The Glenns in Germany

We are so thankful that we were able to spend time with Kevin and Lauren this weekend. It worked out perfectly for them to come over to Germany to visit. It amazes me that we have friends all over the world and we were able to meet up with some of them in Germany, of all places.

Selfies with Kev.

Lauren helping Johnita get ready for dinner.

Girl picture.

Luke being silly.

Brooke helping Ethan with German pronunciation. It's incredible how the kids can speak fluently have no accent when they speak.

Lauren and I coloring. We started out coloring with the kids, but it turned into a relaxing activity just for us.

Saying goodbye at the train station was difficult, but we are so proud of Kevin and Lauren and we are grateful to have been able to spend some extra time with them.

Venturing Into Downtown

Monday, we had a relaxing morning and busy afternoon. The whole day was delightful.

In the morning, we hung out with the Glenns at our apartment and had lunch here. I like being able to cook in the apartment...makes it feel homey.

In the afternoon, the girls ventured out into the city while the boys hung out and played soccer at the apartment. It's World Cup season, as you may know, and the whole town is buzzing about the Germany soccer team. There are photos of them everywhere! It's pretty fun and festive!

This is the Old Rathaus (old city hall). The statue you see in front of it is a major landmark for Goettingen. I'll take better photos and share more about it later. It's really neat to me.

Feeling like a tourist:

We went to a confectionary called Cron & Lanz. It's been around in Goettingen for a very long time and I can see why it's so popular! You walk into the 'showroom' (that's what I called it) and pick out your dessert. They give you a ticket and you go find a table. Then a server comes to your table, takes your ticket and drink order, then brings your dessert and drinks to your table. It was a nice day so we sat outside on the upstairs patio, which was lovely. The dessert was ridiculously delicious. We will be going back here again!

The 'showroom:'

Gorgeous impatients on the patio. The colors are so vibrant in real life that I don't feel like they come across in the photo as bright as they really are.

My dessert, a raspberry tart with fresh whipped cream. Unbelievable. 

As we were walking around on Monday, we saw lots of little places I want to go back and check out. Good thing we've got lots of time! There is an H&M on the square. Even though it's a European company, it made me feel more at home to see it! 

We went into the Old Rathaus and looked around the Goettingen gift shop, which was really cute. There is a lady there that speaks English and she was so nice and answered all our questions. We went to the grocery store again, another Rewe, and then took the bus back to the Williams' house, where we had dinner and ice cream and stayed up and chatted. 

The best part of my Monday might have been sleeping 6 consecutive hours! The Lord is faithful!

Our Home in Germany

The Lord was good to us when we stumbled across this apartment listing. It's in the perfect location. It's the perfect size. It has everything we need. The landlord and his wife couldn't be sweeter. I thought I'd share some pictures of the interior, so you can see where we are living this summer.

The kitchen. 

The cabinet on the left is actually the fridge. It's quite small. No wonder you have to grocery shop every 2-3 days!

Our view from the kitchen window.

Looking down the hall (I'm standing in the living room), the door on the left is the kitchen and obviously the bathroom is straight ahead. We have a tub with a detachable shower head and a washing machine in there!

The living room is cozy and has three windows across the back, filling the room with the most gorgeous light.

There is a little desk for studying and Ethan is making good use of it.

A view from the living room.

It was quite rainy the day I took these pictures, so it's a little hazy, but we can see one of the church spires from the living room window.

This is the little entry way (just to the left of where I was standing to take the living room photos). There is a coat rack, a full size mirror, and drawers to hold our stuff like maps and reusable grocery bags.

The bedroom. I like how they do bedding here. You get your own small mattress (so there are 2 on this bed) and your own set of covers. It is comfortable and simple.

Another view of the bedroom, the closet.

Our view from the window by the closet is just this tree. Our landlord told us it was one of the oldest trees in the city. Not sure how old that makes it, but it's pretty!

This is the view looking down from the other window in the bedroom. We are surrounded by residential buildings and there is a parking lot in the middle.

There are no screens on the windows. In the above pictures you can see that the windows are cracked from the top. If you turn the handle a quarter turn, then you can open the window all the way up because they are double hinged. It's really nice, actually, because you can control how much circulation you want in your place. We usually just crack them, which has been completely sufficient.

We had a suspicion from emails that our landlord is a believer and when we walked into the apartment, we saw this frame by the door. 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." Hebrews 13:8 

A nice reminder each time we leave the apartment!

A Pretty Day in Goettingen

We have a magnificent view of the sunset from our kitchen window. It was quite lovely on Saturday evening. It doesn't get dark here until around 10 pm and it gets light in the morning around 4:30 am. It's really nice to have the extra long days.

On Sunday, the Glenns arrived! We hung out at our apartment for a while and then walked to the Williams' apartment, about 10 minutes away by foot, for dinner.

This is the view from the Williams' balcony. It's beautiful! They are up on a little hill, right at the edge of the forest. Our apartment is closer to downtown and the main part of the city. 

The weather has been quite nice! Although it has rained 3 of the 5 days so far, it's nice and cool and when the sun is out, it is beautiful! It's a cozy kind of warm in the sun, but in the shade it's a little chilly. We'll see, but supposedly the whole summer is much like this! A very different type of summer than in Fort Worth.

Outing to the Grocery Store

Have I mentioned how much we love the Williams family? Today Johnita came over and helped me finalize a grocery list and then walked with us to two grocery stores to show us the way and also around the stores.

There is an organic grocery store around the corner from our apartment. It took us all of 2 minutes to walk there. Unfortunately, they were closing. However, the two employees were very kind and spoke English. They let us go in and look around. They don't have everything we need weekly, but they have most things we will need every few days. I plan on going there often. As we were leaving, we thanked the employees and the lady gave us some homemade bread from their bakery as a welcome to Germany gift. She gave us potato bread rolls and croissants. Both are unbelievably tasty. Apparently their produce is all picked fresh daily and they have farm fresh eggs on the table in the back. You pack your own into a carton. We will definitely be going back! 

We walked about 10 more minutes toward downtown to the next grocery store. We really felt like we were in Germany then with all the half-timbered houses lining the streets. 

*It was rainy when we went, so we took only a few photos during a break in the rain.

This is the second store, Rewe. It is small and a lot like Aldi. You put a coin in to get the basket out, you have to bring your own grocery bags, there is a small selection of most things, but that makes it easy to find what you need.

Johnita snapped the above photo for us and I'm glad she did. Today, getting out of the apartment and walking around, instead of driving, we finally felt like we live in Germany!

Travel Day

Thursday we left DFW at 3:55 pm on Lufthansa Airlines, which we highly recommend, by the way. Great experience with them! We had a direct flight to Frankfurt, so we spent about 10 hours in the air.

Matt and Suzanne picked us up at home with Sonic and some sappy story about how we've seen each other pretty much every 10 days, if not more, for 7 years. Thank goodness they are coming to visit in July so we don't have to wait the entire 10 weeks to see them again! We certainly are thankful for great friends like the Speighties.

We are happy about boarding in a few minutes.

Probably somewhere over the northeast US. The sunset was really beautiful from the plane.

Our first glimpse of Germany. We got a very rainy 'willkommen' to the country!

We made it! It was 1:45 am Texas time, 8:45 am Frankfurt time. We hadn't slept on the plane at all, thanks to a screaming kid and a less than thoughtful person in front of us, but we watched lots of movies and were feeling good when we landed. That is an act of the Lord, truly.

Ok, now we've picked up our luggage, walked what felt like at least 10 miles with our bags to the very last train platform. We were less than thrilled, but still feeling ok. It was about 4 am Texas time to us by the time the train arrived.

We didn't take any pictures of the train. It was a relatively stressful experience with all our luggage and weren't even totally sure we were on the correct train (we were, thankfully). We weren't able to sit together and Ethan's seat mate was our luggage. Poor guy. It was a two hour train ride and we stayed awake the whole time because we didn't want to miss our stop.

Our landlord and his wife picked us up at the train station. They are amazing people, believers, and were very warm and welcoming. He is a doctor in Goettingen. They showed us around the apartment and told us where the nearest grocery store was. Then they left us to rest. Again, we are so thankful to God for the blessing they are already! 

The Williams family (our wonderful friends from SWBTS and church) came over last night and brought pizza, candy, flowers, ice cream and groceries. We had such fun hanging out with them and their precious kids. We had been awake for about 30 hours at this point, so we were pretty out of it. Thankfully, they understood!

Sleep was very welcome last night! We are still feeling pretty tired and out of it, so I'm looking forward to sleep again! Our friends, Kevin and Lauren, arrive tomorrow and we are so excited to see them!!

Settled In

It was a long (read 30 hours of no sleep) travel day, but we are here in our apartment, all unpacked and ready for bed!

I'll write more about our travels later. But for now, know that we are blessed and we are so thankful for your prayers. We were picked up at the train station by our landlord and his wife (the sweetest little couple). They drove us to the apartment because it was raining. The apartment is amazing. Better than we imagined, in fact. We are so thankful for it!

Tonight, the Williams family (some great friends of ours from SWBTS and church, who have been here since last July) brought us pizza, flowers, candy, ice cream, and groceries (including some of my favorite things). They are incredible. It was so much fun to hang out with them and their children. They are a delight and blessing.

Again, thank you so much for praying! We will post pictures soon. We don't have wifi internet at the apartment so we'll load some up to the blog soon, instead of instagram. Thanks for following along and for your encouragement and most importantly your prayers!

Now, off to bed!

And we're off!

We are packed. Our passports are in hand. Pillows and snacks are ready for the flight. Train tickets are handy. We're ready to go!

Please pray for us as we leave this afternoon. We've got a 10 hour flight, then a 2 hour train ride before we arrive at our apartment in Germany. Our landlord and his wife are picking us up at the train station because it's going to be rainy! How sweet is that? Please pray for safety and protection. Please pray that we are able to rest and that we (ok, really mostly me!) won't be stressed or too anxious. Please also pray that we are healthy while traveling. I have a sinus infection and, although feeling better, am still feeling a bit under the weather. Please pray Ethan doesn't get sick too.

We will update you with pictures as soon as we can. In the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram for more 'real time' updates: emily_rose_jones. Thanks for following along with us and praying on our behalf.

We are so excited about this adventure and we praise God for his faithfulness and provision!

Last weekend

This weekend has been fantastic. Our dearest friends, Matt and Suzanne, hosted a backyard party for us to hangout with all our friends from church. They presented us with cards from everyone to take with us to Germany, something we will cherish. 

Saturday we ran lots of errands and made sure we had everything we needed for packing. It was a long and tiring day, but we ended the day by watching some sweet friends get engaged. 

Yesterday morning we enjoyed our last Sunday at Wedgwood for the summer. It was a great day and we will miss it greatly while we're gone. 

The ministry is in good hands with these sweet friends. 

We started packing and getting everything in order today. We are so excited! Thanks for praying with us!