A long time in the making

As all of you who like to read what I write know it has been a while since my last post. It has been really busy here for the last few weeks and I haven't really been in much of a mood to write. I have a little down time now so I will try my best to update you on things that have been going on in my life.

This is the last week of the lecture phase here in Herrnhut, and then on the 1st of July my team will be leaving for Israel. This is extremely exciting but also a bit sad because there are a lot of people in my DTS I will miss while on outreach. I am so excited for the opportunities that we will have in Israel and if anyone wants more information about what we will be doing I can send you our team newsletter by email if you ask me.

This last weekend my team had an opportunity to go to Theresa's, one of the leaders of my team, church. The team lead worship and we all spoke about what we are doing and really challenged and blessed the church. It was a very cool to be able to speak in the church and to share God's heart for our team with them.

Another thing that has been really cool is over the last 10 weeks or so we have been going to the YMCA in a city near by and have had time where we can share Jesus with the people there. Tomorrow evening is our last time there and we plan on really presenting the gospel very clearly to everyone there. There are a few non christian people there and a couple muslim guys that come. We would love it if you could partner with us in prayer for tomorrow evening.

Last thing is God has really been changing me during this lecture phase. It has been very cool to see how much I have grown. Its been a crazy journey and guess what it is only just beginning. Israel here we come :)

Love you all and I would love to hear from all of you,
Josh

Very Interesting

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS

by Portia Nelson

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

This was shared in class today, I found it extremely interesting at the truth that is in this story at least about my life. I will be creating a larger post tomorrow afternoon but I just thought I would share this.

Starbucks

Well, I am sitting in Starbucks in Dresden using the free wifi, and avoiding the rain. I have had such a fun weekend with Kyle Hallblade. He flew all the way out here just to hang out for a weekend, how awesome is that. Been doing a lot of thinking about life after graduation even though it is a long way off. I have really been thinking that I could live anywhere once I graduate and I am really excited to see where God is wanting to take me, maybe even somewhere here in Germany. Today in Germany is a holiday celebrating the disciples after the day of Pentecost being sent out as missionaries, what a cool thing to celebrate. I love the lifestyle here it is a lot slower then back home, no car or cellphone, lots more walking and just appreciating everything in nature that God has created.

On another note, my team of five have booked our plane tickets to Israel, only 220 euros per ticket what a deal!!! We will be leaving July 1st and coming back to Germany on August 20. I am so excited, we will be in Tel Aviv for 3 full weeks and then traveling to different cities in Israel like Haifa, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. We will be doing a lot of different ministries like one we will be working with is one that helps women who live on the street addicted to drugs and usually involved in prostitution. This ministry gives these women a clean bed and family type atmosphere and shows them the best way out of any addictions or lifestyles, Jesus. We will be doing some cafe ministry, and refugee ministry, as well as relational ministry with people we meet and worship. Things that we could use prayer for as a team are finanices for everyone, places to stay while we are there, and open hearts for people to receive from Jesus through interaction with us.

Thanks everyone for all of your support.
Love ya,
Josh

Praha

This last week the topic was the Holy Spirit. This was such an amazing week! One of the staff in my school Antonia had invited a friend of hers from home to join us for the week and during the last session of the week she gave her life to Jesus!!!!!! During the week there was some really cool teaching on bitter roots and strongholds (which the whole time reminded me of my wonderful mother because she loves to teach on those topics) and that teaching prepared the way for teaching on the workings of the Holy Spirit. The second to last day of teaching we had time where our speaker Connie was praying for us and anointing us with oil. She was praying for me and put her hand on my heart while she was praying and I had a vision where God said He was giving me a new heart. IT WAS AMAZING! I went to Prague on Friday night with a few people from my DTS and man God was really showing me how broken the people were there. We went to see Robin Hood in the movie theater there at night and we were walking back around 1am and there were a lot of people walking around outside. While I was walking it hit me really hard how much Gods heart was breaking for all the people who don't know Him and are living in prison to sin. I honestly think that is the first time I have ever felt something like that for people I don't know, which is really sad.

I am really excited for my outreach which is coming up in about 45 days. There is a team of 5 of us going to Israel. We will be doing a lot of different things there and don't know completely what God's plan for us is but some of the ideas we have are doing some cafe ministry, working with a food distribution center, working with a ministry in the red light district, working at a refugee camp, and doing a lot of worship ministry, also a lot of relational ministry. We are thinking we will be in Tel Aviv for a month and then traveling around Israel for the second part of outreach.

For outreach we all started reading a book called Why Me? by Jacob Damkani its about a Jewish man who comes into a relationship with Jesus as far as I know I am only a little more then one chapter in. I was reading it on the bus back from Prague and this stuck out to me. "It seemed to me that human tradition was and always will be the hardest thing to change and that often it was held even more sacred than the very Scriptures." I thought that was a pretty intense statement.

Anyway thank you all so much for praying for me and coming along side me on this journey that I am on. I love you all and I hope this encourages all of you!

Story

This week so far has been crazy cool, I have realized how much I really love a good story. Our speaker this week also has been telling us a lot of different stories about how God has given him different things which has been really cool. I used to hate reading and spending time in a book but I have realized I dont hate all books I just dont like boring books. Boring books are to me books that have a whole bunch of information in them but not a single piece of practical stories that back them up. My friend Kaci a couple days ago let me borrow this book by Donald Miller called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. If you are looking for a good story to start reading I would recommend it. I am only 70 pages in but I have really enjoyed it. I love it when people can be real in things that they write. To me is nothing worse then someone who is completely fake. This book is about Don writing a screen play about his book Blue Like Jazz. The awesome thing about it is he has to recreate his life in a way that would be exciting on a movie screen. He talks about how creating a character for a screenplay is sort of like when God creates a person. God designs a person and places them into the family they should go into and allows them to create their own story within his master story. It is a really cool thing to think about. God has this huge master story that He has written and we all have small little mini storys within this master story. We have a freedom to create a sub-story as part of Gods story! Hope that sparks something cool to think about for everyone who reads this!

Character and Nature of God

I want to start this post by sharing a dream that most of you will enjoy. On thursday night I had a dream that was really awesome. The dream started on my wedding day, I was in a church I didnt recognize and I was in a room with all my groomsman and best man. I had no clue who my bride was at this point and I still dont but she was really cute. Anyway so all of us guys were getting dressed and I was in my jeans and a button up shirt and I went to put my tux on and I realized I forgot it at home. I was like well we could delay the wedding for an hour or so while someone goes and gets it. Then I was like what the heck I dont even care I loved this girl so much that it didnt even matter what I was wearing. So I went on and got married in jeans and a button up shirt. It was really fun! Maybe that is a prophetic dream about my wedding so everyone who is reading this when I get married make sure that I dont forget my tux at home.

On to more important things this week we were talking about the character and nature of God. It was a very good topic. A lot of the material discussed was just a refresher for my mind. There was a lot of stuff I knew in my head but a lot of stuff that was not nessarily stuff my heart knew. I was really challenged this week in just believeing all the stuff my mind already knows. One thing this week that really stuck out to me was about praying in Jesus name. Almost all Christians end their prayers with ''In Jesus name'' and we were talking about the importance of names and how when that verse that says if you pray for anything in my name it will be done (I dont think I quoted that right but ya). What was explained to us was praying in Jesus name really means praying in the nature of Jesus. That really challenged me because I dont know if I have ever prayed in the nature of Jesus. Any thoughts on that???

We also found out about the locations we have the opportunity to go for outreach there are 4 choices and we will know more about that on tuesday but if you want to know the locations you can email my google account jrbraman3@gmail.com

Thats all for now I might be making another post tomorrow,

Love you all,
Josh

Worship

I dont think I have mentioned this before but right now there are two dts's going on at the same time. One of them started in January and the mine started in April. The January school leaves on outreach this upcoming week. This week my school and the January school shared teaching time and speakers. This week started off being very hard for quite a few of us and I am not going to go into detail on that. On thursday my school met before the teaching time and we just talked about the week and stuff and from that point on everything went so much better for all of us. It was really cool like a night and day difference. The topic of teaching this week was Worship. There were some cool things I have learned through that topic. Worship is extravagant love and extreme submission. When we worship God where is our treasure? When we worship do we hold on to our treasure or give it to God? We spent a lot of time this week just thinking about the cross and what really happened there and how to relate that to worship. There is a song that I would recommend all of you to listen to its called True Love by Phil Wickham I had it on my Ipod and it really stuck out to me during my quite time. This week I had really been praying for God to show me more of Himself and the way he wants to use me. I was being prayed for by a couple different people and one of them felt like God has gifted me with prophecy, the other felt like God is calling me to Germany to work with the youth at some point in my life. Both of those are things I would really like prayer in I am not sure about either but if they are from God then I want to be able to work in both those things. Well that is all I have for now, I just uploaded some pictures from my trip to Dresden yesterday on facebook check them out!

Hearing Gods voice

Last week was such an amazing time of teaching and getting to know new people. It was the first full week of me being in Germany. We had a speaker named David Gava who spoke on hearing Gods voice. It was a very refreshing time of teaching and learning. I learned so much and it was very cool to be able to apply something so basic but so essential to having an intimate relationship with God. It is almost so basic that I maybe even overlooked it. It is just so awesome that we have a God that speaks to us in different ways! One of the days we took time out of our lecture and each one of us went into the forest and read either Psalms 23 or 24 and thought about it. Then we were supposed to just sit there and think about nature and how God is speaking to us through nature. It was very cool for me because I heard 5 or 6 different types of birds singing, and I started to think about that. Even song birds sound different from each other. God loves they are not all the same. He has gifted all of us with different songs we should sing with joy the song He has put in our hearts. If a duck tried to sound like a robin or sparrow or any other bird it wouldn't be pretty. same as the way we are gifted. Sing out the song God has gifted you with! Anywho this week we are talking about worship and I will keep you all updated on that. It is so nice to know that I am where God wants me right now! I love it so much

Travel

Well my 30 hours of travel is over thank the Lord it was so long. Let me tell you in a way most of you will understand, I was bored to the point where I journaled 6 pages wrote a short story and a poem now everyone that knows me knows that I pretty much hate all those things. The plane flight was good though I watched avitar and another movie but I cant remember what it was called. I for some reason couldnt sleep on the plane though which lead to me being exausted and the only nap I snuck in was a 25 minute one in the airport termanal. Im starting to ramble and I am going to go explore the base Ill post some pictures on facebook soon. Love you all! Josh

Hello

Well I have been getting stuff ready for my trip, I have my plane ticket all set and I fly out April 6th. Check back after that for updates and photos.