Our internet provider (i.e. – the neighbor) went on vacation and turned his router off the whole time he was gone! In normal people terms, that meant we couldn’t access his internet and we were cut off from the world until he returned home. Hopefully, we will have our own soon and all these problems will be over. Trying to get our hook up has been a nightmare. We chose a company called Kabel BW, because they have the cheapest deal for an internet/telephone/cable flat rate. However, we ordered the installation in July and haven’t gotten it yet. If they don’t hook us up today, we are going to use this other company that has a deal on right now. Incidentally, the other company also has really cheap rates to call America, so I won’t have to use internet numbers anymore and therefore won’t sound like a robot. Yay!

Flo and I are on the great search for a church to call home. I developed this really arrogant idea along the way somewhere (Actually, I developed lots of arrogance along the way and I’m not sure why, but God has been faithfully and kindly pointing it out – so I apologize to anyone who was a victim of my arrogance. Please forgive!) that God doesn’t visit Germany, because Germans are too rigid and rigidity really seems anti-God to me.. at least, the God I know. So I haven’t even wanted to look for a church, because I just knew I would be disappointed. Of course, if that’s what you expect, that’s what you get. We’ve been to this church in Stuttgart for about a month now. It’s called BGG, though I have no clue what that stands for, actually. There are some really nice things about it. The worship is ok; mostly the preaching is good; Flo knows a lot of people our age that attend there, because he went there a few years ago, before he went to Toronto; they have lots of events and things you can get involved in. The downside is, worship ends at 10:30, no matter what; the preaching is not always good (sometimes it’s a bit more about loving the law than the law of love); it’s huge – 3,000 members – so it feels impersonal; and there are lots of things to get involved in. On the whole, I would say the people don’t know how to just be and be in relationship. Flo was approached twice in one day to run sound for different things associated with the church, but no one asked us to lunch or how we are doing or if we are even regular attendees at the church. I just want relationship! I don’t want to do anything! I don’t want to have a purpose! I told Flo we should only meet unmotivated, lazy butt people so that we can all just hang out and have relationship instead of getting something done. Anyway, we’re going to try another church for a while and see how it goes. We know we won’t find the perfect church, because let’s face it, where does one exist? But at least we want to find the one that’s right for us.

In the meantime, we’ve continued to visit our other temple: Ikea. We bought a desk there this past weekend. We decided to get a corner desk set-up so that Flo can spread all his equipment out on it and I can still have an end for my laptop. I could put my computer in the other room, where my creation table will be, but who really wants to get glue or sawdust or whatever on the keyboard? Anyway, since everything from Ikea comes in pieces, we went with our Golf. I quickly measured out the inside of the Golf and decided the corner piece would only fit one way, so the whole endeavor would go smoothly as long as we could get the piece in that certain direction. Ha! The piece itself is 120×160 cm, or 47×63″ – naturally, with a curve in the middle of the long end, where you sit. We probably spent about half an hour in the parking garage of Ikea trying to make it go in the car. We also got two small filing cabinets, which came already built together, so they took up quite some room. This is what we finally ended up doing:

Our normal speed on the Autobahn is at least 130 km/h. With this baby out the back,

I think we only did about 90 km/h. It was a bit longer trip home… but every trip takes longer when you have a Grampa driving!

Because we had to push both the seats all the way forward to fit everything in, Grampa Flo drove home.

Someone from Flo’s job has a plum tree in his back yard. He gave Flo a whole bag of plums and – this one is for you, Ruth – guess what Flo said when he brought them home and I pointed out that we can never eat them all before they go bad? “Well, I guess we have to bake a cake or something.” Yeah! We have to bake a cake or something. At least baking is my forté. If he’d said to cook a gourmet plum meal, I would have been sunk. By the way, Jer, they’re prune plums (giggle giggle).

On Saturday, we went to Karlsruhe (another city – actually it was Graben Neudorf, but that’s a small town and you’d probably never find it on a map. Karlsruhe is bigger.), because Flo was doing sound for his friends Albert and Andrea. Burkhardt the drummer was also there. He’s the funniest guy. It’s wonderful. He has this lovely Swedish wife who just wants to speak English with me. Alas, they live a bit far away. Anyway, I thought we were going to a worship concert, because Albert writes worship songs and it was his show. No, no, no, no. I could not have been more mistaken. Apparently, it was some sort of conference from a regional Evangelische organization (read: Lutheran). They had seminars and workshops and then this big program at the end of the night. They also had canes and false teeth and orthopedic shoes. Flo and I went to get some lunch and before we could even present our meal vouchers as ‘band’, the guy said, “You’re with the band, right? Just take the food.” We decided it was because we were the only young people there, we must belong to the band. So the first part of the big program was this huge, old-folks choir. It was… interesting. (Click on all these small pictures to see them bigger.) I don’t know if anyone from Father’s Promise can pick out the woman who was conducting, but she was wearing one of these sack dresses – you know, the uniform of Trojan Christian Church. It was a hideous reminder of days long gone. Also, you may be able to see in the background there, the banner reads “Henhöfertag”. No one has been able to tell me what a henhöfer is. I translated it “Chicken Yards Day”, but clearly, that makes no sense. Even my trusty friend LEO couldn’t tell me. If anyone has any insight on that, leave a comment and let me know. Then they had what looked like ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio with James Lipton’, but it was these two little old ladies. One of them sounded like she’d smoked all her life and was business-y, but I didn’t catch what she actually does. The other one is some kind of missionary and she told these fun stories of her missions work, but with so much detail and so many pauses that the audience didn’t know when she was done and kept clapping halfway through her stories. Finally, they got to Albert’s worship session. Albert’s music is, well, it’s not my style, so much. It’s sort of à la Brian Doerkson or older Vineyard stuff. A bit sedate. Anyway, it was the most upbeat part of the evening. It was good. Albert is really nice and so is the rest of the band. Flo was pretty much bored the whole day as well, except when he got to play with all the knobs and buttons. Some people are easy to please.

Anyway, I can’t remember anything else right now that I wanted to put on here. And I better post this before Dr. Pepper goes on vacation again…