andi's perspective

PERSON TO PERSON LENDING

Just now totally enthusiastic about the Kiva micro-loan scheme: the world's first person-to-person micro-lending service.  100% throughput to the entrepreneur!

"Kiva's mission is  to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty."

You "browse the catalogue", choose profiled entrepreneurs in the developing world, and lend $25 upwards enabling them to work themselves out of poverty or at least continue to survive in it!   

Are you the only Westerner without $25 to spare?

I think i love this!

FEELING CHURCH

Celebrating the life and death of Josua we today took our leave of him in the good company of family & friends.

 
We were honoured by many a friend expressing their love & sympathy, sharing prophetic impressions or lending a hand in practical matters. It was good experiencing church - local and global - as a real life support network. The amount and intensity of empathy and interest actually surprised us. Joshua to us finally became not only a uniquely personal, but also a powerful relational exerience. "In his name" we wish you all a blessed celebration of the life & death of Josua's namesake!

DEEPER MEANINGS?

Partaking at a collective funeral for preemies we've waved a final goodbye to our firstborn today.

While i tend not to look for a deeper meaning where just plain nature (read: God authorised fallen reality) hit, we were suprised to receive a number of prophetic impressions for Josua: from being a "seed" over being a "sign to the city" to being a "prophetic image about the condition of the church".
For me Josua's being buried in Magdeburgian soil in the good company of other preemies is primarily a sign of confirming our incarnational attitude of sowing our lives into this specific place. We will see what comes out of it.

A huge thankyou at this place to all friends who by various ways have expressed their sympathy over these last weeks!! THANKYOU :.-) 8.-)

HELLO GOODBYE

(audio may take a while to load)

"Where's the Navigator of your destiny?
Where is the Dealer of this hand?
Who can explain life and its brevity
'Cause there is nothing here that I can understand

You and I have barely met
And I just don't want to let go of you yet

Josua, hello, goodbye
I will see you on the other side
Josua, sweet child of mine
I will see you on the other side

And so I hold your tiny hand in mine
For the hardest thing I've ever had to face
Heaven calls for you before it calls for me
When you get there, save me a place

A place where I can share your smile
And I can hold you for more than just a while"

(by M.W.Smith - thanks friends for the link!)

BEING MILDENED

It's not a new truth, just a new experience for me: The older you get the milder (or call it: more broken) - you seem to become. Now, if fatherhood is not accelerating your age, brokeness, and mildness, i don't know what would... In this sense, small Josua has probably done more to my spiritual journey than many other.

Looking back i realize how hardened my heart had already become against anything (and especially any kid) that would interfere with my business, projects and with getting things done...  -> Thankyou kids for opening my eyes to this reality so precious and so real! I guess this is called "life"?!

READ MY NAME

After 12,5 years of marriage we proudly announce the birth of our firstborn son Josua Immanuel Wolf!! :) :)

Tiny Josua, however, did not come with much time to spend on planet earth - about two hours after birth (24th week of pregnancy) he already left to meet the King...

Christine and me do feel hugely blessed by the gift we had the privilege to enjoy for a short time. Josua will stay with us an encouragement to press on towards the final Hope. Forever he has made a significant difference in our lives.

I have been here, just read my name ;.)

FACES OF EUROPE

Ever wondered who Europe is? Here is the answer:

These 27 True Europeans give "a human face to the political union".

It's really a nice monument to walk in and around,  to read and study the faces and to marvel at this great ethnic diversity of the "European family".

Found in Berlin during our last prayer visit.

RELATIONAL UPGRADES

We are talking a lot about church 2.0 as the next major upgrade version of "church as we know it". Here is a nice application of that language for the relational side of life. Enjoy ;)

Reference: INSTALLING HUSBAND
Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance -- particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0, and Golf Clubs 4.1.Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?
Signed, Desperate
---
Dear Desperate
First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Please enter the command "http: I Thought You Loved Me.html" and try to download Tears 6.2 and don't forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Food 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7. Good Luck,
Tech Support
(credits)

INTO THE FEAR

We just returned from a marriage enrichment seminar in Berlin. The one thing that I remember best was the speaker's interpretation of the meaning of "intimacy" based on its Latin roots:
intimacy = "into the fear".
I like that. Explains a lot of why partnership is such an epic adventure and continual challenge of finding our courage to "go naked" and overcome our natural fear of each other.

LIANNE OF MAGDEBURG

Last Sunday the church of Magdeburg assembled in memory of Lianne Roembke, missionary to Magdeburg for the last 20 years. It was a very moving time with folks from all over, as Lianne had been travelling the world to train intercultural missionary teams. Those that knew her best described her as a steadfast and reliable rock, faithfully and radically committed to a life of  silent servanthood, a challenging and horizon enlarging voice to her local community, and a gifted trainer bridging the academic and the pragmatic.

Christine and me are happy to have known her, even if not too much. I would express it that way: it just gave you a good feeling knowing that Lianne is around in the city. Like a place to go to in need, a steady witness of the one Body, an humble role model of servanthood leadership, without many words. That is how city elders and those of the empowering 5-fold team should be experienced.

Together with her closer friends we have cried in grief to loose her now. In remembrance of a huge saint of old, I will call her Lianne of Magdeburg, one who found a home and provision in a scorched place and lived and died as a token of faith and hope.

Thankyou, Lianne. Thankyou, Lord.  :.)