Will I ever arrive?

Sorry for the longest silent treatment ever.

The last post I wrote was about Croatia and the missions trip I did to that beautiful country. I ended the last post by saying, that I had a job in Switzerland. Well I really enjoyed working for that company and I had a good time with my co-workers. I worked there till the beginning of July. After that I was involved in different volunteer jobs for our partner organisation MOVIDA.

Well now I'm already a few weeks in Brazil. I departed October 3rd with a few minutes of delay direction Frankfurt, Germany. In Frankfurt I didn't have to much time till I my connecting flight to Recife, Brazil departed. I was already sitting in my seat when a Flight Attendant came up to me and asked me if I would be ok switching seats so that this mother could sit together with her aprox. 6ish year old daughter. At this point I didn't know where he would be taking me but I agreed to switch the seat. On this response he asked me to follow him into Business Class. ():

Never have I received a Upgrade to Business Class and I was even happier to know that this flight from Frankfurt to Recife was about 9h long. Now I was sitting here in the first row looking forward for this flight. But about 5 minutes after we started rolling towards the runway we already stopped again and the Pilot gave an announcement saying that there was a technical error on one of the engines. Luckily Condor had an other airplane standing around so that we were able to leave about 1.5h later. It was a very pleasant flight in which I got spoiled by the Crew and the service of the Business Class. 

But the trip wasn't over in Recife. I still had a connection flight from Recife to Teresina and now with almost 2h delayed my chance of making the connection was almost 0. But here as well Condor surprised me. They already had contacted to ground crew who was waiting for the passengers with connecting flights. Now because I was in the first row, I also was able to leave the airplane really quickly. I went really fast through Immigration and my luggage even arrived on a separate carousel. At Customs no one was looking so I was quickly out and already back at the Check-In for my connecting flight (this by the way is normal in Brazil if you have a connecting flight, you go through Immigrations and Customs and back to the Check-In counter of the next airline). As I arrived the counter I noticed that I had about 10 minutes before departure time. The agent looked in the system and because of the Condor ground staff who already warned the other airline of my delayed arrival he was able to still check me in. So I dropped my luggage and ran to the security to proceed to the gate. I arrived at the gate just in time to be the last one to board. After such a beautiful and relaxing flight I suddenly came into such a stress.

Even though I had such a great cross Atlantic flight I arrived exhausted but on time in Teresina. And to my surprise my luggage also made it, even though they just had about 10 minutes to get that luggage from the Check-In counter to the airplane.

Now I'm in Brazil and slowly and as good as possible getting used to the high temperatures (+- 40C).

Croatia

Sorry, I had this text written in German but forgot to translate it into english :(
Well I'm back in Europe for almost 3 months. I returned on the February 22nd to Switzerland. 4h later the Missions Team from CLBI (Bible school in Canada) that I led to Croatia arrived in Switzerland as well. On February 23rd our training started for the trip to Croatia.
The team that went down to Croatia was made up by 11 members that originated from 7 different countries / nationalities.
After one week of training in Switzerland we left for Croatia on March 1st. During the three weeks in Croatia we visited three different cities. We started our journey in Cakovec were we played with the kids from the gypsy villages and we were able to share some stories and songs with them. For me personally it was rather hard but also encouraging to see and hear that the missionaries are already working for 14 years

with the kids but see little fruit. In all this time "only" one family became christian. For me that shows dedication and perseverance. It was hard to see that our sisters and brothers in Christ are serving for 14 years to the people of Croatia but sadly don't see a lot of change. But at the same time those missionaries are a huge encouragement to me and I believe to many others as well. This because they are showing what it means to persevere and suffer for Christ. They were demotivated but who can blame them, but they didn't give up and exactly their perseverance is what encourages me.
The second stop we did in Split, where we mainly worked with Campus Crusade and with Reto Center (Drug and Alcohol Rehab). Something we learned here is probably that it isn't easy to talk about your faith with the Croatians. We got challenged a few times during the street evangelism that we did. But what gave me hope was that we encountered young people at the university that are seeking and looking for something better and bigger in their lives.

The third and last stop of the trip in Croatia was in Knin. It is a small city that was battleground during the civil war and till today is shaped by it. I notices fast that there was a spiritual darkness over the city. We had the privilege to work together with the only evangelical church in town. This little church is already in Knin for 15 year and they "only" have 14 church members / goers. They were already thinking about closing the church. But during our time with them we had the chance to evangelize for 4 days on the main square. We danced, sang, shared stories and distributed Bibles and other books and we had the chance to talk to different people. The Missionaries and the church didn't think that what we are doing will be well received and that we will receive a good feedback from the people. But to their surprise a lot of people stopped by and talked to us and took some books with them. This led to the decision to not close the church. The following Sunday two new people joined the service that no one of the church new before and 4 others that the church was already in touch but they never made the step into the church. Something that I just got know at the end of our stay in Knin was that two of the church members took a week of work just to be with us. One of them joined us with his kids on the square and the other spoiled us with different goodies that he made himself just for us. Both of them were a great blessing to us.
I was able to learn a lot out of this trip, not only from the culture and from the Christians in Croatia but also in my leadership position I was able to learn more and grow more. I'm God thankful for this experience and for the testimony that our brothers and sisters in Croatia are. Myself and them as well are really thankful if we keep them in our prayers. The life of a Christian might not be directly connected to persecution but the cold harts doesn't make life for a Christian easy.

Now I'm back in Switzerland and I'm working temporarily in a fabric that makes industrial floor cleaning machines. I'm thankful to God for this opportunity that he gave me.

It is done

Sorry for the late update. :(
I have some hectic and intensive days that my team and I had before the CIMA. But for a few days already I can call it done. This post I want to divide into three parts. I want to start with the time I had while my parents where here.

Time with my parents
My parents arrived two weeks prior to the CIMA here in Costa Rica. They used this time to visit a Swiss organisation that works amongst the natives of Central America and to enjoy some free days. I had the chance to spend New Years Eve and the first few days of the new Year with them at the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
January 2nd we started with our last preparations for the international CIMA. Also my parents helped out where ever they could. And I can say in the name of the whole team that we where thankful for their help. During CIMA we barely had time to hang out and talk. Most of the days I was working till the the first few hours of the day. But still I had the chance to find some time to quick talk to them and catch up with them.
On the same day as CIMA finished they returned to Brazil.

International CIMA 2017
CIMA was a roller coster for my emotions, strength and thoughts. But I don't want to scare you here.

Let me start from the beginning. About in November we realized, that we probably are not going to reach our goal of 600 participants. That meant, that we set our new goal at 500 participants, which again also influenced our Budget. We had to cut in every area the budget as much as we could. We had a few financial supporters but not enough to cover all the cost. The opening day finally was here and so was the rain. This ended up in mud slides on the road that connected the capital city with the city where the CIMA was held. This led to the delay of participants, speakers and exhibitors. This all was a big chaos but already in the second day we had most of it under control and we noticed that our main hall was full of participants. We counted the list of registered people more then once and we were surprised. We had more then 600 participants. On the last day we had about 600 participants, more then 50 speakers and about 40 pastors and some exhibitors. This meant that at the end we had about 700 people at the CIMA. This was a huge answer to our prayers. We thank God for this!!

During CIMA most of the Team and some volunteers were constantly running around and organizing things. About half way through the CIMA a lot of us started feeling the lake of sleep and all the pressure, including myself. I reached a point in my life that I've never been before. I was physically, emotionally and mentally tired. My batteries were 100% empty and it was probably the worst time for me to be so tired. I had to rest and completely relay on my team and over all on God. Why the worst time you might ask, well it was the second last day of the CIMA. A lot of the participants needed information about their missions trip. Everyone wanted an immediate answer to their questions. We also had to set the teams together and to get some last minute things done. We needed every single person of my team during this time. I'm really thankful for my team that supported me during this time and gave me the opportunity to take the rest needed to operate again.
All of us still had the chance to listen to the speakers and their messages and we were all really blessed by them. During most of the time I also was translating the main sessions from Spanish into English. January 15th most of the teams left on their missions trips and also here I'm thankful to God because we didn't have any incidents with their departures. The week after

CIMA was still filled with a lot of work and no rest was in sight. My team and I traveled to the near by locations where we had teams doing their missions trip. We went to visit the teams and record some interviews of the participants. Well this was more or less the international CIMA 2017.


Thanks of keeping me in your prayer.