Another email from our son's outreach team in the Solomon Islands

Dear parents

I can proudly tell you that we are finished! we came back yesterday from travelling around makira island and are back in kira kira now. tomorrow, we're leaving for honiara, where we are going to visit the rhema church we went in in the first week in the solomons. but mostly, we're going to have debrief and re-entry before we go back on base next tuesday. we are all happy to relax now and are looking back on a challenging and amazing time.

first of all, the visas worked out well. so we went to tawatana two weeks ago. we were told the boatride there takes 2 hours, but we spent 11 hours on a ship that stopped in every village on the beach and was loading passengers and cargo in. the ship was very wavy. we arrived in tawatana after daylight and got welcomed by angry warriors in traditional costumes who held there spears in our faces and screamed at us. that's a traditional solomons welcome. even if they just pretend to be angry, i got really scared. it's pretty impressive! we did programmes there, as usual. the people liked it very much and came to spent time with us inbetween programmes, too. we also went visiting caves: 3 hours swimming and walking through knee deep water in total darkness! we left tawatana after 2 days to drive by truck on gravelroads to bia. warriors welcomed us again. this time, I hid behind the others backpacks. the priest in bia was younger than usually and there were a lot of young kids. some of us had problems with anger and frustration, we prayed into it. after bia, we went to makirima. it was different there, because it was a polynesian village and there culture is not the same as solomon islanders. we felt a lot of spiritual stuff going on, too. some of us had a really bad time, like feeling angry or frightened without any reason. we prayed for this place, too.

after all this spritual stuff, we were happy to be in pamua. it has a big college there and a lot of young people. we just stayed there one full day. we went to a small island close to pamua, too. it was beautiful!

so now, we're in kira kira. tonight, there is a dinner and programme for us to say thank you. we're looking forward to it. all in all, we learned a lot on outreach. we learned to use our talents and to step out in faith. God strechted ourselves and taught us to only rely on Him. we can go further with Him then we ever thought we could be because He is our strength. we also can't wait to go back home and make an impact where we live.

God is our strength on behalf of solomons 2

Some of our summer

I haven't posted anything about our trips this summer so here are a few highlights. We have hundreds of photos and stories- God is so great! Wish you were here so we could talk all night.

This was the first time we took our raft out this summer.
The five of us and 5 friends.














This was the start of the hike to the 11 waterfalls.
Lots of stories from this hike!














This was the start of the hike to Lake Mary.














This was one of our caving trips, us and our friends.














This is the start of our 20 day hike through Yellowstone Park with some friends.
"We" are the 3 girls wearing blue and the boy on the ground.















The magnificent leap.

An email update from the Solomon's team

dear parents!
we're now back in kira-kira after a week. we are in the middle of our outreach now.
we went to kira kira for 3 days and did some chapels and kids programmes there. all islanders are really shy in the beginning, but the kids opened up after a while and we had a god time with them. we left on saturday a week ago to ugi island, luckily with randy who came the day before we left and joinde us. janine stayed still in honiara, because laur couldn't come. fortunately, they catched up with us on thursday and we're finally all together! in ugi, we did chapals in the churches. we worked with anglican churches all the time, which is often hard for us, because they have a lot of religious tradition. but we could share our passion for God withn them and made an impact. We've been often really stressed and tired, because we walked from village to village and did at least two programmes for them a day. But God used us in awesome ways! When we where the weakest and the most tired, He did great things. So for example, we ofered prayer for the people of one church and almost the whole church came to the front. That's already pretty cool, but the pastor told us afterwards that the people from his church NEVER come up somewhere.
We all worked together a lot and everybody takes part in all the chapels. Parents, be proud of your kids, they are doing a great job! Jason and janine are leading in a good way, too. we learn a lot about the islanders, their way of life, about God and what He does!
we're staying in kira kira probably till fr because of visa problems. the government mixed something up and most likely, Jason has to fly to honiara to get a visa-stamp in all our passports. but afterwards, we are visiting some villages in mainland makira. probably, we're doing chapels again.
Be blessed

Crazy Pictures

I wanted to take some photos before she (daughter in tie dye) left for outreach.I'm sorry our other son could not have been here for the photos.
These were taken two days before she left for Germany. She is now in Switzerland and will be in South Africa after that, for 10 weeks.