Hallo Guten Tag

Today we spent our day at Samaria’s Ministry. We began by preparing the meal. The girls all helped by preparing the salad and sides, while the men cut chicken. We all enjoyed this aspect because we were able to be busy and continuously find tasks to do. We even had a break between the time of cooking the meal and serving the meal. Brad, Sarah, and I switched around playing checkers (the game took forever…we are all competitive). As we just sat and talk we were able to discuss some words in German and English. We all laughed because of the way we all pronounced certain words. When it was time to serve the meal we all had certain tasks in order to fill up 160 plates of food with only 6 people in the kitchen and about 5 others serving to the refugees. With having not that many workers everything was fast paced and it felt very rushed. It was hard in some ways because we wanted to interact with others but it’s also our duty to serve by making sure they get a meal so even though conversations were very little we still did our part. It was so much fun working with the interns, Helga, and Heinrich in the kitchen because we were able to make lots of jokes, and sing country songs. After we cleaned up we ate our lunch and any leftovers that we had were packaged up and given to homeless people on the streets. When we arrived back to our place we sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather (it’s been in the 70’s all week!!!) and just played card games as a team. Again the competitiveness is never-ending and yelling at each other in UNO and Dutch blitz is normal. LOL.

-Marissa💕

Friyay

Today was another ministry day so we went to helping hands. Their normal Friday’s consist of serving biscuits and tea. Sarah, Cianna, and I decided to work in the kitchen this time since most of our volunteering experience was working with the children, we decided to switch it up. All we had to do was ask if they wanted “sweet or bitter tea” for the first couple of hours. Even though it was such a simple task we were grateful to learn new words while others laughed at us for trying to repeat the words multiple times until we got it down. (I already forgot the words we learned, haha).

Once we switched tasks for the next couple of hours I went to sit at the women’s table where they were coloring with their children and talking to some of the leaders of helping hands. Sarah and I tried to talk to a refugee woman but the conversation ended very quickly since she couldn’t understand English. There was one leader named Bonnie who helped us try to get the refugee woman to answer some of our questions about her life and it was neat to just see her smile and laugh because the language barrier was difficult but pointing out objects helped us get somewhere in conversation. Soon later we ended up finishing for the day and cleaning. All the leaders, groups, and interns debrief at the end of the day and discuss, “where they saw God working throughout the day?” Each and every day of their ministry they debrief and pray for about 15-20min, and during this time they discuss about the conversations between refugees. I found this very fascinating because often times in our society we go about our own days and never consider how God works through our conversations or activities. It was more different than just a prayer, but actually thinking about each moment of the day and the impact God had in that single moment.

-Marissa💕