Dear praying friends,

Thanks so much for your prayers last week. Our first team arrived and I picked up some very tired people at their lodgings this morning at 2:00 am to get them on their journey to the airport for their 6:00 am trip.

Yesterday we brought them to Drachtenberg, the highest point in Berlin, where they could look over the city. We gave them some reflection questions - and I always love hearing people's responses to this time. After a short 8 days with us, they were saying they were taking a new patience for ministry, new ideas, new mindsets, new care for TCK kids, new awareness, and new understandings of discipleship back home with them. The team from Western Great Lakes did a great job building relationships with the different Alliance ministries in Germany - they were a great group!

Elissa's cold turned out to be COVID, her first time having it, and she spent the whole team's time here waiting to test negative again. Unfortunately, she missed them entirely - but our Envision Berlin team really stepped up. It was a great trip!

And - in the middle of all of that, we got our budget submitted early, got our new art works hung, got publicity material (postcards, posters, and flyers, and instagram) finished for our exhibit. I am so proud of our team!

Some things you can be praying for this week:

1. Passion Week - Pray for us as we engage in this meaningful week as an Envision Berlin site and as we help lead our house church during this time. Some of our East German church attendees have long-standing family traditions that Easter Sunday is more about family gatherings than about an Easter church service. Finding meaningful ways to engage with them in the days leading up to Easter are important!
2. Health! Between family and team, the business of having a team here is catching up with people. Pray for God to keep giving daily healing and strength.
3. Bookkeeping - Here is a really specialized prayer request! As Envision Berlin continues to grow, our work keeps getting more complex! There are aspects of this that are really amazing - short term teams, interns, residents, podcasts, publishing, online courses - we are hitting so many of our goals! This is making our finances really complicated as well. Would you pray for God to provide someone to help us with this? It would be a huge help to have someone on-site to serve in this way!

Thanks for praying!!

mike