Thursday

Good news! I managed to find a specialty shop that had the chocolate I like so much; but I only bought 4 bars because it's kind of expensive.
Today is our last day in Freiburg, tomorrow we're going to head back to Frankfurt, stopping in Ludwicksburg (I think) to tour around for a whole as our "travel day." Then we'll spend Saturday in Frankfurt and head back home on Sunday. Our time in the Mensas (cafeterias) has generated some very interesting conversations and the gospel has been presented a number of times, but there haven't been any commitments for Christ. That is kind of what we expected because the ground is so spiritually hard and the culture is so rooted in postmodernism that it's easy to get into discussions with people, but people are more looking to just share ideas/opinions than to consider changing their own positions on things. One massive success over the last few days (which I'll have to detail once I get back) is Shane's ministry to high school (well, HS equivalent, they have a different school system here) students who were staying in the same youth hostel as us with a school group. He joined some of their guys in a game of table soccer (foosball in the US, but they us that name for real soccer here) and used it as a starting point to build friendships with a lot of them. He is very gifted in relational evangelism, so as he's built those friendships the last few evenings while they party, drink, and smoke in the hostel basement, he's been able to share the gospel several times with each of them. He says that several were really close to accepting Christ last night, but they weren't interested in doing anything major like that on the last night of their trip. So we can only pray that Gott (German for God) continues to pursue them and that they meet other believers soon.
I'm looking forward to blogging all about the trip and sharing a small (very small) fraction of the hundreds of pictures I've taken, but not until I get back because of how much time it'll take.
The ministry of Campus Für Christus (the local name for Campus Crusade for Christ, because the word "crusade" has very negative connotations here) has been gaining momentum and they've decided that this is the last year they're going to have a STINT team here from the States. They are in the process of putting together an ICS (International Campus Staff) team to put here long term starting this fall. That is a huge step forward because it shows the kind of progress they've made since they first started trying to build a ministry here. It's kind of dissapointing to Pauline though because she was pretty sure that she'd be coming here on STINT in the not too distant future, so now she has started praying about other locations to apply for.
This morning a few of the Purdue people were planning on getting up really early and heading over to the Münster (local gothic cathedral) around 6am to try to get in before there is anybody there to disturb and have a little praise and worship. We got the idea because a guy I had lunch with at the Mensa was telling me that he (cultural Christian, but not a believer) sometimes heads over there about the same time and there is no one around. So I got up at 5am and went down to the lobby at 5:20, but Anna was the only other one there. Chip decided he needed more sleep, as did several other people, and Fack (the worship leader) just overslept. So yeah, I'm kind of sad that those plans didn't work out because it would have been really awesome to sing modern praise and worship songs in a cathedral like that.
Ok, I'm gonna head over to the Campus Für Christus office to meet up with some people and head over to a local art museum (we already visited the medival torture museum this afternoon, which was, shall we say, unnerving). Expect to hear from me next after we get back to the US. BSY