Sunday
And now, finally I will update about Sunday. As I was thinking about what happened on Sunday I realized that while I was busy all day long, I didn't do very many things that would make a long blog. So this one (to the pleasure of a few of my reader, ahem KMP) should not be so long.On Sunday morning I went to church at BIC again, only this time I took the train to get there rather than drive. I found that it took the same amount of time, and I didn't have to find parking or worry about what to do with my car in the afternoon. That was nice. The worship this time wasn't as elaborate, only having the lead singer with his acoustic guitar and a couple of backup singers. It was still good though. I again sat in the middle, in a row that was empty when I first got there. A couple of very friendly men from Namibia came and sat next to me, and can I say that I love that accent! The pastor was away this day, so the speaker was a missionary who had worked for several years with women who were prostitutes in Thailand and was now working in Berlin with women who were trafficked here. Her message was really touching, about the thankfulness that these women expressed when they found forgiveness in Christ and how they were so touched by His grace that they would often start weeping uncontrollably when they would give their testimonies. I found it really hard at the end of the service to express how I was feeling. It was like that feeling that you get after watching a really powerful movie, like Schindlers' List or something like that.
Anyways, after a certain period of time for reflection, people started to talk and some of the people from the homegroup that I attended invited me out to lunch with them. So I went, and I invited Yinghong along (not that it was exclusive to the homegroup at all, other people came out too). We went to a Mexican restaurant, and even though I don't like Mexican food when I am at home, it was comforting ordering something that I knew what it was before it arrived on the table! Lunch took about 2 hours or more, in which time I spoke with a guy who I really think is gifted in prophecy as far as being led to communicate things that he feels God telling him to say. It was neat. He told me some things that I have been thinking for quite some time now, in relation to some of my passions and some of the opportunities before me, and it was clear that there is nothing that he could have known about me to say those things. Of course, I took what he said in stride and made sure to meditate on them later to be sure that I felt that the things really were of God, but I think that they were.
Anyways, after this, Yinghong asked if I wanted to go down to the fanmile and beat the crowd into the area and then spend the afternoon in the park that is beside the street there. So we took the U-Bahn and saw an area of the city that I hadn't seen yet with some really exclusive and expensive stores, and then we took the S-Bahn from there to the city center. We got off at the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz and walked the half mile or so to where the entrance was. Along the way we saw a memorial to the Jews who were killed in the prisoner camps. It was row after row of concrete blocks, each a different height and the ground was undulated. I have no idea of the significance to the design. There is a museum or something there too, underground, but we didn't go to see that.
When we got into the Fanmile area, were were about 3 or 4 hours early for the game, but it was already starting to fill up. We got in and then walked through the park for a little while and found a quiet area with a bench to just rest before fighting through all of the people that would be there to watch the game.
At about 7 we started to make our way to where we wanted to watch the game. It was fun worming our way through the hundreds of thousands of fans, and we were able to get way up near the front of the crowd. She was surprisingly good at getting through people, even for such a small girl. I have also found that when there are two people together, people around you give you a little more room. The times when I watched the games down there myself I found that people were all crowded around me and cramping my personal bubble. But with her there it seemed that there was a little bit of a gap around us. It was much more comfortable.
So it was from that place, at the front of a crowd of nearly a million people, most of them screaming French, Italian, and Germans, that we watched Italy defeat France in a dramatic penatly shootout. It was an amazing scene. The ground would literally shake when something good would happen. Security was surprisingly good too. There were probably thousands of police (who look much scarier than in N.A) spread all throughout the crowd, wearing riot gear. They also were in scaffolding towers looking down on the crowd and had camera's recording if anyone did anything that would stir trouble. So there were no incidents at all that I saw.
But that pretty much ended my weekend. Of course, there are many details of things between the lines, but it would be impossible to describe them in written form, and I am sure that you have better things to do than read them.
Peace and blessings,
JZ.
posted by JZ @ 2:06 PM
Comments: 1
