Super Bowl Sonntag

Well, school has been back in session for three weeks now so we are back in the swing of things here at HBR. It's funny how after weeks of living on a completely different timetable during a break, one day back is like a refresher course sending you back to the same toilsome schedule that it seems like you've been doing for years. It didn't take long for some of the RA's to start feeling worn out even just coming off of a long and relaxing break. It seems like a few of the guys returned to school ready to pick up where they left off in testing boundaries. But as tired as I feel sometimes, I am so glad to have them all back for this semester.

The first two weekends back were filled with home basketball games. What happens on weekends like these is that games will start at 4 o'clock on Friday right after school gets out. Girls JV plays first, followed by Boys JV, Girls Varsity, and Boys Varsity. We basically spend our entire night at the gym watching games, and eventually get home around 10:30ish. Concessions are available at the games, and all of the students and residence life staff get their meals provided. The entire process starts all over again on Saturday morning at 10:00 as all four teams play a second time. It's a lot of fun to hang out in the stands and cheer on the teams although by the end of four full games sitting on wooden bleachers, there is a lot of... ermm... discomfort involved. Also, BFA's basketball program isn't exactly Europe's finest. The teams we play against are all from schools on American military bases throughout Germany, and the students tend to be more athletic than our kids. Our Varsity guys haven't won a game yet, and they're getting pretty bummed about it. The BFA players have fared well overall though as they handle adversity and keep good attitudes. Plus, even though we aren't extremely competetive in basketball, I hear that we generally kill the other schools in soccer most years. This current week is Spirit Week at school, and we will have our last weekend of home games this coming weekend. Hopefully, the guys can capture their first win in front of the home crowd!

More sports discussion: When I was preparing to come over here to Germany, I really had no idea how much I would be able to keep up with American sports. Of course, I would be able to see the results of games on the internet, but I wasn't sure if I would be waiting a full year or so before witnessing my next professional American sporting event. It sounds kind of silly because sports aren't exactly the most important part of life, but I decided that part of the sacrifice of coming here was giving up the ability to keep up with American sports. When I arrived here, I was happy to find that a couple of the dorms, including HBR, have a channel called NASN (North American Sports Network). It is a channel run from within Europe that basically shows what they decide are the best games being played in North America. The games they choose to show are alright, but the organization of the channel as a whole is quite sad. The commercials are horrible; there are basically about three of them total which play over... and over... and over, and all of which I have memorized. They also like to float their logo around the screen any chance they get while playing an annoying little ditty which has also been seared into my brain. I'm very thankful for the channel however. So anyway, during the NFL season, what would be the Sunday afternoon games at home came on at 7 and 10 at night, and they were basically the cream of the crop of what was available. Needless to say, the Bears didn't find themselves looking anything like a cream of a crop this year so they were never featured during those games. However, the Sunday night and Monday night games were always on no matter what (and started at about 2 in the morning) and the Bears managed to be in four of those during the season, and yes, I did watch all four of those games. Those were always late nights, but it was made easier because RA's get every Monday off so if I stayed up late watching football on a Sunday night, at least I could sleep in the next day. I also got to watch exactly three Cubs postseason games in the fall. No more, no less - just three. We don't have to talk about it.

Anyway, as some of you might have heard, there was one of those Super Bowls on Sunday, and for us it started at midnight. Yes, we did have a Super Bowl party here at HBR. Several staff members and a group of student girls came over from other dorms to join us, and we served chicken wings, french fries, and soda at midnight before it started. And even though hardly any of the kids in the room knew anything about football, it turned out to be a great time. This despite the fact that my discouraging prediction came true when several students seemed to pick a team to cheer for at random and proceeded to go nuts every time that team gained more than three yards. One of the sad subtractions from the evening were the commercials. We didn't get to see any of the Super Bowl commercials firsthand so I had to wait until Monday when I could look up a few of them online and watch to my heart's content. Even though I was pulling for the Cardinals, it turned out to be a great game, and I'm really glad I had the chance to watch it.

For those of you who are wondering, our new RA Anna is doing a fantastic job of picking things up quickly and adapting to life here at HBR. She seems to be finding her niche in the dorm and connecting with various students so that is an answer to prayer. Tell me if you have prayed for her, and I will let her know! I'm sure she would be encouraged to hear it. She is still working on her driving and needs to take our BFA driving test before she is able to drive with students in the vehicle. She's a little nervous about it due to the combination of large vans, manual transmission, and boys being in the van with her. So you can continue to pray for Anna and her transition. I'll leave you there for now. I try my best to make calls home once in a while, but there are so many people out there who I want to talk to and so little time to use on talking. If you'd like to talk to me, send me an email, and I'll try to set up a time when I can get a hold of you. So if you're reading this and you haven't talked to me in a while, I'd love to chat sometime. Until then, thank you for your prayers! God bless!

Wilkommen Null Neun!

Ein Beschwingtes Neues Jahr!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Germany! Sorry I haven't written sooner. I finally made it to our Christmas break when I had spare time to get things done, but all of a sudden, all I could force myself to do was relax. A couple of us joked about making a schedule for ourselves for the break like when the kids are here. It looked like this:

7:00 - Wake up... or don't. You choose.
10:00 - Wake up... or still don't. It doesn't matter.
1:00 - Go shopping to pick up food and necessities only for yourself.
4:00 - Make a snack... for yourself... if you want one.
6:00 - Drive the dinner van into town to pick up dinner and eat whatever you want.
8:00 - Study hours - Study a movie.
10:30 - Lights out... or not.

The casual reader will look at this schedule in bemused speculation at its full meaning. But trust me, I am laughing so hard right now, my fingers can barely find the right letters on the keyboard. Ok, that's not true. It's not that funny. But it is a little bit. I'm considering backspacing over all of this. But even if that joke flops with random blog readers, I still think it's
funny. So there is some insight into the job for you.

Christmas went well for me here at HBR. I was dreading its coming for most of the semester since I knew I would be away from my family. But it ended up being a great day. I ate a brunch in the morning with all of the RA's that were still in town. And I spent time with a couple different families later at night. And I got to video chat with my family at home a few times through the day and opened gifts with them. On the right is a Christmas tree I stole from our rec room and put in my room after the guys left. I even got to put some presents under it from family back home, a few people here, and even a couple of my supporters!

The Sunday night before the guys left, we had a Christmas party here at HBR. It was a blast. Here's what happened. We split them up into their small groups and let them take part in three events for the evening. First they chose two students from their group to wrap a gift. The trick was that the one in front couldn't use his hands and the blindfolded one behind was the one actually wrapping the gift. We got a few interesting looking presents, and I couldn't help but laugh anytime it actually looked like the arms really belonged to the person in front wrapping. Tee hee hee!
Next I donned my gamemaster hat and led a few rounds of Christmas trivia (my forte). These guys don't know much, but it was fun anyway. Here are a few of them shouting out (probably wrong) answers.
After this we used Rachel's brilliant idea to portray a live nativity scene. We assigned each group roles that they had to fill so we could take a picture. Hilarious consequences.

Can you find me in the picture? From left to right we have three magi, a little drummer boy, the star over Bethlehem, a camel composed of three boys, the moon, Mary and Joseph (with Jesus), a group of angels and a group of shepherds in back, a group of animals in front, King Herod, and finally a good-looking and well-dressed innkeeper turning away the young couple.

We came inside out of the cold and enjoyed some snacks and punch. Then it was finally time for the boys to open presents. The five of us staff had gone out and bought a bunch of relatively inexpensive gifts and wrapped them up. We then allowed them to draw numbers out of a hat and proceed with the gift exchange. And I've never seen one like this.

To see the looks on their faces when they opened something as simple as a pair of headphones, sidewalk chalk, a pair of slippers, or a Spongebob pillow was great. One of the most revered items to open and find was the almighty roll of duct tape. There were at least half a dozen rolls of colored duct tape, and they are a huge hit every year.

Of course, they were allowed to steal gifts from each other, and this is when things really started to get funny. After a gift is stolen three times, it is considered safe and can't be stolen anymore. The seniors worked together and the juniors worked together and were strategizing how to keep certain items for their floor because if a student wins something, it basically belongs to the entire floor of guys at that point. The seniors were really good at this strategy and the juniors... not so much. So whenever something got stolen for the third time, one entire side of the room would jump up and start taunting the other side. I've never seen anything like it. When all of the gifts belonged to somebody, the night was over, and it was bedtime. All in all, it was a great Christmas party.

Something I haven't mentioned is that at the end of last semester, Rachel found out she couldn't come back for this coming semester. Her support had been low for a long time, and she basically ran out, and her missions agency was having her return to the States. Also, there was a new RA coming for this semester who was going to be placed in one of the girls dorms. After this new development took place, however, she was moved to HBR. So we'll have a new RA this semester! Her name is Anna, and she got here earlier this week. She seems very nice, and I think she'll do great. But she could really use your prayers through this transition. To follow up on the other story, the dorm students were really sad and upset that Rachel wouldn't be coming back. After some of the students' parents found out about it, they contacted their supporters and tried to start raising extra support for Rachel. Some of the parents (missionaries themselves) are even sacrificially giving of their own money. And we just found out a couple days ago that Rachel is at full support and she will be returning to join us for this semester! It was really exciting to see God's people come together and use their resources to support someone here at BFA who needed help. And that shows you how strong of a ministry an RA can have here. Many of the guys were nearly devastated that Rachel would be leaving. And hardly any of them even know she's coming back at this point. But we will all be delighted for her to be back. And now we will have four RA's at HBR. We're looking forward to a good semester!

Keep praying for me and God bless you in this new year!

Brandon

Christmas Banquet

This Saturday (Nov 29th) was BFA's Christmas Banquet. For about a month prior, most of the guys at HBR had been working up courage to ask a girl in some creative way to be his date to the banquet. Songs were sung, flowers were offered, poems were recited, eggs were laid... all done for the word "yes" from a sweet young lady. I drove one guy to a girls' dorm after dinner and witnessed him performing a song he wrote on guitar first over the PA system and then in front of her. Overall, it was a fun and exciting time for the guys (and probably more so for the girls, I think).

After weeks of anticipation, the day was finally here. We admired their suits and helped tie their neckties. I convinced one guy that he needed to borrow a pair of black socks. We arrived at the school at around six and all of the boys waited outside for their dates to show up so that they could escort them indoors. After a lot of milling around and pictures being taken, the banquet officially started. The theme of the banquet was "Christmas in France." There was an Eiffel Tower on stage, and we were served all night by middle schoolers with thin mustaches.

The program was composed of a three-course meal, musical acts by the students, wishes being granted for them, and parents' emails being read. The emails from the seniors' parents to the kids were mostly made up of statements like "I can't believe this is your last year" and "I remember when you were filling your diapers." The wishes by the students were submitted in the month leading up to the banquet and Student Council along with the staff chose which wishes to grant. One kid wished for hot drinks to be available in the student center. One girl received elf shoes. The girls' volleyball team wished for Coach Woodward to put on a performance for the audience. A couple girls wished for a surprise and received a box of junk that was garage sale worthy. Our very own David Cho wished to go out on a date with the prettiest single teacher at school and won himself a night out with Mr. Michaels. The kids auditioned to be able to sing a song at the banquet, and the musical performances were done well. The last act of the night was a student singing, "I'll Be Home for Christmas," a song which hasn't meant much to me in the past but that is a lot more moving this year all of a sudden.

This is Phil playing guitar and singing a song with another student named Amelie. He's really talented!

This is the Christmas court, as voted on by the student body. Note the French items given to each student. Aryan from HBR on the far right was chosen to represent the senior class on the court. He was the Big Cheese for the night.

This is one of the group pictures I got of HBR at the banquet. Can you find me?

The Christmas banquet was the biggest excitement we've had around here for a while. There are only two more full weeks of school before the Christmas break. You can tell that most of the students are ready for a break. They've been here a long time, and they're getting a little antsy pantsy. I have to say that I'm ready for the break as well. Weeks upon weeks of a job like this will take its toll on you! I feel physically drained, and I can imagine I will just collapse and not get up for a week as soon as the last student is dropped off at the airport. Continue to pray for me getting my rest and for the preparations for Christmas. Thank you!

-Brandon

Herbstmesse!

Hallo! I absolutely cannot believe that it is the 12th week of the semester here at BFA. Someone mentioned that the other day, and I was astounded. On the one hand, it feels like I've been living here in Germany at least a year by now, but on the other hand, it feels like school just started and I only have a few weeks under my belt. This is one of those places where time just absolutely flies by. I can't keep up!

Here's your trivia question for today. How much does this dorm pay for water each month? If you guessed 2,000 euros per month, then you are exactly right! That is somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 dollars spent each and every month just for the use of water in this one dorm alone with 33 people living in it. I heard that stat the other day, and it just blew my mind. I hope it blew yours, too.

Now you're probably thinking to yourself, "I've read Brandon's intro, and I've read his trivia question of the day. Now what does that German word in the title of the blog mean?" Well, my friends, Herbstmesse is one of the biggest festivals of the year here in Germany. I mean, it's no Oktoberfest, but it's up there. I know not a single one of you at home is going to correctly pronounce Herbstmesse, and I'm not even going to try to explain how. I think it's more fun that way. But the word "herbst" means "fall" (as in the season), and the word "messe" means "party" or "festival" so we're talking about THE Fall Festival here. Two weekends ago, on Thursday, October 30th, we loaded up every BFA dorm student into rented tour buses and traveled to Basel, Switzerland for the night to celebrate.

It is basically set up like a festival in the States. There are wild rides, booths with food, games ready to scam you, and creepy carnies. I spent most of my night walking around the city with a group of RA's, riding one single ride (continue reading), riding the bumper cars with a huge group of BFA students, and taking in the sights. My favorite part was the random American influences all over the park. There were signs hanging everywhere of random American celebrities like Macaulay Culkin from his "Home Alone" days and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. One ride had a background behind it with some no-name girl looking risque in the middle of it, Marilyn Monroe in the left corner, and Doc Brown and Marty McFly from "Back to the Future" in the right corner. Lovely. Read on for pictures and stories.

This is a picture of a handful of RA's riding one of the carnival rides. The one I rode was like this except the spokes were longer and sat five people across. After five of us loaded ourselves into the ride and the seat bars locked over us, we were sitting there waiting for it to start, and I was kind of rocking our entire row back and forth. After doing this for about a minute, the bars holding us in place came undone and stayed loose. The problem didn't fix itself right away, and after some nervous laughter, I was just thinking to myself something like, "Ok, play it cool. The ride probably isn't going to start like this... but if it does, you are really going to die." After a few seconds of this, a couple German guys show up chuckling and push our lap bars back into place while thinking, "Stupid Americans!" Or maybe they said it out loud. Who knows? But you can bet that during the entire ride as it mercilessly flung me every direction upside down and backward, all I could do was imagine my lap bar coming undone, and my flailing body hitting several steel beams before it met the ground below completely lifeless.

This is Andrew and I dominating all of our students on the bumper cars.

From left to right: Mr. Corn on the Cob, Rachel, Andrew, myself. Reenacting one of Andrew's digestion issues from the beginning of the year. We won't let him live it down.

I don't remember doing this, but this is from the end of the night, and I was evidently ready for the night to be over with. Left to right: Lizzy, Timmy, Andrew, and myself.

This is probably my favorite sign that I found which featured American influence. It was displayed over a food stand and proudly presented characters from the 90's Batman movies. You can see Jim Carrey's Riddler on the left and Chris O'Donnell's Robin on the right. And yes, in the middle, wearing a white tux jacket OVER his leather suit, is Batman himself, offering a tasty burger and a thumbs up. I loved it.

I've been asked several times about how we are handling Thanksgiving here. Germany doesn't have any Thanksgiving holiday, but we are celebrating it at BFA. We are actually celebrating it tomorrow... two weeks early. Don't ask me why, but we are. But we have been concerning ourselves with preparing for it because the meal is indeed going to be much larger than usual. I'm hoping that a lot of the RA's will be able to celebrate together in a couple weeks on Thanksgiving Day itself. This brings me however to the unavoidable fact that I will be missing the holidays with my family this year, the first year that this will have taken place. This is obviously one of the sacrifices I had prepared for in coming to BFA in the first place, but as I have remarked to several friends and family, it is going to be tough, and I will miss all of my family back home especially during these times in the coming months. So keep me in your thoughts through this holiday season! And thank you for your continued prayers!

-Brandon

Battling

I think most of you know that I have loved the time I've been able to spend here at BFA so far. I really like the rest of the staff here, being involved in the students' lives has been a blessing, and I have been growing by taking on the role of a servant in the dorm. Some of you know I even got to take a weekend trip to Barcelona on my last weekend off, which was amazing.

But I need you to know that not everything here in Germany is as beautiful or as fun as my pleasant blog posts make it out to be. Because as great as I can portray the ministry here to be, there is definitely a war being waged against BFA right now. Anytime a ministry is strong and thriving, Satan is going to attack that ministry in any way he can.

We are being attacked physically. Last weekend one of our dorm moms got into a bad accident on her bike and needed work done on her face and hands. Also, one of our (tall) guys hit his head on a doorway, giving himself a concussion, and needed to go to the hospital. And one of our teachers finally arrived to school late for the semester after staying home and fighting a bout of cancer. And besides these injuries and disease, working here is exhausting!

We are being attacked emotionally. Dealing with these kids day in and day out grows tiresome. I am essentially putting aside the freedom of my own life so that I can live their lives alongside them every single day. As nice as I can make the kids sound, sometimes they are... not nice. Sometimes I want to strangle them (I'm not really going to). Just like any other kids, the ones here can be wildly disobedient, make stupid choices, and be incredibly disrespectful. Working through the students' issues is emotionally draining.

We are being attacked spiritually. The busyness that comes with every day makes it seem easy to miss a quiet time of meditation with God on a daily basis. This can't happen if we are to resist the devil and fight back against him! It's frustrating to try and get involved in the students' spiritual lives. Because even though almost all of them come from families of missionaries, some of them don't have much interest in spiritual matters, and even the ones who do don't seem to talk about it much. Sure, they have church services, small groups, dorm fellowship, chapel services, and whatnot, but I don't know how much they are growing or learning from any of those things.

All that to say, I am finding joy in my trials and am taking up the Sword to fight back in the war. I just want you to know the reality that along with the good times here, there are hard times. We really do need your prayer here as we continue battling!

Fighting for Him,
Brandon

Overdue Pics

Hallo! I decided I should hop on here and add a couple important pictures since I've been meaning to for a while. This first one isn't important, and it's rather dark and grainy, but I like it. This is at least half a dozen guys or more who were in my room a couple weeks ago playing Halo against each other on the network. I joined in, but I stink so that part wasn't fun. But I was really glad that my room was a place where they could feel comfortable coming together to hang out and have fun. A lot of the guys pop in once in a while to relax and talk in my room, especially the eight guys who live on my floor with me. And I love that they feel like they can do that.

This next one's not important either. It's just me. Both of these next two are from orientation before school started when I had only been here about a week and a half. This was taken the day we found out which dorm we would be in. We were referring to it as a draft because each new RA was picked to join the staff of a certain dorm, kind of like how players are drafted to join a sports team. You follow? So I took the time to draw jerseys for everybody so we could hold them up just like athletes do on draft day. Not really a good story, but since I'm holding the thing up in the picture, I couldn't really avoid explaining it. Jeffers! HBR! #23! Just like Michael Jordan, Ryne Sandberg, Devin Hester... Needless to say, I was the steal of the draft.

I would have put these up earlier, but they are Andrew's pictures so I had to get them from him. And that took... over a month. OK, I guess I don't really have an excuse. Anyway, I realized I had never to this point put up a picture of my dorm staff so I thought I should take care of that! This is the important picture I was referring to. As you can see, this picture was taken the same day, right after I found out who I would be working with this year. Refresher course: the dorm parents' names are Calvin and Joan, and the two RA's who are also working here are named Andrew and Rachel. I'll let you figure out for yourself who's who.


They have been great to get to know and work with, and like I've said before, I think we make a great team. In other news, I get a weekend off this week which starts tomorrow, and I'm getting the chance to get away for a while with several of the other RA's. Pray that I would take the opportunity to get some rest and to be reenergized for when I return and to have a good time of fellowship with the others who are going. I think I've made it clear that this job is quite exhausting so it's important to take advantage of these rare times to get away and rest. Thank you in advance for your prayers! Auf wiedersehen!

-Brandon

Laundry Day

Buntwasche!

Thursday is laundry day for me here at HBR. It actually starts on Wednesday night when all of the sophomores and freshmen bring their laundry baskets downstairs after dinner and throw their clothes into (mostly) organized piles. We have six sophomores and only two freshmen so that means I'm doing eight guys' laundry once a week in addition to my own. I throw in a couple rounds of loads Wednesday night (usually 10-12 loads overall) and then finish Thursday and spend around two hours folding. I usually throw in a CD, and it's a good time to just be quiet and reflect for a while. By doing so much laundry so often, a couple funny notions hit me. First, I think how funny it is that I can expect certain things from certain guys and can recognize most of the clothes and who they belong to. Then it hits me that every parent must have this same experience. I'm sure it's a little different. But I know that Sam is going to give me almost as many undershirts as regular shirts. And that almost every single one of Reece's t-shirts have one of those goofy sayings on the front (Lost in thought: Send a rescue party!). And that all of the Italian soccer jerseys belong to Chris. And that Andrew will give me a few of his older brother's old shirts. And that so-and-so never brings me hardly any laundry. :( And that if clothes aren't marked, more often than not they belong to Z (Zwelakhe). All of their clothes are supposed to be marked somewhere so we know whose they are. And all of the socks and underwear get put in mesh bags so I don't have to learn that much about the guys. So anyway, that's part of what my schedule looks like on Thursdays. So if you ever wake up in the middle of the night at 3 or 4 in the morning on a Thursday, you know I'm probably folding clothes...

It goes from this...

...to this...

...to this.

Fun, huh? That's part of what I do around the dorm that involves service rather than relationships. There's a fair amount of both here, and I've mentioned before that I enjoy the time I spend with the guys more than the time I spend working, of course, but it is great to get work done and develop the heart of a servant and contribute something to the dorm. Especially on Thursdays, after I finally finish the laundry for the week, I feel like I've completed a grand accomplishment! And now you've seen proof that I'm doing real work around here, too. :) Thanks again for your thoughts, prayers, and encouraging messages! God bless.

In His Service,
Brandon