Hi praying friends,

Thanks for praying for our exhibit launch last Thursday. It was so amazing to be able to welcome guests into our gallery. It was warm enough outside that we could set up a table and some chairs, which immediately got some attention. Several neighbors stopped in and asked if we were a gallery (the answer is yes, among other things!). They were excited that there was a new gallery in our street (we keep hearing about the gallery that used to exist across the street, which is now closed.) All told, a great night with some fun conversations!

We also looked at the art for our next exhibit on Saturday - stay tuned for this exhibit! We are exhibiting the most realistic origami you have ever seen, I can 99.999% guarantee that you have never seen anything like it!

Sunday, we helped a partner ministry with their Easter Service by coordinating the brunch and leading music. Celebrating Easter with friends, joined by people from our house church and Envision was great.

Easter Monday is a national holiday in Germany. Our family drove about an hour outside of Berlin and visited a 750-year-old Abbey and walked a little in the greening countryside. The leaves are just starting to bud on the trees and spring flowers are emerging. Beautiful!

Here are some prayer requests for the coming week:

1. We have a busy May coming up, with two interns, a resident, and a short-term team arriving! Pray for the final preparation stage(s).
2. Our team is working hard on developing a residency program for our residents. We are trying to, in cooperation with the Envision National Office, develop a program that prepares people well for vocational service in the C&MA. This program needs to be robust and flexible, so that people can be prepared to serve in all specializations of the C&MA. Pray for our team as we push forward with this!
3. We held our German non-profit annual meeting yesterday, where I shared that our budget for 2023 is 3x's higher than our budget for 2022. Increased space, more teams, more interns, residents, a publishing house, gallery work, video work, podcasting, etc. means that our budget has increased from roughly 80,000 Euro's in 2022 to almost 250,000 Euro's in 2023. Amazingly, in only our 3rd year of existence, we will be able to make this happen with only 30,000 of donations for the coming year. Can you please pray that God puts our ministry on the hearts of generous donors?
4. Pray for health! This last week was a good health-week in the Picconatto house, but we had several people on our team out with colds and sickness.

Thanks, as always, for praying!

Blessings,

mike