As the spring and summer of 2020 have worn on I (Nathan) am sure that all of us are feeling some sense of disconnection from our communities and/or uncertainty about future plans. This has certainly been true for us, maybe even exacerbated by the pioneering nature of our context here and the geographical distance between us and most of our support network.
As I reflected and prayed about this over the summer I really felt the voice of God say to me that the next season for us was to be a season of putting down deeper and more significant roots in the communities around us and into German life in general.
The first obvious step for this is to make another purposeful go at language learning. Our first 18 months here saw the greatest progress in language and we have improved steadily but very very slowly since then. So this term I have enrolled back at the language school where it all began back in autumn 2016. I go four mornings per week and to help stick to Covid-19 restrictions class sizes are reduced from 12 to 6 participants, and the length of the class is 2 hours instead of 3. Both of these factors suit me perfectly and I am loving it so far and feeling very inspired.
I’ll write in the coming weeks about a few other language topics and reflections in relation to putting down roots. I’ll also share some tips for German language learning and hopefully receive some tips from others too! I’ll also discuss ideas and thoughts around how one can put roots down into community life.
