SMR in Berlin Day Five

Sonrise Mountain Revival Berlin Project

Day Five

By Kristin Gaffney

            It was time for our subway game.  Basically, we all got off on different stops and then, starting with Rebecca, got on the next train and started playing, adding instrument after instrument until finally the vocals.  We have a video which will do much more justice than me writing about it, so hopefully we can get that up sometime soon for you.  But I do have to say that the one gentleman who was seated in the middle of it all thought it was over when Mike got on with the big bass…until the vocalists started singing all around him and he jumped half a mile!

            Also, happy 50^th birthday, Mark Kelly!

            This was definitely a tiring day, and for the last two days the weather has been hot, hot, hot!  It cools down quite a lot at night too, so we seem to be getting both the extremes.  (I hate hot weather…)  But we managed to get through, although many of us need a break from playing our instruments and singing.  We did quite a lot of walking, which many of us were just physically too tired to do, and searched the whole day for drinks that were not carbonated.

            We played in the street for the church in the center of Steglitz, a busy suburb of Berlin, where we will be performing on Thursday and that was very cool – will doing it was cool, the weather was most certainly not!  We had to rush from there to get to our train that would take us to the concert.  We ate a quick lunch on the train platform, got on our train, and the trains were even hotter, filled with people, and hot, so hot and everything was melting and ick!  L  (Okay, I just really hate hot weather; it wasn’t that bad. – Dad’s comment here: yes, it was…)

            We had to catch another train after, which was very nice, but we all did discover just how fast European trains can go!  When you’re standing right next to them it feels like they’re breaking the sound barrier!  A long loud blast of a horn, and whoosh, they’re gone.

            This concert that we were going to was outside of Berlin, in a town whose name I don’t remember in German (dad here again: Fuhrstenwalde) but translated means ‘Royal Wood’ for reasons no one can surmise – we passed through a forest to get there, but there was no woods once we arrived.  Some of us walked from the station over there, which would have been nice if we weren’t so hot and tired, because it really was a quaint little city, but thankfully many of us were able to get a ride there in a car.  We got water, and then although we desperately wanted a rest we were hard at work setting up and getting ready for the performance.

            God really worked during that concert.  Even though we were physically and mentally tired, and Jeff’s voice wasn’t still fully recovered, the time spent in prayer before hand was answered!  It was one of the best concerts we have ever done despite being exhausted, and it opened many doors for the people there.  I’m not going to guess and say how many people I thought were there, because I’m really bad at guessing, but I would say… over thirty.  A lot over thirty.  Like, thirty is just me being safe because there were a good number of people there (dad again – more like 250, which I guess is a lot over 30).  They were very receptive, and despite coming off cold and stone-faced at the beginning, by the end they were tapping along with the music and even sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in German for Mark!  They kept asking for encores and afterwards many were engaged in deep conversations.  The pastor was excited because he estimated over half the people there had never been in the church before and were professing atheists.  A lot of those were the people who stayed to talk, and he feels we helped him open several critical doors to his community.  The missionary we were working with in partnership with the pastor there was an American named David Sweet.  He has been in Germany over 20 years and is mentoring national pastors.  Dad was happy, because Mr. Sweet is a Moody Bible Institute alumnus! 

            Many great stories came out of that night, but we quickly had to get back to catch our train.  The train was fun, some slept but many of us talked for a while all the way back to the hotel.  Then some who didn’t rush off to bed went to get ice cream to celebrate Mark’s birthday (yeah… one of them was me).

            We got a good night’s sleep and we’re ready for whatever work God has for us today!