Our first full day in Zwickau started and ended with worship and remembering the importance of thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day in Germany! Even with very little sleep, our intergenerational & multicultural team of 7 from Mariners got to start the day and the whole faith adventure with a special thanksgiving service. The service was hosted on a farm in Mülsen owned by a family that is also leading a small network of life groups that will hopefully be launched as one of Stadtlicht’s church plants next year. Pastor Henry of Stadtlicht reminded and challenged us to think of thanksgiving and thankfulness as a muscle that we need to learn to train like a bodybuilder would. We also got a tour of the farm, its barns which the owners have transformed into a space for events, as well as the main house which serves as both their home and a restaurant. We got to hear the owner’s passion for using every space for the benefit of the Kingdom as he shared the farms history and his family’s journey to restoring the property while still honoring the wisdom of those who built it in the 1800s.
After taking a quick nap break, we went to Stadtlicht’s Sunday night service that’s shaped around their life groups. It’s a hybrid of church service with life/series group discussion AND community BBQ hangout time! Being that it was Thanksgiving Day here in Germany, we got to hear their Men’s Ministry Pastor teach us on the importance of thankfulness and expressing it. It was also a time of reflecting on how God has blessed us with His people that have invested, shaped, and influenced us and what it looks like to reinvest in this church community through honesty, generosity, honor and prayer.
Personally, it was a day of seeing how God loves bringing His people together in community as well as in divine appointments with random conversations. We get to experience a glimpse of heaven in the ways God has brought our team together but also to see our stories somehow intersecting with each other as well as our German family! Sharing communion as small groups and having a time of discussion as part of that allowed us to experience what heaven would be like to simply be and live loved as His sons & daughters. We were blessed to see a picture of what being & living loved looks like by seeing how Pastor Henry loves his kids and how they showed the power of being so loved… and through that, many of us felt loved and were reminded of our heavenly Father’s great love for us, His children!
So thankful and excited for this faith adventure!
Danke schön!
Sero
Mariners Faith Adventures 