Hello Friends and Family!!!

It is a beautiful Montana November and the snow is starting to fall! I am so ready for Christmas! Hooray! Here is the latest on our lives!

Josh is loving his time ,on School of Biblical Studies staff! He recently taught 1st Thessalonians and did a brilliant job of it, if I may say so myself! He is loving being a part of the lives of his students and helping them out whenever he can!

I on the other hand, am still in the amazing theatre dept. on base as well as the student library that I am helping manage at the moment! I am also getting ready to help run lights for the Nutcracker Ballet in Kalispell which I am super excited for! It is always a fun time to be able to help out the community in such a creative way!

In other news we at the theatre are currently running a show called “A Montana Christmas Extravaganza”! It is a backstage look at what it is like to run a Christmas variety show! It is based on true events which prove fact is stranger than fiction! Josh has the starring role as the uptight “talent” of the show and I am his adoring and slightly manipulative wife, with millions of costume changes into sparkly Christmas attire! It is pretty darn funny and full of Christmas carols and unbelievable scenarios! All that to say, if any of you are in Montana this weekend or on December 12th, come up and see the show!

Anyway, with Christmas just around the corner, we are getting ready to head to CO for fun festivities and such! For those of you in the area, we will be there from December 19th – 29th unless, God willing, there is a blizzard that keeps us there longer! So please let us know if you are around as we would love to hang out and party in Christmas style!

Please also be keeping us in prayer if you think about it! We would love to have a very safe trip down and back for the Holidays! We would also love to stay healthy! So far we have been blessed in the health department and we would love to continue walking in that!

Please also let us know if we can be praying for any of you! We love to know how you are doing and pray for you guys often, even though we are terrible at keeping touch!!!

We shall update again soon and hopefully I will have time in the near future to make our posts more interesting with pictures! Hooray!!!

Thanks again for your prayers and support!
Emily and Josh

The time has come and gone again for yet another update! Time has seriously gotten away from us as we have been in a whirlwind of activity and transition!!!

Most of you know that we graduated SBS on June 25th! SBS was one of the most amazing experiences in both of our lives! God truly spoke to us and challenged us like never before during our time in his word! We liked it so much, in fact that Josh has decided to dedicate this next year and perhaps longer to teaching the Bible! Yes, you guessed it, Josh has recently become SBS staff! Josh is in his first week of staff training as they await their students to arrive in only a few weeks! Josh is also studying to teach his very first book of the Bible as a staff person, 1st Thessalonians! He is very excited to see what God does in his life and those of his students this next year! Hooray!

I, on the other hand have gone back to my beloved theatre dept.! I am so happy to be back with my dear friend/boss Erin! We are currently writing our next play which will open on September 11th, here on base! We are trying something new this time to shake things up a bit! So this will be our first attempt at an interactive dinner theatre! We shall see how it all works out, but so far there has been a lot of interest! Hooray! On top of my theatre duties, I have taken over the position as librarian for the campus library, for the time being! I was more than happy to help out when I heard that our current librarian was heading home and the base needed someone to keep it running for the time being! So when I am not spending my time writing and casting plays, I am organizing and repairing books as well as training students in their work duties! Oh joy!

Currently we are both trying to reacquaint ourselves with being on staff, and trying to get back into the swing of things! Please be keeping us in prayer that we stay open to other things that God may have for us! We would love to go on more outreaches if the opportunities arise, so please be praying for that as well! We are also praying for a 4wheel drive vehicle of our very own before the winter hits! We have a vehicle that Josh’s parents have been kind enough to let us use to drive back and forth from our house to the base (as our current car is not 4wheel and will not be able to get out of our driveway in the winter), but it would be nice to have our own vehicle, as well as one that we will be able to drive to Colorado for Christmas this year! My mother will thank you beyond all reason (and we will too) if you would pray for this amazing vehicle to appear in our lives!

Thanks to all of you once again! You guys are amazing supporters and friends and we are very blessed to know each and every one of you!

Here is yet another long overdue update but it is well worth the wait in my opinion! Forgive me for the longwinded-ness but, it cannot be told in any less of a way! It all started with an almost empty tube of toothpaste . . .

A lot of times it is just cheaper for us to buy stuff like toiletries online and have them shipped to us! I intended to get a tube of toothpaste with my last online order as we were running out! The funny thing is that in the 6 or so years I have been with YWAM, I have not had to buy toothpaste but have always found it in our free store on base called the boutique! Anyway, I forgot to order the toothpaste and kicked myself about it, then went to the boutique only to find that there was none there either! So I was stressing about it (I know, not really a big deal) and I felt God ask me in worship to pray about it! So I prayed and asked him that someone would give us toothpaste!

Another part of the story is that in my spare time I really love to collect recipes and write them in a journal! It soothes me for some reason and I always hope that one day I will have the resources to be able to cook them! I then came across this great recipe for cabbage rolls and it reminded me of some tasty ones that my Grandma made for us, and I craved them but could not afford the ingredients!

Moving on, Josh and I usually don’t eat in our campus cafeteria for lunch, but take it to go so we can exercise over our lunch break so we don’t swell from all the sitting we do in SBS!   One day about 4 weeks ago now, Josh and I were feeling lazy and on a whim decided to eat lunch in the cafeteria! As we were eating, one of Josh’s friends on staff approached us and wanted to talk to us! He had previously rented a house about 10 minutes from the base until the owners moved back into it! The owners then decided recently to move out of state and needed a nice young YWAM couple to rent their basement apartment for them! He told us the living situation and the rent and we were shocked at how amazing it sounded! So we told him we would pray about it and get back to him by the next day! Less than 20 minutes later after much prayer and asking our parents to pray, we let him know we were interested and set up a time to meet the owners and check out the place!

The night before we were to look at the place, I started freaking out about cleaning supplies! You see, on base for our dorm rooms, all of our cleaning supplies are provided so we never needed things like windex or vaccums before! So I told Josh that we would have to buy a vaccum if we get this place! He smiles and says that they will have one for us! I thought silly Josh, landlords don’t usually provide vaccums for their tennants, get with the program! And he smiled and said that we would see!

How does this all tie together you may ask? Well I will explain! The morning that we were to see the place, Josh walks in from breakfast while I was still in bed and slips something under the covers to me by my head! I opened my eyes and pulled back the covers and lo and behold, A TUBE OF TOOTHPASTE! I sat up shocked and asked where he got it! He told me one of the guys in the room down the hall had a stack of new toothpaste and offered it to him!

That night, we decided to take our dinner to go so we could go see the place ASAP so we grabbed our bowls to walk into the cafeteria! Guess what was for dinner . . . . CABBAGE ROLLS!!! Can you believe it! Talk about God loving me!

We then drove to the place to meet the landlords and check out the place! The owners are amazing and had rented to YWAMers before so they were completely flexible with the lease and the rent they were asking was beyond belief! The place was GORGEOUS! Within an hour we agreed to take the place and randomly, completely off topic from what we were talking about, as we were heading out, the owner turns to us and says “Oh by the way, we have a vaccum you can use, I’ll bring it right down! A VACCUM!!!!!!

All this to say, God has amazingly blessed us with a brand new apartment near the base for an amazing price! It is odd because we have had amazing consistent support for the whole time that we have been here, yet it has technically never been enough income to pay for our bills! Yet God has provided every time, and the math is impossible to figure out, but we have never missed a bill, even though our income does not match our outflow! So this is the first time in our marriage where we actually have enough support to pay our bills with a tad left over to save! God is soooooooooooooooooooooo good!!!

So without further ado, some pictures!

The view from our porch (we have a porch!!!!!)

Josh in our garden (we have a garden!!!!!)

Our porch!

Right side of Kitchen!

Left side of kitchen!

Study attached to living room!

Right side of living room!

Left side of living room!

View from our back deck! (we have a deck!!!!!!!!!!)

Bedroom! (we have a bedroom!!!!!)

Bathroom!

Washer and drier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, Needless to say, we are so blessed by God! He has amazed us with his love and blessing when we, by no means, deserve it! Hooray!!!!

In other news, we have only 5 weeks of school left! Please keep us in your prayers that we can finish strong!!!

Love,
Emily and Josh

Hi friends and family!

It has been a busy couple of months so here is our VERY overdue update on our lives in SBS!!!

OUR 2ND QUARTER IS FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!! 6 months down, 3 months to go, 38 books of the Bible studied in depth and only 28 left for us to dig into!

(checked off books we have done)

(folders holding all of our charts and assignments)

(thumb and index showing the amount of Bible we have left to study)

It has been an amazing experience so far and we are loving it!!!! I thought it might be fun to have a short interview of what Josh and I think of SBS so far! So here it goes…

Q. Favorite book studied so far?

A. Josh – 1st quarter was Romans and 2nd quarter was Samuel (1 and 2 Samuel were studied as one book)! Emily – I can’t decide between Exodus (we had an awesome guest teacher), Song of Solomon (great teaching!!!!) and Samuel (I love the stories and people in them)!

Q. Hardest Book studied so far?

A. Josh – Leviticus! Emily – A BIG ditto on that! It gave us both a better and more amazing picture of God’s grace and patience though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Q. Favorite thing about SBS?

A. Josh – Learning the History of the Bible! Emily – Ditto Josh! I love the lectures and getting a perspective on the books from the view of who it was written to and the characters in the books!

Q. Least Favorite thing about SBS?

A. Josh - Not a lot of time for anything else aside from assignments! Emily - A little thing called chart insides !

Q. Thing you are looking forward to at the end of SBS?

A. Josh - Having a more complete Biblical foundation, Seeing the big picture of God’s plan for man, Seeing a deeper picture of God’s love for us! Emily - Having a deeper understanding of who God is and the plan that he has for us as his children!

Q. Advice for anyone planning to do an SBS?

A. Josh - Don’t procrastinate and be disciplined in your studies! Emily - A definite Ditto on what Josh said and It is not as scary as it seems, so don’t focus on the horror stories but focus on what cool things God has for you in this school! This school is definitely worth the investment of time and money for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of God’s word!

ANYWAY . . . This quarter has been awesome for the most part! Other than one psychotic cold of evilness that I (Emily) had, everything has gone smoothly! We were able to finish the New Testament (minus Matthew, which we will study last) and got through the Pentateuch and a few other Old Testament books! We also survived an enormous New Testament Test covering all of the NT books, that God really helped us through!!!

One fun thing that we got to be a part of at the end of the second quarter was teaching the book of Ruth! We were able to pick a character from Ruth and teach on their life to a handful of other students! We got to choose what audience our other students represented as well, meaning they could represent another ethnic group, or age group that we had to be able to effectively reach with our teaching! Josh chose a friendly Bible study group and chose to speak on Boaz and his integrity, and how believers should be counter-cultural as he was! I taught to a “Newlyweds group” on Ruth and some character traits we should follow in order to create better relationships with our In-law’s! It was a blast and a great way to end the 2nd quarter!

Third quarter starts up again on Monday, April 6th and Josh and I are really looking forward to starting again, after our relaxing spring break! We were able to really end this last quarter with momentum and are looking forward to picking up where we left off with our final quarter! Some prayer requests you all can keep in mind would be:

1. Revelation from God and better understanding of his word and character!

2. Health (no more colds . . . or anything else for that matter)!

3. Motivation to keep ahead on our assignments!

4. Support as our staff fees start to climb!

As always, you guys are awesomely amazing people that God has put into our lives and you are all an integral part of what God is doing in us as we are in SBS and in our everyday lives in YWAM!!! We want to thank you all once again for your continued prayers and support that keep us going and able to do what God has called us to!

Until next time, Have an amazing spring! We will update again soon!

Josh and Emily

Hello friends and family! We are terribly sorry that we have not updated sooner but we have been swamped like crazy! But anyway . . . MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(our festive water tower)

We have been enjoying a very relaxing Christmas break up here in the winter wonderland of Montana! Winter took its time coming this year as we lived in the balmy 40 degree weather and frequent rainstorms! We were afraid that snow would never arrive! But finally, the week before Christmas, it started dumping! And it hasn’t stopped since! You can always tell it is going to be a cold when you find ice crystals growing on the inside of your windows!

(brrrrrrr)

So, Josh and I have both successfully passed the first quarter of the School of Biblical Studies (SBS) with flying colors! Woo hoo!!! We have read through and charted 18 books of the Bible so far as well as giving our own inductive Bible studies on 2nd Timothy! We have learned all sorts of New Testament history, learned about the life of Jesus, and followed Paul through all of his journeys! It has been a trip to say the least! It is so amazing to be able to read the Bible this way! It feels like it is a totally different book than what I grew up reading! All the characters and stories have come to life and make more sense to me as we look at the text through the eyes of the original readers and authors, and finally apply it to out own lives!!! So now that the first quarter is done, only 2 more to go!

(my “color coded” Bible)

We also had the great privilege to volunteer with our local Salvation Army this December! Each year they gather boxes of toys that have been donated and set them up in shopping mall style! Then, families can come into the shopping area and pick out 1-3 toys for each of their children for Christmas presents! We were able to set up the thousands upon thousands of donated toys and inventory all of them to make the workload of the Salvation Army staff a bit lighter! It was so much fun and so amazing to see the generosity of our community and how much they give to make sure that everyone can enjoy the holiday season! If you haven’t donated to Salvation Army yet this year, I highly recommend that you do! They are an amazing ministry!!!!

Prayer requests =

Please be keeping us in prayer as we start the second quarter of SBS on January 5th! We will be heading into some more challenging assignments than we have had so far! We have gone through most of the New Testament and will be starting the Old Testament within a couple weeks of starting again! Please be praying for us as we approach the bigger books, that we take one day at a time and don’t get overwhelmed with the workload!!! Other prayer requests include:

1. That we would continue to enjoy the school work that we are given

2. That we don’t get burned out with the work but stay refreshed

3. That God would continue to keep us afloat financially

4. for our school staff, that they would be refreshed daily as their workload is much bigger than ours!!!

(What a “chart” looks like)

We hope you all have had a beautiful Christmas and pray that this new year would bring many blessings to all of you!!!! Thanks again, so much, for your constant prayers and support!!!!

Emily and Josh

Hello all!

Things have been interesting and quite fun in the past couple of months!!! We were able to go to Colorado and fundraise for SBS as well as spend some time resting and vacationing before the school starts!

While in CO we got to visit my brand new niece Ora as well as Judah (my nephew) and all of the Terbush clan! while there, my dad asked me to paint a cute table and chair set for the kiddo’s too which was oodles of fun!!!

Angro T. baby pants

Emu egg and Jaime

The table for the kiddo’s

Ora’s chair . . . someday . . .

And Emu’s chair!

Our fundraising time went really well = Thank God!!!! We were able to catch up with almost all of our supporters and raise all of the money that we need for the entire school! HOORAY!!!!!!!! There have been so many confirmations that this is the perfect timing for us to do this school! And I know that I definitely needed that because now that I have this amazing opportunity, I have no excuse to chicken out! So it is good to know that God is orchestrating this whole thing for us so we can sit back and trust him!!!

Another really cool thing that happened to us recently is that we were able to move into a nicer, bigger dorm room! While we were in CO, we asked that people would pray for us to be able to move into one of the new cabins on base next summer after they are built! But as people prayed for us, they began praying that God would even bless us with more space immediately! So we went home, and thought nothing of it but a few days later, the director of our housing committee approached us out of the blue asking us if we wanted to move into a bigger room! We looked at it and agreed! It feels like home now and not just a cramped room that we have to live in! I love it! Here is a quick tour of the room!

Our front door, approved by Josh!

Our bed and storage boxes/stairs, all of which Josh built!!!

Our basement/storage under the bed!

Our living room complete with harvest gold velvet cutout couch!

Josh’s Office!

The kitchen (minus the sink which lives in our bathroom)!

And finally, the dining room! The kit-kat clock was a wedding present from my dad!

Anyway, tomorrow is our first day of SBS and we would really appreciate your prayers as we start! Josh is super excited and I am getting excited but am slightly anxious of the unknown as always! So here are some prayer requests:

1. That we would get to know people quickly and not feel awkward (there are 50 other students in our class)

2. That we would understand the method of Bible study right off the bat so we can spend our time really digging into the word instead of worrying if we are doing our assignments wrong

3. That we would stay healthy as I especially tend to get sick when I am stressed

4. That we would have fun! This is an amazing time of being able to be with God and we want to be able to enjoy every minute of it

5. As my dad prayed for us before, that we would have a love for the subject! It is so much more fun to research something when you are passionate about it

Thank you guys so much for your unending prayers and support! This is going to be a really cool season for us so we will try to keep you posted as often as we can!

Hi guys!

Well, you know how in the Bible it says that we make our plans but God directs our paths . . . yeah . . . its true!

So, Josh and I had planned on staffing the Musician’s Summer of Service and taking a team down to Mexico, then doing the first 3 months of the School of Biblical Studies! So, we had all of our paper work filled out and needed just one more signature of the SBS school leader. We find him and ask if he would sign our paper and he responded by calling us into a meeting! So, he sits us down and asks what our long term goals are and if we are planning on stying at YWAM, Montana for much longer. Josh and I prayed about it and we decided that we are sticking with YWAM as long as God wants us too even if it’s forever! So, the SBS leader tells us that the SBS staff had been praying for us and want us to do the entire school! They let us know that if we are going to be in ministry for the long haul that we can never learn too much.

So, Josh and I talked about it and prayed about it and laid out a few fleeces, so to speak. We asked God if this was his plan, that we would be released from MSOS so we could head to Colorado and raise the funds that we need, and we also asked for more monthly support so we wouldn’t have that worry on our shoulders while we are in school! It turned out that MSOS had an overflow of staff and a deficit of students, allowing them to release us from the program and personnel worked with us on our schedule allowing us to be able to go to Colorado for 7 weeks this summer. We also got 2 new supporters so we are now able to cover our monthly bills with a few dollars left over to save! On top of that, SBS gave us some scholarships, as we are on full time staff, that really blessed us!!!

So our new and improved plans are:

1. We will be in Colorado from July 12-August 8 to raise money for SBS!

2. We will be back in Colorado for a second time from August 31- September 19ish!

3. We will be full time Bible School students from September 22-June 26 of next year!

We are very excited to know the next steps that God has for us (and a bit nervous too). But it will be cool to see what doors open for us after the school as well!

Therefore, if you are in Colorado during the summer, let us know and we can hang out! If you would like to send us any donations to help us through SBS, (we still need about $1500 total on top our our regular monthly support) feel free to give to us (all donations are tax deductable if made out to YWAM)! If you think about it, please keep us in prayer as our studies will be INTENSE!!!!

Thanks once again for all of your support and prayers! They really do make a difference in our lives! We will send out another update soon covering things such as FTPS graduation, etc.! Hooray!!!

Hello all!

It has been a while since we have updated but our goal is to start doing it a lot more often!!! The past couple of months have been fun and eventful!

Life at YWAM, MT is going fabulously! Spring is starting to show its face with some green grass and sunshine! It looks like we may be done with blizzards for a while but you never can tell! So, without further ado, here is what has been going on in the lives of the Huffmans!

First off, Josh was asked to be a part of a CD recording project for a girl on staff here! Her name is Lucy McGregor and she is a very talented Kiwi musician! Josh was able to play bass for “Lucy and the Lamp Post’s” first CD! Very exciting!

In theatre news, we are working on putting up the play “The Hiding Place” based on the story of Corrie Ten Boom and her family! It focuses on the family’s involvement in the underground, hiding Jews in Holland during WWII! The Hiding Place will be the biggest show we have put up in the history of The Little Yak Playhouse, with a cast of 25 people! Talk about craziness backstage!!! I (Emily) will be the backstage manager and I also get to do a cameo on stage believe it or not! Josh will also be playing a small part in the show which I am sure he is excited about too!

The FTPS (Foundations in Theatre Production School) is going well! My (Emily’s) students are trudging through their 3rd and final quarter! Our student’s, Jenna and Laura, must write, cast, design, promote and direct a 2 act play of their own! You can definitely keep them in your prayers as they are starting to get tired after 7 intense months so far!

Other than that, Josh and I may have the opportunity to take a team of teenaged musicians to Mexico in July! The program is called Musician’s Summer of Service (MSOS) and is 2 months long! It begins with a moth long training time here in MT where the students learn their music and start working together as a band, as well as spending time in classes learning about hearing God’s voice, and other basic discipling! We then would head to Mexico for a month and hold concerts/ministry times for churches, schools and anywhere else that we are wanted! We are in the process of waiting, to see if we get enough applications to take a team! So far 5 students have been accepted and we have several other applications in the works! We will keep you posted on what happens!!!

Another fun event coming up in September is the School of Biblical Studies (SBS) that Josh and I are going to attend here! One cool thing about YWAM is that they provide a discounted price for any of their staff who wish to take one of their schools! Hooray!!!!!! The SBS is and INTENSE 9 month school that goes through every book of the Bible looking at historical background, the original readers, the original writers, and after understanding the “backstory” of each book, we then apply it to our lives today! Josh and I will only be taking the first quarter (3 months) of the school but we are excited to get the tools we need to go through the rest of the Bible at our own (slightly less intense) pace! We are both very excited to be able to take that time just to focus only on the Bible and what God has to say to us!

So please keep us in your prayers as we prepare for the next few months!!! It should be challenging but fun!!! Specific prayer requests =

• For my FTPS students, that they would be able to push through these last 2 months of school with passing grades!
• Whether or not God wants Josh and me to go to Mexico this summer! We are fine either way but would like to know soon!
• Finances: for SBS (we need to raise about $2000 ), possibly for MSOS (we would need to raise $1200), and for our monthly support! Our monthly rent/utilities/food bills add up to $395/month which is more than we have been able to raise each month! If you would like to support us, please take a look at our “How YOU can be a part of our ministry” page of this website!

Thanks to each and every one of you for your continued prayers and support! You guys are truly a blessing to us!!!

Hi all!

We have made it back from our fabulous European outreach! Thank you all so much for your prayers and support! The trip turned out to be one of the best outreaches I have ever been on!

One thing that stood out more than anything was God’s provision! As you know, God multiplied the loaves and fishes, so to speak, with our finances to be able to go on the trip! When I told my loving mother about our financial miracle, she told me that that would be just the beginning and that many things like that would be echoed during the trip! And she spoke correctly! The entire trip, people were blessing us with food and money left and right and each week we ended up with extra money! It was a huge blessing!

Ok so now, we will give you a fun overview of each week of our outreach with all sorts of fun pics! Hooray!!!!

The Team

Our team leader was Deb! Deb is the head of the Foundations of Theatre Production School and is fluent in Pigeon!

Team leader #2 is Erin! Erin is the head of the theatre dept at YWAM, MT and auditioned for the part of Gandalf in LOTR before Ian McKellan scored the role!

Leader #3 is Wells, Erin’s husband! He was the leader of the band and he glows in the dark!

Then we have Josh and me! Josh was the super cute djimbe player for our band and I was theatre school staff extraordinaire! We worked really hard as you can tell!

Next we have Matt and Becky! Matt was a guitarist/theatre school staffer and Becky was the amazing team violinist! Everyone’s got to have a team violinist!

Student #1 is Jenna! She was our crazy sound tech when she wasn’t studying her brains out!

Student #2 is Laura! She sang lots of songs in the band as well as going crazy keeping up on her studies!

Finally we have our team mascot Kristingle the Gnome! This was his first trip outside of the country and as far as I know, he thoroughly enjoyed it!

Traveling to Europe

Our journey to get to Ukraine was interesting to say the least! We left Kalispell around noonish and connected in Minneapolis! Our next flight was to London and this is where it gets interesting! We were circling Gatwick getting ready to land when an announcement came over the speakers that we couldn’t land there because of a plane that was broken down on the runway! So we were rerouted to Wales! We were just about to arrive in Wales when we were yet again rerouted to Heathrow in London instead! The plan was to stop there for a minute, get refueled and then head back to Gatwick! We land and then we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . 3 hours later, the gas truck comes, we get refueled and fly back to Gatwick! By this time, we had, obviously missed our connecting flight to Ukraine!

So we head inside to hopefully get another flight to Kiev only to find out Gatwick has but one flight to Kiev a day! This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that Deb had to teach in the School of Biblical Studies the next morning, so we had to get there ASAP! So, they arrange for us to drive back to Heathrow to take a flight to Kiev via Lisbon, Portugal? So funny!!!!!!

So we take a bus back to Heathrow and catch our flight! At this point, I have become very ill! I started to come down with a cold and was having really weird vertigo! It was only God that I didn’t puke all over our plane! So we fly to Lisbon, and as soon as we arrive, we try to get our boarding passes for our Kiev flight . . . yeah . . . the Heathrow lady never entered our info into the computer so we had no boarding passes . . . So, a very sweet man worked like crazy trying to contact Heathrow so we could get on our plane! 5MINUTES before our plane was scheduled to leave, we get our passes, run through security and safely make it onto the plane! 38 sleepless hours later, we arrived in Kiev! HOORAY!!!!

Week 1 = Kiev, Ukraine

Kiev was fabulous, I have been told! I remember maybe a day of it all because I was so sick and stayed in bed for almost our entire stay!

The YWAM base in Kiev is on a house boat so we rocked fabulously all day and night! Deb taught the book of Leviticus while we were at the base and did wonderfully well! Other than that we helped out by cleaning around the base and doing other random jobs that looked like they needed to be done!

Our contact Tim also took the team (minus myself) on a fun outing/tour of the city! I was not too sad to miss it though as I had been on the same tour about 4 years prior! Josh was so sweet! He snuck Kristingle and the camera to take a cute photo tour for me! Below is a birds-eye view of the city!

They ran into a NATO protest while out and about!

Then Kristingle played in the park . . .

and met his good friend, the chicken!

They also got to tour some amazingly beautiful Russian Orthodox churches! The blue one, Erin calls the Faberge egg church!

The Kiev base was very cool! The SBS dept. was doing a great job! They were so amazingly hospitable and truly blessed us during our stay! It was really cool to be a part of their ministry even if it was only for a couple of days!

Week 2 = Hamburg, Germany

We flew out of Kiev to Hamburg, Germany! I LOVE GERMANY!!! It is so amazingly beautiful there!!!

Our contacts in Hamburg were Steve and Leslie! They, their two cute kids, Josh and Hannah and another family pioneered the YWAM base in Hamburg! We were able to stay in their staff housing and have the building all to ourselves with only one other person Henrich! Henrich was great, and Josh and I adopted him as our son! What a good kid!!!

Below is a picture of Steve!

The train system in Hamburg was great! We took trains everywhere and they were amazingly cheap! This is Josh looking down on me!

Our time in Hamburg was amazingly full of a of street evangelism! One of the main things we were able to do was ministry in the Red light district! This part of Hamburg was definitely on the sketchy side of things! Every shop on the street advertised sex! At night, the main square was lined with young prostitutes as far as the eye can see! One street we walked by had a huge gate up and our contact explained to us that women were not allowed to go down that street! Husbands would go, and pick a girl out of a window while their wives stood on the other side of the gate waiting for them!!!!

We spent a bunch of time walking around and praying throughout the area! Some of the team were able to go and talk with the prostitutes and bring them hot chocolate and invite them to a local soup kitchen/ministry we were also able to serve with! Very cool!

A lot of the young girls who worked in this area were from Romania! They had families and children back home but couldn’t afford to support them! They would come to Germany for a few months because they could make more money in that few months, selling themselves than they could in a year back home! CRAZY! So that is a huge prayer point you guys can keep in mind!

One of the funny ministries we were a part of was called the Love Club! The Love Club is a gentlemen’s club but one of the owners recently became a Christian! While during the week, the gentlemen’s club is still fully functioning, on Sundays, the club is a church and soup kitchen! So our band was able to play a concert and talk about God to a bunch of street people while they ate good food!

Here are a couple of pictures of the Love Club

While in Hamburg, I also gave 3 fun lectures on American Theatre History for our students! It was oodles of fun!

At the end of our stay in Hamburg, we were able to go sightseeing with Steve! Here are some of the fun things we were able to see! First we have a weird norbly tree!

Then we have a cool door!

And one of the thousands of amazing churches!

Here is Kristingle taking a stroll down the street!

Here he is in his yacht!

And here is the beautiful castle he bought while we were there! He is planning to summer there every other year!

One last fun thing was that our team leaders surprised Josh and I with a date night! It was really cute and they even bought us a heart shaped pizza!

Week 3 = Hurlach, Germany

Our next destination was Hurlach Germany! We flew out of Hamburg to Munich and from there took a train to the small town of Hurlach! On the way, we were able to go to Dachau for about half an hour before it closed! We weren’t able to see a lot of it but what we were able to see was humbling to say the least! Here are a couple of pics!

This is the gate into the camp!

This is the amazingly disturbing sculpture outside of the museum!

And the bunks prisoners slept in!

After our time in Dachau, we arrived in beautiful Hurlach!

And we stayed at the castle . . . yes, YWAM Hurlach is in its own castle!

When we arrived, we were greeted by my dear friend Lilli! Oh, I love her! Lilli staffed my Summer of Dance the very first time I cam to YWAM Montana, 6 years ago! She recently moved back to Germany to get engaged! I don’t know what that’s all about! But it was so good to see her! I would have a picture of her but sometimes my sweet friends are not the easiest to photograph!

So, while in Hurlach, our main ministry was helping the base out logistically! So, they put us to work cleaning up the grounds and refinishing their amazing staircases! The entire week, our team stripped, sanded and refinished to our hearts content!

Here is a before pic of one of the staircases!

This is me all beautified in my work overalls!

And Josh working hard!

And here is the finished product! Amazing eh?

We were also able to play some music as well as perform a couple small readers theatre pieces! One of our pieces that I sadly don’t have pictures of was the book of Kings! We performed the book of kings in the fashion of a football game! We had teams Judah and Israel and instead of yard lines, we had year lines! It was hilarious! I got to be a cheerleader! Oh boy!

Ok so here is Erin, me and Deb performing!

And here is the band playing! Isn’t the drummer cute?

After our week of hard work, we got to go to the castle Neuschwanstein! It was an amazingly, gorgeously, beautiful fairy tale castle!!!

Kristingle really loved it here but the people at the castle kept looking at him weird!

Inside was amazingly beautiful!!!!

From the window, we were able to see another castle nearby! Josh took this amazing picture!

After our castle tour, Josh and I ate some tasty food! Here is me with my currywurst and pommes frites! Mmmm tasty!

Kristingle was also able to hook up with his long lost friend the happy snowman!

Our last day in Hurlach, our hosts made us a delicious Bavarian meal to show their appreciation of the work we were able to do! It was so tasty I almost died! They made us porkloin, potato croquetts, and spaetzel which are funny noodly things which I really like! Kristingle enjoyed it as well!

Here, Kristingle is posing with Toby and Bethany who were our bosses on the base!

Week 4 = Heidebeek, Holland

Our final week we spent in Holland! Oodles of fun! We took a fun train ride to the Heidebeek base! When we got there, Josh and I were surprised with our own little cottage on base! Each of the cottages were named after the fruits of the spirit and I am pleased to announce ours was the Love shack! Hahahahahahaha!!!!

Another fun thing about Holland is that everyone bikes everywhere so the YWAM base provided us with great bikes to get us from one place to the other! Mine was purple and it had a bell!

Here is the gorgeous fiets pad or foot path that we cycled down every day!

And the cute miniature horses that were everywhere!!!!!!

Our time with the base was spent mainly doing a bunch of small theatre pieces! We have a piece on the book of Thessalonians which is meshed with the story of Corrie Ten Boom and the book the hiding place! We performed it one night for the staff and there was not a dry eye in the building!

While in Holland, we got to tour around a lot! This is Kristingle with a windmill! He thought it was cool so we had to take his picture with it!

This is a Jewish graveyard in the center of town!

And this is a beautiful Dutch town that Josh took a picture of!

This is Josh hugging the cow because he has become a vegetarian! Don’t tell him I said that . . .

This is a fun Dutch food item called a croquette! It is deep fried meat paste you eat with mustard! We ate these everywhere!

While in Heidebeek we were able to see some old friends who used to work at our bas in MT! Dennis and Rebekah and their 3 beautiful children! Rebekah is Indonesian and her food has haunted me for years since they moved to Holland! She was so incredibly hospitable to us all and created an Asian feast for our team that should tide me over till they come back to Monatana!!! Hee hee!

The last days of our trip were a bit hard! There was a flu bug going around the base as well as a cold that got shared with our team! Oh the joy of it all! I managed to catch the cold and the stomach flu all at the same time! Yeah, my last days in Holland were not my favorite but that is ok!!!!

Outreaches always have their ups and downs but I am very thankful for how well this one went! Our team was so hard working and our students had such good attitudes not only serving the bases and performing but keeping up on their school work and studying! I am exceptionally proud of how well they did!!! This team also had some amazing leaders!!! They set the example for us! They went out of their way to serve each base, each other and us as well! They were always the first ones out there working hard with a smile on their faces! I was so challenged and encouraged by their beautiful attitudes and selflessness!

So there! That was our outreach! God is good! Thank you for all of your prayers and support! I hope you enjoyed the update!!!

Josh and Emily

Hello Friends!

Well, we officially leave for Europe TOMORROW! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! That is so soon!!! We will head out on the 18th, spend a few days in Kiev (Ukraine), 2 weeks in Germany and 1 week in Holland!

The people on our trip are : Erin and Wells (the head of the Theatre dept. and her husband, the head of our Band), Deb (the head of the Theatre School), Me and Josh ( Theater school staff and my hubby the musician extraordinaire), Matt and Becky (Theatre school staff and his wife, our bands amazing violinist), and Jenna and Laura (Our fabulous theatre students).

Our team will be working in the School of Biblical Studies, at each YWAM base we stay at, both teaching and performing to better tell the stories in the books of the Bible that they will be learning about. On top of that, We have a band that will be performing in random churches, cafes, etc. We are really excited to also be helping the bases we are staying with, with their logistical duties as well as helping out in the kitchens, . . .

Prayer points:

• For our health. We have all been fighting our hardest to keep healthy as we prepare to go!
• Safe travels. We are praying for smooth flights, easy layovers, no hassles going through customs.

We are excited to update you guys with an amazing miracle that occurred just yesterday! Our team as of Friday night, was short $1000. Saturday morning, my boss Deb decided to recount our team funds to make sure how much we still needed! She counted 12 times before it sunk in that we amazingly have all the money we need and even have $10 extra!!!!!!!!!! God is good!!! There is no explanation as to where this extra $1010 came from but it is here and we are going to Europe! YAY!!!

We will try to keep you all updated on our fun travels whenever we have internet access.

Thank you all once again for your continued prayers and support! We would not be able to keep up doing what we do without your generosity and perseverance in prayer!!!!