May update

Dear friends,

Following are a couple of stories from the Pastor’s Atelier:

In the Tuesday morning men’s prayer group we recently agreed to limit our personal sharing time and jump right into our theme. M**** gave us copies of a chapter on prayer from a book titled Christianity for Beginners - I am looking forward to working through this chapter with these men. They have a longing to learn how to pray more in their every day lives.  The idea of freely and spontaneously communicating with God is still novel to them.

I recently had a chat with a father and his 20-something daughter in front of the atelier. They were admiring my work through the window. He was thinking of buying one of my paintings for his daughter to hang in her new apartment. As we chatted, he wanted to know what exactly I am doing here. After explaining it to him I told him, as I have told many others, that I just want to be a blessing for the neighborhood. He said he thought I already was and then as they were leaving he said that he hoped that a lot of blessings come right back to me. That made my day!

I have signed up to take part in an event called “Blue Evening in Nippes”. Nippes is the name of the district of Cologne we live in and where the atelier is. It is an evening where all the participating shops and businesses decorate their shops with blue streamers, balloons, etc. and offer specials, music and creative events - staying open much later than normal. Last year there were dozens of participants with hundreds, if not thousands of visitors wandering from shop to shop. I have invited a jazz musician to perform at the atelier. Please pray that I would be able to make many new contacts for the Gospel through this event on September 5th.

Oh the pain!
Although I was not up to it earlier, I would like to share about a medical condition I have been dealing with over the last month. In April I went to the skin doctor and was diagnosed with pre-cancerous spots on my forehead. The doctor recommended a special light treatment that has proven highly successful in eliminating the abnormal cells.  The procedure was executed two times over eight days.  The discomfort and pain after the first treatment was manageable but the pain after the second treatment was almost unbearable.  Fortunately it subsided considerably after six excruciating hours.  The next several days were spent dealing with a severely swollen forehead and eyes followed by severe scabbing.  Thankfully I was able to preach at the Easter service less than a week later - albeit with a hat pulled right down to my eyebrows to spare the congregation from having to look at the disaster underneath.  Amazingly the outer layer of skin has healed quite rapidly and I am thankful to the Lord for modern medicine and for how he carried me through this unpleasant ordeal.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

Yours for Germany,
Jason and Sue