Our First Church Baptism.

Last weekend marked an event to remember in the history of our church, our first baptism. It is exciting to see how far the church has come even since I have been involved. Over the past year we have seen the church grow to the maximum capacity for our meeting space filling each chair on Sunday and prompting us to pray for a larger building. We have had the opportunity to see adults and youth come to faith in a culture that tells you you're crazy if you believe in Jesus Christ. We have seen the birth of a new covenant child to a family raising their three children to believe in the Gospel. We have seen answered prayers to situations that seemed impossible. It is amazing how the Lord continues to bless our congregation and our first baptism was just another glimpse of His power.

Hans and Chimmie have been coming to our church for about a year. She is from Zambia, Africa and met Hans through a mutual friend here in Germany. Talk about two different cultures! They have a one year old son named Sebastian that they wanted to have baptized.

(I must add that baptisms in Germany are a much bigger celebration than in America. All the children here have multiple godparents that are to be very involved in their life and sign a paper during the service to agree. All of the extended family comes and they host a coffee for the church as well as a day long meal, which you will see later.)

So as you can tell it was a lot of work to prepare for such an event. Praise God He provided a larger building to rent so that the 15 extra family members would all fit in addition to our regular attendees. The service went really well and everyone had a great time celebrating together. Here are some pictures from the day.

Here is Hans and Chimmie taking their vows.

Here is Stephen baptizing Sebastian....who was not very excited about having to sit still.

During the closing prayer Sebastian decided he wanted to sprinkle himself with the water. Chimmie told me that every time he takes a bath now he puts water on his head and says, "Jesus."

Here is Leonie and me. I was so proud she was on time, she tends to live on Paraguayan time now.

Here is Chimmie serving refreshments at the coffee time after. There was a beautiful courtyard outside that we used to fellowship.

Heather, our resident cheerleader!

Here is Sebastian. I think I may have scared him!

Stephen and one of his good friends Roland, who just had a third baby girl "Felicia Maria" with his wife Ulla.

Stephen and I had the pleasure of being invited to the family lunch and it was a wonderful time. We ate wild pig which Hans (who is in a hunting club) had killed for the lunch. I had to pull out my best sign language and sounds to get by but we felt really privilege to be invited.

This a picture of the whole group.

Enjoy!