In Community

By Ben and Sarah Carey, serving in Germany

Taking risks and believing don’t always come easy for us, especially after living for some time in a place where it appears that ministry moves slowly. Upon our arrival in Waren, Germany, we spent  the first few months bathing the city and its residents in prayer, asking the Lord to show us our role in the community as well as how to connect with Waren’s people. Pioneering takes much daily prayer, which is what we continue to do.

After being here for just a year and a half, we are ready to take some bold steps, as each open door has been leading to the next. We saw God’s faithfulness in many ways this past year and knew that He was preparing us for something bigger than the biweekly conversational meeting in a café or the weekly children’s English play time we sponsor. We believed it would be even bigger than the weekly cooking events in the community center or the classes we teach at the Adult Education Center.

Because we are familiar with leading summer camps, we decided to offer an English day camp during the February school break for the local elementary school kids. Through prayer, we had peace with this decision.

We spoke not only to the director of the community center but also to the director of the after-school program, where many children go during school breaks. If these two programs wanted to partner with us, it would be a great opportunity to connect with community resources. If this didn’t work, we would offer the camp alone and see what God had for us. We were praying for 30 kids to come and would have been happy with 15.

God Heard Our Prayers

We are excited to announce that, in cooperation with the after-school program and community center, we will host the first-ever English day camp in Waren, February 3–7. Fifty-six children are registered. Six volunteers from the United States will come to help, with a handful of staff from both centers assisting, as well as a few others from the community. God nearly doubled our expectations and hopes!

F. B. Meyer said, “You do not test the resources of God until you attempt the impossible.” Working in cooperation with both of these organizations has been an answer to prayer, because we’ve heard from German nationals that this cooperation does not come easily.

Our camp will not be “religious.” However, we asked the Lord to provide a way to show the people of Waren that we are Christians and that we want to love and serve them. We pray that this camp will continue to open doors and build relationships here.  The Bible says the world will know we are Christians by our love, and this is our prayer as we continue to press on in this small northeastern city of Germany.

What You Can Do

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Sarah Carey tells how a teenage girl found Jesus through an English camp.

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