The Vanns: October 2011

It's hard to believe that the end of October is already here!! Our time in Berlin has been so full and so rich!! After our Summer of Service Outreach, we as a team had a couple different ministry opportunities where we were able to encourage youth in the greater Berlin area and get a little bit of rest! After all of that we really stepped into preparation mode for our Transforming Arts Discipleship Training School! The Transforming Arts DTS is a bit different than other DTS's we have staffed in the past because, in this school we really take our afternoons to focus on the arts - music, dance and drama! Our students are in the process of writing an original show/musical that we will be using as a tool to preach the gospel and reach out to the upcoming generation on our foreign outreach to Japan and South Korea and on our European Tour to Southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland in early spring. We started this DTS at the end of September and we're in week 5 already! We have 16 students here from all over North America and Europe. They are an amazing group of young people who are really pressing into God!! So far we've had an orientation week where we went over basic info, had lots of get to know you time, a big city tour and attended a Jesus Culture Conference. We also have had teaching on Hearing the Voice of God, Identity and Original Design, Justice and this week were diving into the Holy Spirit!

Mark and I are co-leading this school as well as helping to mentor some of the newer, younger staff in a secondary school called the "Basic Leadership School". We're apart of the lecture times in the mornings, were having one on ones with students and staff, we're helping to lead small groups, helping with the music track a bit in the afternoons, we're cooking, we're cleaning and really just diving into helping disciple this young group of students and encourage them to run after Jesus with their whole hearts however we can! God is raising up a new generation in Europe - It's so exciting to be apart of it!

On a little more personal level we feel that we've been adjusting to living in Europe quite nicely! There have definitely been good days and bad days and we have definitely had our days or even couple day stints where we've been walking through culture shock and are quite overwhelmed. Today we were approved for a year visa which finally brings all of our "grown up paperwork-legal stuff" to a close; at least for the next year!! It's shocking that it's really taken us 4 months to get our visas, bank accounts, health insurance, residency cards, and cell phone stuff settled! We are definitely celebrating that today! We've also just recently got our room set up in a cozy, comfortable way so we have a "homey" place to rest and spend time together!! This is especially exciting to us because we know there is a cold German winter just around the corner! Mark and I are sharing an apartment with our single girls staff and the speaker of the DTS, so having a cozy little space to call our own is such a blessing!!

Here area few pictures from our current DTS!! Please be praying for us as we continue pressing into everything God has for these students and for those who will be ministered to in Japan and South Korea!!!