German Classes have begun!

We will now be in class Mon-Thursday mornings until summer. Going into the class we were excited about the idea of knowing German but a little nervous about the process of getting there. We had learned a little before hand from living here but didn’t know much. I am blown away with how much we have progressed. We serve an awesome God! We are working hard at applying ourselves and even though we have learned a lot it is still very hard to understand much of what people are saying when we’re not in class. But we are recognizing more and more words all the time and right now at least for me (Alyssa) it is exciting. So far the four hours of German class each day has not seemed like a lot. Our teacher is very good and breaking up the morning with various activities, the time just seems to fly by. I can only explain that as being from God.

Our class is different from any that I have ever been in before in the sense that it’s not English based. I have been in numerous Spanish classes and especially the more advanced classes we rarely spoke in English but our books had the vocabulary translated to English and if we didn’t understand something the teacher would explain in English. This class is not like that. Probably only half of the class can even speak English and there is only one other that it is their first language. There are people from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Spain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and Serbia. Our books are only in German, no English. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work but our teacher is very good at communicating what a word or question means with only using German. We are blessed that she does know some English so we are able to better understand but if she has explained and someone doesn’t understand they are supposed to look up the word in their personal dictionary. The class moves quickly but I feel like we are both keeping up quite well. Pray that continues.

Also be praying for our opportunities to be a witness to the people in the class. Pretty much the first question that anybody asks us is Why are you in Innsbruck? This has been an awesome opportunity in the class especially to share with people God’s calling in our lives. There is a couple from Iran that we have talked with the most so far of the people in our class. Be praying for more opportunities to spend time with them, even outside of class. They have never been skiing and since they learned that we are beginners as well they were interested in going skiing with us. So be praying. That leads well into my next story…

On Monday we went skiing for the first time while being here. God blessed us tremendously with skis to borrow as well as extremely cheap used skis to buy. I had gone skiing once before in the states with my family when I was in middle school but it was only a couple days and we didn’t get much passed the bunny hill. This was the first time going skiing for Seth. Our team leader, Dave and his son Jakob (He’s about to turn 7) decided to help us learn and took us to Mutters. I quickly caught on and remembered much of what I had learned. Dave was working with Seth trying to teach him the basics while Jakob and I would race to the bottom (Jakob won every time but I like to think I was competition). Soon Jakob got bored with the bunny hill and wanted to go down the main slope so we all decided to go. Dave gave us a pep talk before hand saying that you can make any slope less steep by zigzagging across it. Seth was not ready to be off the bunny hill but we all went anyway. The next couple hours consisted of Seth falling countless times, poles flying, skis coming off, taking a break for cookies, lots of stops and Seth lying in the snow. At one point Seth thought he may have really hurt his knee but we were getting close to the end so he just tried to go as slow as possible. He did end up walking down the last 100 meters (it was pretty steep). Praise God nothing was broken and his knee healed up nicely in the next couple days…however he is still pretty sore.  He is open to going again and we are excited about maybe going with the couple from German class, it will be nice going with other beginners.

Seth however was not the only one to crash this week. We have bikes that we have borrowed from people. They are turning into our primary mode of transportation. They are very nice to have to get places quickly. So far whenever it has been snowing we have avoided using the bikes just for safety. This Tuesday we rode our bikes to class in the morning and we didn’t realize it was going to but it snowed about 3 inches while we were in class. We didn’t have much of a choice so after class we headed out on our bikes. It was just a couple blocks later we were turning (with a bus following us) and my bike slipped through the slush and I found myself lying in the road. Praise the Lord I wasn't hurt and I was able to jump up quickly and move over to the sidewalk. God really protected me. Thanks to all of you that have been praying for protection for us while we’re here. I think we’re going to make a point of leaving our bikes at home when it is snowing or raining.

Be praying! This weekend is a retreat for the youth kids. This is going to be an awesome opportunity for us to build more relationships. We are in charge of games and then Seth is speaking on Saturday night. Be praying that God will use and guide us while we are there!

The walk along the river to the place where we got our skis (this is also the way we take to church and when we run)

There will be more pictures yet to come and even some video of skiing!