I am SO thankful for the Stadtparksee.

Because today was super humid and sweaty.

I went to City Light in the morning.  Walked in the shade as much as I could on the way there, but I was still quite sticky by the time I arrived.  Everybody else was too, though.  Janos's three-year-old daughter asked him, "Papa, who poured water on you?" because the back of his shirt was so sweaty after setting up the room.  I enjoyed doing worship, though by the end my shirt was damp too and I'm pretty sure I sweated on Joey's guitar.  (Sorry about that, Joey . . . if your guitar is sticky it's probably from me!)

Rebecca's mom and dad are visiting from California this week, so I got to meet them.  They are going with the Ropers up to Copenhagen and to the North Sea during the week, which should be fun for them all.  (Ah, Copenhagen . . . Marni and Petra told me great things about that city, but alas I didn't get around to visiting it.)  There were also a few other new people this week, one of whom was named Kelly.  She is from North Carolina and is in Hamburg for a while to be an in-house nanny.  We traded contact info so I could send her travel tips about hostels and stuff like that.

The service was really good.  Joey finished up the series about the vision of City Light that they've been doing the last couple months.  The message today was about giving.  I wasn't quite sure how that topic would go--after all, giving is one of those topics that makes a lot of people uncomfortable--but the way Joey explained it was different than I've ever heard it taught before.  We read 1 Chronicles 29, where David and all the people contributed willingly and generously to the building materials for the temple in Jerusalem.  When he saw how abundantly everyone had given, David praised God and thanked Him for everything He had given Israel.  Joey was talking about how the people's gift was generous because it was born out of true thankfulness to God.  The point of the message was: When we we start to really consider how much God has given us--how even the little things, like health and air to breathe and strength for each day, only come by His grace--then our gifts to Him flow out as a natural response, and we are willing to give not just money to serve God, but other things like time and skills and resources.  That was the case with David and the Israelites, and that is how it should be for believers today.  Extremely helpful . . . I've never heard it explained from that angle, and that helped me understand the "giving to God" concept so much better!

I met Indra at the Stadtpark at 1:30 and we went straight into the water.  It felt SO good . . . cold when you got in, but a very nice kind of cold.  You're just so glad to not be hot and sticky that the initial nip doesn't matter.  I have to say, this phenomenon is one that I've rarely experienced in my life, being from the California coast where you always have that chilly ocean breeze giving you goosebumps before you get in the water.  While we were swimming we heard the Polizeiorchester (which was in Planten un Blomen the other day) playing again!  They were on the west side of the lake and we listened from the water.  I knew it was them by their white polo shirts and white truck with the name on the side.

Thankfully some humid-weather clouds came in about midafternoon, which cooled everyone off to a comfortable temperature.  Indra and I left around 5 and made dinner sometime around 6.  She made Marni's pita-pocket döner recipe and I made a humongous batch of roasted potatoes because a couple of my potatoes started to go rancid and they had to be used up.  (Most of the batch went into the fridge . . . I think I'll be eating them for dinner the next couple of days . . . )  After dinner we watched Anastasia in English (which I had never seen before and enjoyed pretty well) and then Beauty and the Beast in German (its German title is Die Schöne und das Biest).  Ahhh, summer vacation, when you have no school so you spend the first couple weeks swimming, tanning, and watching movies--in other words, basically doing nothing.

I ALMOST made it through the semester without burning myself while cooking . . . but it happened tonight.  Got my knuckle on the inside edge of the oven and ended up with a sort of instant blister.  I iced it right away though, and Indra gave me some aloe vera gel and a nice little blister bandage for it.   Actually the burn was totally my fault, because I was being lazy and I didn't want to take the pan out of the oven to add more pepper to the potatoes.  So I kind of asked for it.  Oh well, live and learn.

Now I am going to bed.  Hot weather is making me so sleepy . . . Gute Nacht . . . zzzzzzzz