Koeshall Family

Let the Semester Begin Picnic

Berlin

Anita and I arrived in Berlin by air from Brussels Saturday afternoon. We took the city bus from the Tegel airport to Alexanderplatz. In photos from the East Germany history you might have seen the communications tower, which is a landmark from the Russian occupation of divided Germany. This tower can be seen from a lot of the city of Berlin and John and Kristen live nearby.
So we got off the bus at Alexanderplatz and walked three blocks to John and Kristen’s apartment but no one answered when we rang the bell to open the gate so we could walk in the inner courtyard [Innenhof] to their stairwell and then ring again to get the door unlocked. We kept ringing the bell by their name but no one answered. Finally someone came on the intercom in German, this wasn’t John and Kristen! So somehow, some way we got let into the courtyard when someone electronically unlocked the gate on the street.
Since no one answered their apartment doorbell, outside, we still aren’t in the building, we decided to call them on the cell phone. ‘Where are you guys??? We just flew in from Brussels as planned, where are you?’ They replied, ‘we are at a nearby park having a picnic/grill party with students! We will come and get you, want to join us? Sure!’ So we waited and waited and people came and went in the building and said, ‘are you waiting for a taxi or something?’ ‘No,’ we replied, we think our son forgot we were coming!
Eventually John arrived, he didn’t tell us he was going to walk back from the park! So we put our suitcases, full of baby items, in their apartment and walked to the park. The sidewalks were so jammed with people strolling and little sidewalk cafes that I walked on the street.
It was a wonderful sight to see around 40 students sitting on blankets at the picnic—many of them just peering into a Christian community for the first time. There were other picnic parties taking place within six feet of ours. The population density of Europe is so much greater than in other continents. We had a wonderful time with our 5 week old grandsons who were held by willing students. I stood on the edge of the crowd and prayed for them. How I would have loved to have gotten to know each person and hear their story. Then I would have loved to share my life’s story with them and tell them about God’s love and faithfulness to me all these years.
I hope a lot of the visitors make their way to the weekly Students for Christ meeting that will take place tomorrow night. So that’s how part of Saturday went for me, as you can tell this is John’s style of writing a blog.

Students at the picnic...peering into the community of believers and enjoying the fellowship.

Ever locked your keys in the car?
Ever locked your keys in the car while it’s running?
Ever locked your keys in the car while it’s running and illegally parked, in a foreign country?
Ever locked your keys in the car while it’s running and illegally parked, in a foreign country, in front of a hospital because you’re picking up 5 day old newborn TWINS taking their inaugural trip from hospital to home?
I stood with my hand on the back door of Kristen and Johnny’s Hatchback CRV Honda, immobilized by the sound I had just heard. The doors had locked. I was parked on the street outside the hospital. The car was running and Johnny and Kristen were walking down the walkway from the hospital with two twin boys in their arms. I had hopped out just to get the baby seats in position and help them fasten them in, but for some crazy reason, the car had betrayed us.
What a sickening feeling! Thankfully, Kristen and Johnny kept their cool. Kristen and I returned to the lobby of the hospital while John kept watch over the illegally “parked” running car while he waited for ADAC to come and rescue us an hour and a half later.
We all have moments when things seem to take on a life of their own to create testing events. Living with the unexpected is a necessity for life, and a double necessity if you want to live life cross-culturally.
How well do you do? Are you friendly, flexible and full of grace?

Too Fast, Too Full, Too Fun

Thats how I would describe Spring 09…which if I am not careful will quickly be fading into Summer without a word on this site. I thought perhaps it be best if this time I simply update you on the things that are going on in our lives:
January–a great prayer weekend in Toulouse with the SFC gang, followed by a first in a lifetime for me…I flew to be with two friends who live in very different parts of the world. We spent a long weekend together talking, sharing, walking, laughing, and theologizing. It was wonderful.
In February, John and I participated in a Think Tank concerning Youth Ministry in Europe, then left immediately for a series of meetings, one of which involved planning Encounter 2010, a world gathering of students in Budapest coming up in (duh!) 2010! Followed by a quick trip to Finland, where we met again with youth leaders from around Europe. Shortly after that, I left for Berlin, where I am sitting now, waiting for the twins (which you can read about on John and Kristen’s page of this same website. Fortunately, all my work (the thinking, planning, preparing) is packed into my little computer, so I can continue to work away here…and that helps the time pass. Of course I am also cleaning bathrooms and cooking–Kristen can’t hardly reach the corners of the tub around her tummy anymore.
I promise to be a little more thoughtful, and a little less reporting on my calendar next time!
Blessings to all!

Memories to Start the New Year

It has been 4 years this Christmas since my dear dad, the pharmacist known as Mr. Ed in a little town in ND, passed away. He lived in the time and place where the drugstore was a very important part of the health of a community. He knew all the folks in town, who their kids were, what was ailing them and the medications they were taking. It was not unusual to be called out on a Saturday night or Sunday morning for a forgotten heart medication or something for pain, croup or indigestion. He was involved in Town Criers, was a board member and Sunday School teacher of the little Baptist church, was an emergency technician for the local ambulance and part of the volunteer fire department. He pulled calves, removed fishhooks, and even delivered a baby or two. He never knew a stranger and would have helped anyone who stopped on his doorstep, day or night.
For Dad, integrity and responsibility were built into every cell of his body. In about 1965 my dad purchased the building that the store moved into with a handshake, and dear old Mr. Zimbrick, the former owner had no doubt that Dad would pay every penny, on time. I know that Mom and Dad started out with nothing—and at the end of their lives they possessed a simple 2 bedroom home with a large garden and one old car. But they were incredibly content and felt very well off. Not only did they have a nice modest sum in the bank , but they were surrounded by 5 wonderful grandkids and had a chance to travel as far away as Europe and up to Alaska. My mom, having grown up a child of a share cropper in Missouri, would smile at me and say, “I never dreamed we would be so rich”.
This seems such a stark contrast to today’s Ponzi schemes, unbelievable bonuses and the thirst for ‘the good life,’ at any cost.
And I ask myself “what happened to the DNA that was in my Dad’s bones?” How have we changed so drastically in a mere generation? It seems to me that the key is not in the money but in the outward focus of life: my Dad and Mom were always looking outwards, caring for others, and knew that the community would only be a good place to be if THEY made it happen. And they did. Today it seems priority has  turned towards the self-made individual, and a bunch of individualists together don’t make good communities…they hardly know one another as they pass by, quickly scurrying on to fulfill their own dreams and fill their own bank accounts.
The Bible tells us: Godliness with contentment is great gain. Mom and Dad gained much, died happy, and left my generation with much to think about.

Warmest Christmas Greetings

It was September…and then December!

Time is a very precious commodity and as we all know, it passes whether we have “spent” it well or not. By spending, I am referring to “investing”. Like water running into the desert or or snow in the spring, it disappears without an effort at all on my part. On the other hand, to invest time well takes effort. Since I have written last, we have been more than busy, filling our time, and accomplishing much, but one week that was well spent was Thanksgiving week. John and I trekked down to Family House Bauer in Hoch Imst, Austria. Just the two of us, to walk, rest, talk, read, write, swim and play Scrabble. It turned out to be an incredible week of beauty. Deep snow was everywhere, loading the trees to breaking point and dripping in musical rhythms when the sun was the brightest. We have decided that it is a must do for every year–time well spent.

Beautiful snow in the Austrian Alps

Two former visitors to this bench left their mark.

Fear: On top of the rollercoaster–where is the bottom?

All the news is bad news! Economic calamity driven by greed in the US, the flexed Russian military muscles in Georgia, Atomic arms agreements at the UN are at a standstill, a hopeless fatalism drives individuals both men and women to see no alternative but to offer their bodies as human bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It doesn’t take much nowadays to reflect and react in fear to the seemingly out of control world that we live in.

I remember well sitting on a bed at Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin some 14 years ago and personally being buffeted by bad news. Sarah, our then 16 year old daughter was told that she would never be able to eat again. The social nurse arrived soon there after to say that our insurance company would not pay for her IV nourishment–it was food after all, not medicine. The IV’s cost $600.00 per day. The nurse suggested that I divorce my husband and move back to Wisconsin as the mother of four children, and then I could get governmental help.

Fear. Sarah and I sat in that room in silence, grasping for hope. We both reached for our Bibles and began to read out loud promises in Scripture: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” “Who can separate us from the love of Christ? …For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rlers, nor things present, nor things to come…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” On and on we read, one after another. The room seemed to be filled with a Holy hush, and nurses scurried in and out doing the necessary and leaving.

That night, I held the Bible under my pillow feeling the rock sturdy foundation under my feet. I did not know what the bottom of that rollercoaster ride would be like, but I knew that my faith, would be tested and put into practice and I would see with my own eyes how God would work. Very scary, but very comforting.

Now, all these years later, as I hug my healthy daughter and breathe a prayer of thankfulness for the faithfulness of a Father in heaven, I know that the world can threaten to steal from us all that we think that is important, but it cannot.

So when the world crumbles, my first thought is, the rock is under my feet. I have one more chance to put my faith theories into faith practice. That is very very good.

Sarah today is a nurse, however she and her husband Daryl are making plans to leave for Central Asia to invest their lives there.

Moses: Some Interesting Thoughts on Leadership

Moses is described as a “nursing father” in a book that is a study on leadership. The man led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to wondering in a wilderness but never saw with his own eyes the culmination of the vision and entry of the people into the promised land.
Wildavsky describes a great leader as one who “is able to inculcate principles so profound that other people can successfully implement them well into the future.” Rather than formalizing and concretizing principles into structures and forms that become stagnant with the culture and generational change, and rather than being the heroic leader that brings the people into the promised land, Moses was left with the task of learning to lead and giving birth to a people who would continue as loyal followers of almighty God. Moses had to plant the tradition and DNA necessary to enable the Israelites to make adjustments into the future; from Egypt to wilderness to promised land and beyond, without him.
Wildavsky notes that Moses’ life suggests “he who teaches must continue to learn”. Moses’ last lessons include recognizing that no leader is indispensable, that a leader must relinquish his own role, “efface oneself” so as not to have created followers of himself, rather followers of God in the process of becoming a people.
“leaders must make themselves redundant: and…the best teacher, or leader, leaves a living tradition that others can continue to shape. By reactivating the events of history in the light of present and future significance, Moses inaugurates a tradition of interpretation, a model of self-scrutiny, and critical, historical consciousness.”
“The chief virtue in leaders is to make themselves unnecessary. To be a “nursing father” –knowing that the child may die, will probably rebel, and must be allowed to make history on its own—is the essence of Mosaic leadership. Teaching that leads to learning that creates new teachers is a circular process of renewal, not a linear model of leadership”. (p. 167)
As we come continue on with the work we do, I find myself asking, have we made ourselves indispensable, unnecessary? Have our SfC colleagues been taught and released to participate in critical thinking, self-discovery and critique, cultural exegesis, and the application of principles to new situations? Is ours a living tradition that the future generations will be able to continue to shape?
Lots to think about. Its never too late to start, right? Moses was 80 when he led the people out of Israel, so life is just beginning!!!
(see The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader by Aaron Wildavsky, University of Alabama Press)

Just what we need

I spent the last 3 weeks traveling–from Trondheim to Berlin to Toulouse and back to my cold and lonely house till John got home yesterday. For me, it felt like I had just crawled out of my little study to experience the world again after the last 5 years of concentrating solely on my dissertation and begin to grapple with a whole new set of problems…actual challenges that our student leaders and campus pastors struggle to resolve in face to face confrontations with others. Explaining and sharing the vision for reaching students to pastors and churches, dealing with questions concerning commitment and time pressures among students, making money stretch in very expensive European settings (like paying $3.00 for a liter of milk), and creating and training leadership teams who have widely divided interests and ideas. No, its not easy. With the beginning of the fall semester upon us, most of our campus pastors are in a time of stress.

I appreciated greatly the opportunity to be there with these three groups, as it jolted me out of the theoretical and academic and back into action–but I found myself overwhelmed with the realization that God is the all-powerful who pours himself out for his people and for the sake of this world. He is a power-giving God, very unlike most of the taskmasters that we have in this world. And he has a way of supplying just what we need, just when we need it. Like I discovered in the conclusions of my dissertation, redeemed power as modeled for us by Christ on the cross is the power that is available for me and for the student leaders I visited.

Trondheim Team, Cortney and Kelly

Brett was our chef for our Hotdog Feast

Saturday afternoon lunch in Trondheim

CSM-2008

CSM 2008 is behind us and those of us who were present were incredibly blessed by the presence of the Lord in the community during that time. This year was a year like no other, and as is normal for the Lord, in the darkest hours, his presence is the sweetest. Some of the highlights of this year include:
A wonderful mixture of nationalities giving us the opportunity to welcome into our community new SFC workers and students:
Welcoming Henry and Ruut from Finland who are going to Thailand
Czech represented by Jason M and two Czech leaders
Chinese girl from the Netherlands, a new Christian
A young woman from Austria found the group in Ireland and came to CSM
A freshman came from Trondheim who is on fire for God
Charles having the vision to raise the money to bring 3 leaders from Liege
A young man from the middle east…
Joe’s death came as a surprise to us—we had been so united in prayer, including an all night prayer meeting (initiated and led by Steve Kramer) and fasting. Somehow we were sure he would be healed and return to Scotland, but the Lord allowed us to be together in our staff meeting at 5pm when the news was received. The assurance that nothing had escaped the watchful care of our Father in heaven covered the contemplative service that evening with George’s comforting words (hear it on the SFCeurope website) and the rainbow of promise in Belgium’s stormy sky that evening was a sure sign from heaven of His presence.

Having both Chuck Haavik (Spiritual life of a leader) and Brady Bobbink (spiritual friendship/discipleship) speak to the ICM and ICM-pro classes was incredibly rich, not only from content, but from their godly spirits and broad experience. If you are traveling and want some good mp3’s to listen to, download them from sfceurope.

Very special to us was the unexpected visit of Stephie and Hannes. As Sarah, one of the teachers in the Creative Ministry class left early to go to Joe’s funeral in the States, we were short of a teacher for making music…so we gave Stephie and Hannes a call and they came. Teaching a ‘new song workshop’ in less than 8 hours is a challenge indeed, but in the end, a song and a chorus were born and an inkling of what music to the Lord in cultural context is all about planted in the hearts of the students.

They also brought with them pictures that Diethard and Inge had taken while back packing with us in the Rocky Mountains this summer…I will post a few, so you can see that we really are alive and well.

Spectacular Scenery, wonderful fellowship, what a week!

Walking towards Rainbow Lake in East Rosebud Canyon