me into a special status and only sent the emails to people who it could verify (through its secret magical ways... I am not sure completely what that means!)

But - after their great customer service and a week of cleaning up my email lists, things are hopefully running again the way they should be.

So if you missed the last couple of weeks here is a quick update!

1. Elissa's health has been much (MUCH) better over the last 6 weeks or so. Thanks for your prayers.
2. We had an intern and a resident arrive last week.
3. We had a great closing ceremony for our last art exhibit.
4. We bought plane tickets for Johannah to come and visit us this summer. :)

Here are some prayer requests for the coming week.

1. A team arrives today! This team of 11 college students and their 3 leaders will be with us for 10 days. Pray for them and for us! We have some colds cycling through our team, so pray that people stay healthy!
2. Pentecost is coming! Pentecost Monday is also a holiday in Germany, so people (who really have no idea what the holiday means) will have the day off. Here is a big-picture prayer request for you. This year is the 1990th anniversary of the birth of the church (according to tradition the Holy Spirit came in Pentecost of 33 AD.). In 10 years, the global church will celebrate the 2000th anniversary of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Pray for us (Envision) and our colleagues (in aXcess) as we train leaders and plant churches. In Envision, we also train leaders from the US, so pray that we can train leaders who are globally aware.
3. Our Alliance family will be attending Council in Spokane Washington May 29-June 2. Pray for this group as they meet and discuss some important topics.
4. In the coming month, we are going to start some more events at our Envision location. Eventually, the goal will be to have something happening every Wednesday night. We will have an English church service, a Salon evening, a Meditative Prayer meeting (called Still) and a time for artists to share their works. We already have our English church service, and the next meeting to start will be the Meditative prayer meeting (co-led by a German artist friend who has started attending our house church). Please pray as these events get up and running - that we keep drawing curious artists and local neighbors as we look for our "sweet" spot, the meeting place of faith, art, and culture.

Thanks for your prayers!

mike