Hello all, and welcome. To start off, I should catch some of you up on this comming year. I will be spending a year starting August 2 in Germany with the Intermenno Trainee Program. This program is organized by the European Mennonite churches and is open to any American or Canadian citizen. Basically, the way it works is I fly over there and work my butt off for them so they can pay for my plane ticket there, my room and board while there, and a small stipend for me to live on. I'll have two jobs while I'm there switching half way through the year (the end of May). My first placement is in Giessen, a small college town about 50km north of Frankfurt. I'll be working for the Global Aid Network, a German non-profit which, as far as I can tell, is very similar to MCC. They are not affiliated with any particular church but they distribute food and material aid to needy countries. My particular duties in Giessen include working in the warehouse loading and unloading trucks, driving to drop-off locations around the area collecting goods, and doing some office work. I'm sure this will change significantly once I get there and start actually working but that's all I know for now.

As far as living goes, I'll have an appartment by my self (I think). Often times trainees will live with a local Mennonite family but the number of Mennonite families in Europe is decreasing and the number of trainees going....well....isn't. At the very least I hope to have some friendly neighbors who don't speak english or don't speak it well. One of my major goals for the year is to learn the language and hanging around with a lot of english speaking Americans and Canadians isn't really the way to do that.

I hope to keep this blog fairly current and check your comments but I don't know yet what my internet situation will be at the moment. So, for now, pray for me....I'll pray for you....and we'll see when I can write next.

David