Germany and Trenches 5/6/08

Steve and the rest of the sports missionaries had left early in the morning, so by the time I got up, It was just me and Daniel in the room. I climbed the stairs in the attic down to breakfast, where Jan had laid out an assortment of cereals, baked goods, and juice. I had some cereal and a jelly filled donut (with real Alsace jam), and then waited my turn for the shower. There was only one shower upstairs for the 4 of us to share. Luckily in this house, the toilet was in a completely separate room from the bath and shower, so this helped elevate some of the congestion. When we were all showered and ready, Randy loaded us up in the car to take us across the border to Germany and The Black Forest.

In the car, Randy showed us his special affinity for Brian Adams, playing us a few of his greatest hits. I've always, personally, found Brian Adams to be a little cheesy. However, I've never seen anyone so passionate about him as Randy. He was giddy to show us his favorite songs, and made sure we were listening to lyrics very carefully. As we listened, he talked a little about what it takes to love someone completely, the way Brian Adams sang about. Both Randy, and Jan still talk about each other like they're newlyweds. I find that extraordinary. It's not even just when they're both in the room together, but anytime we're driving, or talking alone with one of them and the conversation leads to love, they still talk about eachothering with longing. I hope I have that with whomever I end up with, 20 some years after. All of us in the back were laughing, and having a good time playing car games, like the one where you let your body weight squish the one on the end during sharp corners. I was in the center, and at one point, Janelle put a little extra squish into my shoulder during the turn, so we teased her saying that Brian Adams must have had some kind of an affect on her. The rest of the day, that was our inside joke.

We crossed the border, and drove through Neuenburg, Germany to a little Villa called Kandern, near the Black Forest. In Kandern, We visited a middle school/high school in the center of town for MKs. Randy used to teach Biology, and coach Basketball here years ago, when he and his family lived just down the street. He showed us his old classroom, and introduced us to his old class, and some of the faculty there. He had all the kids go down the line, and list off what counties their parents were missionaries in, in order to show us the huge scope of diversity they had in this little school. There were kids from, literally, everywhere in the world, who's parents were all serving in everywhere from France to Serbia, and Indonesia to China. Everywhere in Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East, South America and Africa. Kids with all different experiences, cultures and backgrounds gathered here in one small classroom. All the teachers and Faculty were volunteers. None of them were being payed to be there, they all just decided there was nothing they'd rather be doing right now, than teaching these kids. It was stunning to me. I didn't realize it could work that way. I asked Randy how they survive here without any sort of payment? He said that they're all paid through donations from churches back home that they got to sponsor them before they left. Also, here in this small town community, the majority of the population are all missionaries. So they all pitch in and help each other out when someone needs help. It's kind of the way the ideal world should work. I'd never seen a community work together with such good intentions, harboring all people from all nations with every background and culture, and it seems to be working fairly smoothly. No one has to lock their doors within the town. No one worries about going out at night, and everyone says hello to you on the streets. Randy knew just about everyone, and they all knew him. I felt bad after a while, because there were so many of us, and he tried to introduce us all to practically everyone in the town.

We walked through the center of town, as Randy pointed out what everything was. He showed us his old house, and the street he lived on. For lunch, he bought us all Kebabs, and we ate them out on a bench near a little babbling brook, in the shade of a tree. As we ate, he talked to us about missionaries, and preached to us a little about God's love, and how we show that to other people. I had struggled earlier about the idea of evangelism, and so I brought that up, and talked with him a little bit about what that means, and what, if anything, the responsibility of a christian is. He talked for a while about his ideas and understandings of this was, relaying passages in the bible to support his views. However, I've come to find that most Pastors/Preachers have a habit of talking, and not leaving enough room for discussion of the topic. Growing up with my father having been a pastor, I know this to be true. Randy had a lot great points, and a lot things he said confirmed what I'd found on this trip. However, I wanted to talk to him more about the things that bothered me with evangelism. I feel I do more for a person by just listening, and being their friend than I seem to with talking. I don't necessarily, or never have before considered that evangelism. Evangelism, to me, is like what the spanish did to the South Americans, and the American Settlers did to the Native Americans, and what the British did to Everyone else. This idea of evangelism seems hostile to me. It feels like telling someone their way is no good. Like removing the speck from someone's eye, while having a plank in your own. This is why I'd rather stick to what I know, what I've experienced. I'd rather tell someone who's lost everything that once I had nothing too, and share that pain, rather than tell them a God whom they can't see, understands and read them a bible verse out of context. Maybe something which says "God has a plan for you", in which he's clearly talking to someone specific who lived and died thousands of years before you ever existed. I'm not saying I don't believe God does have a plan for my life (because clearly I do), but looking at it from someone who hasn't experienced what I have, in terms of feeling close to God. I wouldn't know how to explain away that doubt. I wouldn't even know where to begin. You can't prove God exists. Anyone who does convert someone through convincing them that God exists was withholding quite a few facts. It's misleading, in my eyes, to sit down and tell someone about God. The reason being that you yourself don't know everything, perhaps even anything about that topic. It'd be like if I tried to sit here and tell you about horses. I've ridden one before, I know what one looks like, but I don't know anything really about them. Anything I'd tell you would be speculation, or bullshitting. I love bible studies because it's a bunch of people who admit to know little or nothing, trying to come together and figure out something as a group. It's not one person telling another that I'm right and your wrong. Good pastors like Randy, and my pastor back home, Todd, and my father, will tell you that they're still just figuring it out too. So I've had trouble with the idea of conversion, or Evangelism because of that big mountain, which is: I don't know any more than you do about God. I know what I've felt, and until you've felt it too, I don't know what to say that you haven't already heard. Randy made a good point though that, ask anyone who shrugs off Jesus who they think Jesus is, and they're almost always completely misinformed regarding biblical text.

After lunch, Randy took us to some more of the homes in the area, and we got to walk in and see what the beautiful German Villa homes looked like. We got some ice cream at little Gelatoria nearby, and we each had some amazing ice cream cration. Some were shaped like dishes of Spaghetti, others like eggs sunny-side-up. They were all made of various ice creams, but disguised as other foods. It was really interesting. After that, Randy took us to see a Stork farm, and then we stopped through one of the MK dorms nearby, and got to see what living as an MK was like. It was all very similar to what I'd seen in various other college dorms. There were usually 3 or 4 to a room, shared bathroom, one per floor, a lot like a hostel. This was a girls dorm, and they were getting ready for a high school dance which was coming up soon, so all their different dresses were hung up and laid out. Randy explained to us that here, they pretty much share everything. When girls move away, they usually leave their old winterformal/homecoming dress there in the dorm for someone else to wear the next year. There's a strong sense of community in this area, and it made us back home just seem so selfish and vain. The dorm RAs and Faculty were all volunteers as well, the same as the teachers, and it seems as if (probably because of that) teachers and students, dorm RAs and live-ins are all much better friends, and actually hang out outside of the workplace.

When we were finished there, Randy took us back across the French border to the old WW1 trenches. At the opening we walked in and got to see the tomb of the unknown soldiers who were never identified, and then at the top of the stairs was the all the gear, bullet casings and bomb shells which were found littered all over the hills and in the trenches. As we walked out through the trail up through the mountains, Randy warned us to stay on the path. Apparently not all the land mines had yet been found. I joked back, how great of a story that'd make to be my age and honestly say I lost my leg in the WW1 trenches. They all disagreed that, that would be any fun at all. We followed the dirt path up to the top of the hill where we began to see bunkers stationed up at various points, hidden in the brush. We crawled into the trenches and explored through endless mazes of underground bunkers, and caverns. Randy had one flashlight which he gave for all 4 of us, so we were huddled together as close to the light as we could get, in order to see our way through often pitch black tunnels. In a lot of these bunkers, they'd build several stories to them, and they build bridges and ladders, and lifting systems to ammunition depots, and war rooms. Sometimes we'd be all forced together, huddling over the light, and not even realize until the light shined round that we were standing on a tiny bridge across a huge cavern 50 ft down. Some caverns dead end, but some of them lead back up to the surface, and came out at an epic view of the whole area. At some points, you could see into 3 different countries (Germany, France, and Switzerland), and then back into bunkers they'd go. Randy told us that what we're doing, and seeing right now is something only about 1 out of 1,000 travelers ever get to do. It was so much fun, and so interesting to see this kind of history right up close. A lot of the original barbed wire still lined many of the trenches, and they zig-zagged all among the country side. It was funny, because if you looked from one side, you couldn't see any trenches, it just looked like rolling hills; but if you looked from the other side, all the trenches became visible. The first thought that popped into my head when seeing the 2 different sides, was that this spot would be absolutely AMAZING for paintball. That would be so rad to just get lost in a bunker, or jump through WW1 trenches looking for the other team. However, it was probably not quite as fun for the men who actually had to fight here. The french were referred to as "The Blue Devils", and you see signs all over dedicated to their memory. We took some pictures near a giant cross of the summit of the hill which you can see all the way from Randy and Jan's house. At night they light it up, and it shines through the darkness in memory of the soldiers of WW1.

Before we turned back, Daniel and the girls found one last bunker which seemed to go on for miles in one direction. The girls wouldn't venture any further past the light, so Daniel called me to go in with him. I was so excited, I ran all the way over, and jumped into the dark hole. Once inside, I found Daniel by following the light from the (now very dim) flashlight. Together we developed a system to make use of one flashlight between two people in absolute darkness. He, holding the flashlight, went first until he got to a stopping point, and then shined the flashlight back where he'd been so that I could follow. Eventually the small cavern opened into a huge room with maybe 20 ft high ceilings, and piles of rubble stacked in the corners. The floor, we noticed, was getting increasingly more damp, until a small, shallow lake stood where a puddle used to be. Water dripped down from the ceiling also, echoing in the vastness of these rooms. Some of the wood and metal supports for the ceiling had fallen down, and so we used them to balance on between scattered rocks to cross the lake in the center. This was extremely difficult in pitch blackness, but it was like Indiana Jones, and I was so excited, I'd forgotten the danger. We wandered further in, until we got to a point where the air was thin, and harder to breathe. Daniel choked on the dust, and murk of the musty cavern, and we decided it might be best to turn back now before we got lost, and couldn't breathe at all. So we turned around, and made our way back until we discovered the bright white light at the opening of the bunker. It was amazing how dark it was in there, and it took a while for our eyes to readjust to the outside world again. I can't imagine what it must have been like for the soldiers trapped down there for months at a time.

When we got home, washed up and ate dinner out on the balcony. The Kents made us chicken, and we had more of that Alsacian white wine. After dinner, all of us college kids watched more Twilight Zone episodes, and ate French Chocolate and popcorn.
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