Sonrise Mountain Revival Berlin Project
Day Six and Seven
By Kristin Gaffney
I’m going to try and get two days in one shot because unfortunately, I’m behind due to late nights and some computer glitches. I’m also very tired. Bear with me.
Wednesday – Some people stayed home during our free time, but as for me, Mike, Mark, Jeff, Ashley, Leanna, and my dad, we set out for some sight seeing before our concert. As half the team didn’t go, I won’t elaborate too much, but we saw the Pergamum Museum and the Berliner Dome, which you should look up online because they were incredible! The first is the museum that among other things, houses the reconstruction of the Pergamum Altar including much of the original statues, the Babylonian gate, and a number of Assyrian artifacts. The Berliner Dome is the national cathedral. It is a magnificent structure, old on the outside, beautifully remodeled on the inside, yet retaining its majestic splendor. It is not only an active church, but houses the crypts of the royal family, going back centuries. We also got great Vietnamese food, the best I’ve ever had, who knew?
The concert was desperately needed for the people there. This concert wasn’t so much about singing and opening the doors for new believers, in fact there were none present, but it was encouraging believers. My dad reminded the team before the concert that the mission of PowerSurge is to both proclaim the Gospel AND edify the believer. The two churches we sang for desperately needed to hear our message, especially concerning the song ‘There Is A Reason’. Many were going through difficulties, from missionaries struggling with finances as they are undersupported, to Pastor Stephon’s wife who, after being married for one year, was told she had cancer and has been battling ever since. We stayed after for a long time, talking to them about everything from Yankees vs. Red Sox (yes, God can use Red Sox fans as missionaries, who knew?) to the grace of God. We closed our time with them with a time of deep sharing and praying over Pastor Stephon and his wife, Pastor Amadeus, and missionaries Matt and Emily. It was a powerful evening…but not done yet.
After we left them, we headed back to the only restaurant in Berlin whose menu I can read. Yes, we got to eat at the Mexican restaurant again. This night was open mic night and of course Rebecca, Mark, Dick and Rich got to play. After that Mike played an original song on the guitar and Rebecca improvised around it. The crowd loved them, of course, but the highlight happened after we girls left because we were getting too tired. My dad and the others said that Mark played a solo piece, then a guy came out of the audience and asked Mark to play with him. They were incredible and brought the house down (what does that mean, anyway, but that’s what they said happened.) Afterwards they found out that he was a famous guitarist and the guy with him was the owner of a big production company in Europe. And my dad said Mark was the better guitarist!
Thursday – It was the first day I could (sort of) sleep in! Well, actually it was a terrible day, just completely horrid… although the weather was perfect, and we had great food, and people liked our concert, and we had a fun time together… but I was having a bad hair day.
Poor attempt at sad-but-true humor aside, Thursday was a national holiday! It’s Ascension Day, which the German’s celebrate but cover up by making it Father’s Day, or something like that. The Christian Germans we talked to all knew what the day was supposed to be. There were tons of people out and about, because this is the German’s national four day weekend. Places were very crowded (unfortunately where we went to eat and the train after there was a lot of smoking) but so was our concert. We played outdoors at a benefit event raising money for the church we were with so that they could send people out to Africa for a mission trip! Our mission trip is helping another,J!
Pastor Martin was hoping that they might get some neighbors to come out, but hadn’t had success with a similar event in the past. However, before the concert even started people began to pour in, and Pastor Martin’s wife excitedly told us that she didn’t know over half the people already there. And throughout the three hours we were there, people kept coming. They had food booths around the concert area, and people bought tickets for the food and sat and listened to our concerts – yes, we had to present throee separate concerts, but with this team, that wasn’t hard. Afterall, they have been playing every chance they could get all week. We broke the regular concert up into three parts and then added a bunch of instrumentals. I think Rich, Dick, Rebecca, Mark and Mike would still be there if we would let them keep on playing.
After some more amazing conversations, we packed up, tired but happy and went out to eat at a great restaurant. My dad has been telling us about this amazing Argentinean steak house. Reasonable prices and really good food, Leanna and the guys loved the steaks, but the rest of us got other things, and we all agreed that everything was good. Then we got back on the train and headed home to be, and its almost one in the morning and I am just completely exhausted. Dad can fill in anything else he wants you to know, I suppose, and I would write a note for him to edit this but he’s liable to keep it in the blog anyway. (nothing else you need to know except keep us in your prayer tomorrow as we finish our time here, and yes, Kristi, I did keep it in…)
Good night!
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