A trip to the Middle East

Gina here. I recently had an amazing trip to the Middle East with our communications volunteer, Zarah. We went to one country for one week in order to collect written and video recorded stories of Nazarenes through whom God is working to bring hope and love to the people in their communities.

We spent 3 days at a conference for leaders of our church across the Middle East, as they participated in leadership training, and spent time with their new field strategy coordinator, a pastor from the Middle East, who shared his vision and upcoming plans for the field. They spent time over meals and during breaks building relationships with one another, toward a goal of greater unity during a time of unprecedented instability in their part of the world.

After the conference, Zarah and I spent another few days in a city where I interviewed more people about their personal stories and we recorded footage for three videos.

Before I left, I had requested prayer from many churches and friends because I had been sick in the week leading up to the trip. By the first day of the trip, I felt remarkably better and completely recovered by the second day. I was really grateful for this answer to prayer. Also, I had requested that God would lead us to the stories he wanted us to tell, and I believe he did that, since I managed to interview 8 or 9 people during a very busy week. Additionally, I had requested prayer during the trip because a microphone we were using in the video recording sessions suddenly developed a loud buzzing sound that could have prevented us from filming the other videos. But the next day, after you prayed, the microphone mysteriously worked again and we didn't have any other problems.

It was challenging to fit everything in during that short week, and we were working on videos up to 2 hours before we left for the airport at midnight on the 25th. But I want to give thanks to God for what I would consider a successful trip. Not only did we come back with lots of good stories to share, but we were able to meet people and exchange contact information that I hope will lead to additional updates and stories in the future.

Having been to the Middle East twice now, and having been in the homes of Syrian refugees who fled their countries with sometimes nothing but the clothes on their backs, and having spent time with the Nazarene churches who are sacrificing their money, time and personal belongings to share God's love with these refugees while caring for their physical needs, the Middle East has come to hold a very special place in my heart. The situation there is often on my mind.

That's why I was struck once again, in spending time with my fellow believers on this trip, at how deeply they care for these strangers among them, and how hard they are working -- as few in number as they are -- to meet a massive tidal wave of human need with the very few resources that they have.

The leaders I met with unanimously said to me that this is the time, now is the day, when the harvest is ready in their part of the world. People are losing hope in their own religion, as they begin to recognize it has caused mass death, violence, conflict and hatred. They are hungry for something else, for answers that involve love, forgiveness and reconciliation. And we can give them that, in Jesus Christ. People are ready. They want to hear about Jesus. They want to see people love one another.

Please pray with me for the millions in the Middle East who are ready to hear about Jesus, that they would indeed hear him or see him. Pray also for the churches, the entire Body of Christ, which is responding as best they can to the harvest. Pray for God to send more workers to the harvest. Pray for God's people to be unified, to put aside petty disagreements or disharmony and to come together as one, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to bring in the harvest before the time is past.

Sleeping Rough

In the UK, when you sleep in a sleeping bag, or outside, or I guess away from a bed, they call it "sleeping rough." It's a term they often apply to homeless people, as well as campers. That's what we did last weekend. And it was a very interesting experience.

Our local church is part of a network of churches that assist an organization with providing shelter and meals to asylum seekers in the UK. Many of them are homeless until their paperwork is approved and they are given legal status to be in the UK, to work and to set up a home.

A group of men from different countries are transported around to a different church each night where they sleep in sleeping bags in a room and are given a meal provided by members of the church, as well as the opportunity to shower in the building. At least three members of the church are required to stay with them each time. They asked Andrew and I to volunteer one time, so we agreed.

Another guy named Mark, who has done this numerous times, was the third person in our team, since he could show us how everything worked.

We busied ourselves with pulling all the sleeping bags and pillows out of a closet, arranging two tables and 15 chairs, and setting out a huge pot of chicken curry, a big bowl of rice, and packages of flat bread, and a coffee station. We also put out special pitchers so that the men would be able to wash their feet before doing their prayers.

At 8:45 the men arrived. They all spoke English very well. They each went around to us and shook our hands and introduced themselves. Then they sat down and began serving themselves from the curry and rice. They also made sure that we volunteers had plates of food, too.

After dinner, we cleared all their dishes and washed for them, while some of the guys took showers. Most went in the sanctuary to set up their sleeping bags and just play on their smart phones or read newspapers and relax. A few stayed in the eating room and talked to Mark while we sat and listened.

One young man seemed to relish telling funny stories of his experiences with the culture in Britain, as well as talk about the political and national situation of his people in the Middle East. He reminded us a lot of the young guys we became friends with in our German class. The other man was a very big, but seemingly very gentle, middle aged black man from Cameroon. He also enjoyed just sitting with a cup of tea and talking.

About 10 p.m. Andrew and I crashed on a couch in the foyer while the men settled into their sleeping bags in the sanctuary and turned out the lights.

Then at 5 a.m. either one of them started singing or they had an call to prayer as a cell phone alarm because there was very loud Arabic singing for a few seconds. And 5 a.m. is typically when many people from the Middle East do their first prayers of the day.

At 7:30 we joined the men for a breakfast of toast with jam and Nutella and cereal.

The Cameroonian man had asked the night before and then at breakfast if these foods were traditional British foods. We explained that the curry from the night before was probably Indian or Pakistani, so it was not traditional British food, but it was commonly eaten in Britain. I asked him if he had heard of fish and chips. He had not. So I explained about deep fried fish. Then I asked him if he knew what French fries were. He didn't. So I explained about sliced, fried potatoes. I told him about Shepherd's Pie, which he thought he would like, and also about meat pies. He said that at all the night shelters they keep serving them ethnic foods from the Middle East or India and he really wants to try British food to see what it is like.

"Some day, I'm going to go home to my children and tell them about my time in England and I want to tell them stories about the food and this and that," he said. I hope he gets to try some British food soon.

Then their ride came and it was time for us to go.

We both enjoyed spending time with these men and getting a tiny peek into their lives. I think Andrew plans to continue with this ministry maybe once a month.

Thankful

Forgive me for a week's lag in posting about our Thanksgiving.

We have so much to be thankful for this year and we are mindful of it all the time. Every day I feel like I am overflowing with gratitude for everything God has done for us, in us and through us. It would be impossible to list them all.

One thing I am thankful for is that we had such a nice American Thanksgiving last week. I was having a hard time this year being away from family for the fifth year in a row. But it was made a lot easier when new and old friends invited us to join them for dinner last Thursday. We watched the live broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while cooking and then we sat down to a traditional feast, complete with green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes and turkey, and more.

Here's what it looked like.

Someone found the crunchy onions for the green bean casserole, and a stuffing mix.

We were a bit too intimidated by a whole turkey, so they found these juicy large turkey breasts.

The British do stuffing in small round shapes so we tried that.

Rachael and Thijs, former students at EuNC when we were there in Germany, live here now and it was nice to be with familiar folk. Rachael is American and Thijs is Dutch. This is Rachael watching the parade.

Rachael attempts to make gravy while Graham, the PR coordinator for NTC and the host of our meal, worked on spiced apple juice. Graham is from Scotland.

Spiced apple juice

Andrew kicking back and relaxing while everyone else cooked. :-)

Shanley, an American, is Graham's girlfriend and did a large share of the cooking.

My contribution: pumpkin pies.

A rousing game of Dutch Blitz to conclude the evening.

Curry, bonfires and new friends

It's been two months since Andrew arrived in Manchester and one month since I followed him here. Things are going very well and we are happy to be here.

Because we Americans share a language, and to a great extent, a culture with Great Britain, we very quickly felt comfortable and at ease here. Yet we still stumble across differences at times. I learned quickly, accompanied by a lot of laughter, not to say I have "waterproof pants" which here means you have Depends adult diapers. We learned that "to vacuum" is "to Hoover" and that the burner on your stove is a "hob." We have also learned that "cheers" is a multi-purpose word to cover a variety of meanings, ranging from "thanks" to "no problem" to "have a good day" to "here you go."

In October we attended Nazarene Theological College's graduation ceremony, and enjoyed imagining the moment three years from now when it will be Andrew's turn to walk and receive his award for completing his PhD.

We have enjoyed several trips to explore the Curry Mile, which is a stretch of road crowded with Middle Eastern and South Asian restaurants, stores and businesses. It is a highly multicultural area where you will see women raising the flap on their burqa to fit food into their mouths, men wearing turbans, and women wearing Indian sarees and salawas. People are smoking shisha and eating deep-fried Indian samosas or syrupy sweets.

We have also visited Chinatown in downtown Manchester, where we bought some Chinese grocery ingredients.

And we observed a big Diwali celebration at the town hall. Diwali is a Hindu festival of lights. There was a live-storytelling presentation enacted by life-size, lighted puppets, pyrotechnics and fireworks and a colored light display on the town hall building.

Last night we visited a 400-year-old British tradition of lighting a large bonfire in a park and then setting off fireworks, to celebrate the averted assassination attempt on the life of King James I in the 1600s, by the now infamous Guy Fawkes. The crowd of thousands enjoyed fire dancers as well as carnival rides and carnival treats like soft serve ice cream and cotton candy.

It has been a real pleasure for us to be in a bigger city for a change with all of these opportunities to rub shoulders with people of different cultures and to experience a taste of their homelands in our daily lives.

I (Gina) am starting to feel out my new role as a one-day-per-week volunteer for Nazarene Theological College. I have written two articles for the college which you can find here: http://www.ncnnews.com/nphweb/html/ncn/article.jsp?sid=10000008&id=10014086
http://www.ncnnews.com/nphweb/html/ncn/article.jsp?sid=10000008&id=10014082

I am also quite swamped with stories for Engagemagazine.com, and continuing to publish stories for the Eurasia Region. Our November edition of our newsletter came out this week. You can find it here: http://www.eurasiaregion.org/where-worlds-meet-november-2014-2/

Andrew is happily busy with preparing to lecture twice in the coming weeks and months, studying Latin and Greek, reading for his first big paper due in his PhD process, helping a deaf student in note-taking for one of his classes and now serving as a representative on the Student Council.

There are times when we miss our friends and life in Germitzerland. There are times when we miss our friends and family in the U.S. For me, Thanksgiving is quite foremost on my mind this year. It is my favorite holiday all year and this will be our fifth year in a row to miss out on Thanksgiving with our families in Colorado. It is hitting me harder this year than it has in past years. It looks like we will spend the day with some new friends here, three of whom are American, so I am really looking forward to that. I also plan to cook some familiar favorites for Andrew and I so we can have leftovers throughout that weekend.

This will be our third year away from our families for Christmas. I am also sad about that. We are still trying to determine what we will do for the holiday.

However, we have a trip home to look forward to. We are in the midst of planning our home assignment speaking tour in the U.S. next year. The dates are a bit in flux due to an unforeseen complication with renewing my visa next October. For sure right now we will be in Colorado in August and we are open to other places in the month of September. If you are interested in having us to come and speak at your church, youth group, children's group, Sunday school class or small group, or even a home school group or another setting, email me at gpottenger (at) nazarene.org and we can look at getting out to where you are!

We love hearing from you and sharing our lives with you. Thank you so much for your prayers as we continue to settle in and make friends and especially this year as we are away from our families during the holidays.

Settling in

Andrew and I have both now arrived in Manchester and are settling into our room, the school of Nazarene Theological College and life in England. We are already noticing cultural and language differences, learning to ride the bus system and finding out which stores carry which items that we need.

Andrew arrived on September 7 and I got my visa in mid September and arrived on the 29th. I spent my last few weeks in Busingen by cleaning and emptying out our apartment, packing up everything that was there and shipping it either to the US or to Manchester. I also did a lot of goodbyes and Last Things, such as the last time to go to my favorite restaurant, the last time to walk by the Rhein, the last time for a coffee in Schaffhausen, the last time to see my friends, etc.

Meanwhile, Andrew has been making friends and getting busy with his responsibilities here at NTC. He's auditing a Latin course at the University of Manchester down the road, as well as starting his teaching assistant responsibilities and helping to colead a pastoral care group of undergraduate students. He is also taking notes for a hearing impaired student for one of his classes. He spends a lot of time in the library as well.

I was very excited that I will have an office on campus where I can do my work five days per week, rather than having to work from our room. I will spend one day per week working for NTC and continue four days per week as full-time manager of Engagemagazine.com and managing the regional publications for the Eurasia Region. I am sad that now I am separated from the rest of our awesome communication team in Busingen but hopefully we will chat and video often with Skype. I will also miss all the impromptu chats and visits with the rest of our regional office team. Yet, I look forward to working with new colleagues here.

We want to thank you deeply for praying us through this transition and through my incredibly difficult flight experience in getting here (it's a long story). We couldn't have endured our 3-week separation or gotten everything done without your support and prayers. We miss and love you and hope to hear from you when you can. You can also keep up with our short posts in our Facebook group. Just search for The Pottengers in Germany, even though we are no longer in Germany. :-) (Facebook won't allow us to change the group name.)

A big change

Gina and I are now free to announce a change in our lives and ministry in Eurasia. We are in the process of relocating to Manchester, England so that I can pursue my doctoral research on-site at Nazarene Theological College rather than long-distance. We believe that moving to Manchester is the next natural step as we continue following Christ’s lead in our lives.

I (Andrew) arrived in Manchester last Sunday evening, and have spent the week settling into our new apartment, becoming acquainted with the NTC community, and familiarising myself with the city. With thanks to God, we can say that yesterday we received word that Gina’s visa application was approved! We also want to thank you for your prayers regarding some cryptic hints and unspoken needs we have posted in our Facebook group. You couldn’t have known what you were praying for, but God knew and we appreciate your faithfulness and support as always.

Very briefly, I would like to summarise for you how God has led us and made it possible for us to follow that lead.

Last summer, Gina and I spent three weeks at the NTC campus where I immersed myself in research. Both of us felt very welcome and comfortable here, and we began quietly exploring the possibility of staying here. Unfortunately, the legal and financial obstacles proved insurmountable and we concluded that we’d stay in Busingen.

Then, we were asked by regional leadership if we were still interested in moving to Manchester. It didn’t seem feasible, we’d just enrolled in German language study, and we were totally content to remain in Busingen at least for the duration of my doctoral program. As we continued prayerfully thinking it over and communicating with our leaders, every “insurmountable” legal and financial obstacle against relocation quickly began to fall. God gave us peace and the assurance that He would guide, protect, and provide for us no matter what. He showed Himself faithful and greater than any impossible difficulty.

We plan to be in Manchester for the next three years, the approximate duration of my program as a full-time doctoral student. I will be largely focused on research and study, while also enjoying the opportunity to serve the college as a teaching assistant in church history and theology. Gina will continue as managing editor of “Engage” magazine as well as producing “Where Worlds Meet” and “Snapshots” for the Eurasia region. She will also give a few hours a week to the college campus as a volunteer.

Through God’s faithfulness and your continued support, we are able to take this exciting new step. Even though we were not able to share details, many of you nevertheless continued responding to our multiple requests for prayer. We are so grateful for your involvement in what God is doing in this largest, most culturally diverse of all regions in the Church of the Nazarene.

Ministering in Bulgaria

Andrew and I just returned from a week of working in Bulgaria, a former Soviet Union nation in Eastern Europe. Andrew taught a Nazarene History and Polity course for European Nazarene College to two students, and preached in the church on Sunday morning. I worked with our regional communications team to gather written and video stories of all that God is doing in Bulgaria.

God is at work in this economically depressed nation. But it is a hard place to work. Rampant unemployment has led to a mass departure of young adults and families who have sought jobs and a new, more hopeful life in Western European nations. This leaves children and elderly people to try and prop things up in Bulgaria.

With vast rolling plains and gentle mountains, Bulgaria is a beautiful and peaceful country on the surface. Underneath there is still a lot of pain caused by the struggle to transition from a Communist government to a democratic one. There are pockets of Roma (gypsy) communities that are generally segregated from the majority Bulgarian population, and the two ethnic groups have no love for each other.

In Montana, the poorest region and also the birthplace of Communism in Bulgaria, the Nazarene church has faced repression from governing authorities, resistance and harrassment from neighbors, and does its best to reach out to people who are involved in the darkness of the occult, are in bondage to alcoholism, or struggling to make ends meet due to unemployment. The congregation has become a beacon of hope for not only young families but the elderly and Roma people.

We sensed the powers of darkness hard at work to discourage, divide and resist God's people in their work to expand the Kingdom. We invite you to pray with us for the Church in Bulgaria, that it would be empowered by the Holy Spirit to overcome all spiritual and physical opposition and would be victorious in the name of Jesus Christ, who is greater than all who stand against Him.

Our communications team first spent time investigating a brand new compassionate ministry center that is being organized by the Montana Church of the Nazarene. The church is setting up this foundation to assist local people in accessing information and grants from the government and the European Union to start up small private businesses that will infuse new funds and energy into the local economy, and help families no longer be dependent on government welfare. We interviewed
two people who are building this foundation, and we also visited a Roma family that has been able to purchase land and start an orchard of their own, as a result of help from this foundation. The father of the Roma family said he is the first in 10 generations to own his own land. In a nation where people are too hopeless to dream about the future, this family now has hope and big dreams to grow their own agricultural business.

We also spent a day with a woman, Geroyka, who travels around to different villages with a truck filled with household items and clothing for sale, and while doing business with the villagers, she tells them about Jesus and plants churches. She then returns to the new church plants every week to disciple the new believers. She does this entirely on her own initiative and funds her ministry through her market business.

We interviewed the Nazarene pastor in Montana, Valeri, who has an amazing testimony, and who shared with us the exciting story of how his church was started and how it grew to more than 100 people who now worship in their own building, which in decades past was the home of the very first Communist mayor of Montana.

We also spent a few hours at a home for poor elderly people, where two singers performed for the residents and members of the church handed out chocolate and cookies along with hugs and smiles. That elderly home was a hopeless and not nice place, and it was a sobering experience.

Then we spent a day with Zhana, a young woman who overcame personal prejudice against the Roma people to work full-time with Roma children in a local government school, as well as planting churches among Roma families in the surrounding villages. We visited a small Bible study group of Roma for lunch and to see Zhana at work among the people who are open and hungry to hear each week about the goodness and love of Jesus Christ.

Roma are not typically open to strangers, so we felt incredibly privileged to be invited for food and fellowship without hesitation on their part.

It was a full and eye-opening week and we are grateful to have seen and heard not only the struggles but the victories of God's people in Bulgaria. I'm excited to share our videos and articles in the coming weeks and months. Thank you for your prayers for us while we were on this trip.