Alpine splendor

Here are a few pictures from our last day in the Berner Oberland. We took the cog-train up from the town of Lauterbrunnen to Kleine Scheidegg - a skiing area with a beautiful view to the alpine peaks Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. We were blessed with a clear day after several days of very poor vis. You can see in Delynn's eyes the wonder of it all!

Here we are in the alps - it looks like we are on the top of the world and it kind of felt that way.

Michael with the Jungfrau in the background.

This is the Eiger. Pictures just cannot do justice to the majesty of this area.


I took a video showing the three peaks - Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. I love the little halos of clouds on the peaks.

I know this is a quick entry by our normal standards but we wanted to share a little of our trip to the beautiful Swiss Alps. God bless you all.

This is how God works

Before I explain just one of the ways God has worked in our lives this week, I need to let everyone know that March is CRAZY busy for us over here. It's mostly good stuff, but it is affecting my time and ability to regularly post on the blog, so sorry about that. Then, when April rolls around, Delynn and I will be going on holiday to Dresden and Kraków so that will likely cause some additional patches of non-bloggyness. Just keep checking back and eventually I'll get something posted.

Okay, so this was a great God thing. Last week, spring decided to grace us with days of sunshine and warmth. After the long, cold winter, we are more than ready. It has been a glorious few days and everyone is out walking, riding, holding hands, you know... spring-stuff. Well, some form of allergen - I know not what - also decided to make its presence known.

Last Wednesday, I was hit hard. It worked down into my bronchial passages as well as my sinuses. I was coughing, sneezing, watery eyes - the works. My voice was cracking like a middle-schooler. When we sang at our Lifegroup retreat last weekend, I had to sing down an octive. I do think it gave me a really cool (dare I say sexy?) baritone voice though... (I'm not sure what Delynn thinks...) I don't recall whether I had the same reaction last year, but then Delynn and I were so often down with a cold, any allergic reactions were probably masked.

So, I'm not doing the best, I can't sing AT ALL without sounding like a frog and I had to lead worship singing on Sunday morning. My co-leader was away for the weekend, so we didn't have a backup. During the retreat, my friend Jon came up to me and asked if there was anything he could pray for - I immediately said yes; he gently laid his hands on me and began to pray. I didn't experience a sudden healing or anything but I was grateful for his fervent prayer.

Sunday morning, I got up early to prepare to lead singing. I noticed that I was coughing less. As I showered, I started warming up my voice but it was still cracking as I went up the scales. I figured that I would just have to sing as a bass that day. As I got ready to leave, Delynn was up having her first cup of coffee and I asked her to pray for me. We held each others hands and she simply asked God to be close to me, heal me and give me strength.

As I drove to church (I had borrowed a school vehicle to transport the Weiler contingent to the retreat, so we had it Sunday morning) I continued to work the scales and warming up my voice. I was blessed to have the car because I probably would have gotten some strange looks doing my warm ups on the tram... Anyway, during that 15 minute drive to church, my voice really started improving - it was such a relief. I could hit notes higher than I had in days. I was so thankful that God was granting me the desire of my heart.

We had our pre-worship practice (which was a little rough) but the worship went really, really well. It was hardly a strain to sing praises and speak - it felt miraculous. We had been invited over to supper at a friend's home, so we spent an enjoyable afternoon with them. As the afternoon progressed however, the cough and baritone voice began to return. By the time I was ready for bed, I was back to where I had started the day - but God had seen me through. And I don't even want to tell you about this morning - hack!

Late last night, we got an email from a friend back at Vancouver Friends Church that was simply titled: Praying for you. In it, spoke of the Lord bringing us to mind in his quiet time and although, "He did not tell me what to pray for you but he knows what you need at every moment." Wow! Our friend, thousands of miles away, was led to pray for us, for me, at just the time it was needed.

Now, some may say that it is just coincidence that all of these events came together, but I say no. People of faith do not believe in a God of coincidence but in a God who actively shapes, moves, blesses and directs his people. This is the God in which I believe - He met me in my need and provided. Why don't you give God a try and see what happens...

God is good - all the time.
All the time - God is good.

Fasnacht in the Dreiländereck

Okay - get ready for a monster blog. What a great couple of weeks it has been. The Fasnacht season has just concluded in both Weil am Rhein and in the Basel area. For us, that means parades, music, masks and fire (but more about the fire later). Delynn and I are currently on our Fasnacht break in the Swiss Alpine town of Lauterbrunnen. We wanted to get a few days away before we head back to school next week. Last time we were here, it was a little cloudy, so we couldn't see much of the Alps. Well, as you can see (this is a view out of our apartment rental) the view is beautiful but we still can't see the Alps. We hope to get a break in the weather over the weekend so we can bring you some pictures of the nearby peaks.

So, the week before the break went well. Despite the knowledge that RIA will be closing operations at the end of the school year, it doesn't change our desire for teaching excellence and giving our students the best education possible in the last four months of the school year. When I think back to first grade (Yes, I can still remember first grade those many decades ago) and compare what I did in reading and math to what our students are doing, it blows my mind. Here is a picture of our first grade girls during library (I think I have mentioned before that our entire 1st grade class is girls...). This set of girls represent Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Cameroon, Columbia and Kazakhstan - none of whom are native English speakers. During a recent library class, after books have been returned and new books checked out, they settled down on Hedgy for a read. Hedgy is a hedgehog pillow that the kids love to use while reading.
The thing that really impresses me is their absolute love of reading - some reading books that I didn't tackle until 3rd or 4th grade back at St. V's. They are all at different levels (and this isn't even the whole class) which is a testimony to their very talented and creative teacher, Miss Aubrey. Of course, as an Oregonian and sharing my same birthday, Aubrey just HAS to be special... Now, here are some of the girls again with one of our staff members showing off her Basler Fasnacht costume - the harlequin. Up until Fasnacht begins, each group or Clique's costumes and themes are absolutely TOP SECRET. Janelle is only able to show off the costume before Fasnacht began because it is a classic costume from years past as her Clique celebrates its 60th Fasnacht anniversary this year.
So, Fasnacht activities in our area start after Worship on Sunday the 1st of March. We invited our staff over to ours because the Weil am Rhein parade is the first of our many venues. The Weil am Rhein parade starts at the Rathausplatz and wends its way down the kilometer or so of Weil's Hauptstrasse.
Among the traditional German costumes are Waggi's (these characters represent French farm workers from the Alsace region) ...

and witches...

and clowns. I understand that part of the history of Fasnacht is scaring away winter - Well, they aren't going to scare winter away with these clowns...

Our next stop was the town of Liestal, Switzerland. Long-time readers of the blog may remember last year's Fasnacht. Delynn was ill (it was her turn) and needed to stay home so she didn't get to experience the raw heat of the fire parade, so this was her year. Here we are before the parade, standing in front of one of the fire carts that are pulled or carried down Liestal's Hauptstrasse. I recalled this one from the previous year - it is quite well constructed, including wheels made entirely of steel so that they don't melt in the extreme heat. This is the before - oh, yeah, that wood is ready to burn...

And here is the after (well, more during) picture. As the cart was pulled by our post on the Hauptstrasse, you can see how crazy hot the parade is.

In addition to the fire carts, many, many more individuals - both men and women - carry burning bundles of wood - most configured in the cone shape as seen in detail below.

These are carried by groups of folk who run, dance but mostly trudge under the great burning weight. Some only wear wet felt hats (the purists) to protect themselves from the burning load.

Here's another good picture - look at those three story flames! We would never see anything like this in North America. Can you imagine this happening on Broadway in downtown Portland?
Before I go on, if you haven't already noted it, please check the other post from earlier today that has a couple of videos from Liestal, including a hunka, hunka burning wood. After the Liestal parade, we all smelled like a big campfire. Delynn found a couple of small holes in her coat from burning embers that fell on her - and we were in the back row!!

The next stop on our Fasnacht fun was the Tuesday chaos in Basel. Tuesday is one of our favorite Basel Fasnacht days because it has the children's parade so there are thousands of children and families traipsing up and down the street of the Basel downtown, dressed up in costumes and wantonly tossing confetti. The busses and trams are all diverted to keep all of the streets for pedestrian use only.

This picture above says it all for me: Masks, Drums and Confetti.

On Tuesday, individuals or groups with as few as two people (or in this case three) can simply dress up, pick up their piccolo and drum and start marching around the streets of Basel. Notice too the costumed mannequins on the corner of the building at left.

A huge part of the Basler Fasnacht is the lanterns that each Clique creates and carries through the different parades over the 72 hour Fasnacht period starting at 4:00am Monday morning (Morgenstreich). Often the lanterns have two or more meanings. The one above for example deals with the CERN Large Hadron Super-Collider that many feared would create a black hole and suck the world into it - the more subtle meaning deals with the bankers who are the black hole, sucking the money out of all of our pockets.

As the evening deepens, Guggenmusik bands - most analogous to marching bands in the states - but with much better uniforms - march all over playing wonderfully toe-tapping music. This was a really wonderful few days. I hope that you have received just a taste of it by following this blog.

Don't forget to check out the earlier entry with a couple of more videos.

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. These summarize the heart and mind of God.

Videos from Liestal

We took a lot of video at the Liestal Fasnacht celebration last Sunday. These two short clips show a pipe and drum corps which gives you a taste of the traditional Basler Fasnacht sound. Only pipes and drums are permitted for any Clique that participates in the parades. This group is poking fun at rich oil shieks making wads of dough from the price of petrol. The themes for the parades are usually picked in late summer when the price of oil was spiking - it was a common theme for many of the Basler Cliques this year.

The other component of the Liestal parade is FIRE! Groups carry or pull carts of tinder-dry wood through the main street. Let me tell you, just holding up the camera to get this video was a feat. We were in a much more sheltered spot this year but it was still HOT, HOT, HOT!

I'll post some pictures later of the various parades in Weil am Rhein, Liestal and Basel.

Staff Retreat to the Swiss Alps

Today is quite balmy - a huge 5° C last time I checked. This is actually pretty good considering the weather we had just last week. As I may have mentioned in another blog entry, even the Germans and Swiss are getting a little tired of this winter. The cold and snow are coming more frequently than in the last couple of years, but it is probably closer to normal patterns -I guess last year we were just really lucky. As I look back over last year's February blog entries, I see that the weather was still rather cold, but man, we didn't get this much snow. On the upside however, we have hardly been sick at all this year! Yaahoo! Here is a picture of the school about a week ago. You will note the parent parking to the left and staff parking on the right. I took even a tumble off of my bike for the first time last week on some ice - Oy! that was no fun. I'm still limping a little from where the steel bike pedal hit the knuckle of my left foot.

Okay, so where else in the world could a school take a staff retreat to the Swiss Alps without it sounding like one of those boondoggles that a bailed-out bank had to cancel after receiving BILLIONS of our taxpayer money? Well, our staff retreat probably cost less than a similar trip to the Oregon Coast. We were able to stay at a hostel where the accomodations were basic - twin beds (no sleeping together), bathroom and showers down the hall, etc. But the view - Oh, the view...
This was actually the view out of our window. Okay, I can take bathrooms down the hall for one night for a view like this. I created a panorama of our room's view below. If you click on the picture itself, you should be able to get it to open in a seperate windows with a larger image view - it is fantastic.

This is a view of the other side of the valley. Our hostel can be seen along the very left edge of the picture. It is the small tan'ish colored building almost half way up, above the red tile roofed building. Whether or not you see it, what you can see is the glory of God's creation in the Alpine region of Switzerland.

From our room, there was a really beautiful church to our left. There were several terraced levels as one approached the entrance. We took a walk over and up to the church and what do you think we found on those terraces? (Any guesses?)

For those of you that guessed graveyards, give yourself a gold star. It wasn't necessarily what I expected, but they were beautiful none the less. I don't know if we have mentioned it before, but graves and honoring those who have passed over is significant for most Europeans. Since many families live in the same town or village for generations, this shows their respect for family after they are gone.

The many markers were primarily made of wood - this is just one example. Isn't it just wonderful? The grave sites are well tended and quite beautiful.

The church also has some magnificent stained glass windows. (I know Jesus didn't look like this, but I appreciate the beauty and craftsmanship)

Since this was a staff retreat, I wanted to give you a picture of our staff. There were a couple of folks missing, but these are the souls with whom Delynn and I have had the priviledge of serving for the last 18 months. The woman in the back center, Aubrey, hails from the Pacific NW, actually from Eugene, and she has the same birthday as I do - 12 June - but obviously she was born many, many years later. She teaches are 1st and 2nd grade girls (well, the entire class of 8 students are all girls). She is a really excellent teacher and we are proud to serve with her. We could tell you great, compelling, touching stories about each of those here but we will save those for another day. What a blessing it is for us to know each one.

We took a day trip on Saturday further up into the Swiss Alps. The last picture is in the village of Lauterbrunnen. Delynn and I will be returning here in a couple of weeks during our Fastnacht break to recreate some more together in the Alps. Obviously, this day had quite a bit of cloud cover, so we are hoping for some clearer weather the first part of March. We'll see - whatever happens, we look forward to our break.


We pray God's blessing on everyone who reads this. When we see the wonder and beauty of His creation, we are continually amazed that God would make this for us. May you too see something of God today. Keep your eyes open; expect that God will cross your path in some way today - maybe big, maybe small. In all, be thankful and give Him the glory He is due.

A day in Strasbourg

Well, we promised you pictures and during a recent day trip to Strasbourg, France, we (well, the Michael-half of 'we') took a lot of pictures. We met up with our friends and fellow RIA'ers, Cam and Jen to take a trip up north to Strasbourg. Strasbourg is the principal city of the Alsace region of France, home to some 3/4 million people. The city celebrated its 2000th anniversary (no, that's not a typo) in 1988. It was founded as a Roman military outpost in 12 B.C. (right about the time my old home town of Augsburg, Germany was founded). It is now home to the European parliament and the European Court of Human Rights. A fairly significant city just an hour away by train.

We were blessed to get a discount ticket on the French railway - this is essentially a day-ticket on which up to 5 people can travel in a given region or state for a single price. In our case, it cost us only 44 Chf for the four of us to travel round-trip to Strasbourg (That works out to about $9.00 per person which is an outstanding bargan). As as added bonus, there were no strikes, so we got quickly to our destination. The day was clear and cold but those are the best days to travel in winter. We caught an early train so that we could spend a full day in this beautiful city before returning back home to Weil am Rhein.

This is the main train station in Strasbourg. You can't see it very well, but the domed building in front of you actually covers the original stone train station. When you exit the old station building, this curved structure compeletely envelopes the facade and pedestrian area in front of the station. It was not until we walked out and across the square that we noticed how pleasing the architecture of the covering structure was. We knew we wanted to get to the center of the old town. In most cities of this vintage, all that means is looking for the church spire that usually signals the most important part of the oldest section of the city. In Strasbourg however, there are lots of more modern buildings reaching several stories high but that is no challenge for the Strasbourg Cathedral.

The Strasbourg Cathedral, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg, is incredible to behold. It held the record as the tallest building in the world for 250 years until the late 19th century. Even as I write these tid-bits of information, I find myself shaking my head in disbelief. It is still the 6th tallest church in the world.

As you can see, it is hard to get this baby into a single picture, the scales are not to be believed. People walking around the Cathedral square look like so tiny when contrasted with this immense Cathedral. The interior is just as soaring with airy vaults and lots of stained glass. I appreciate so much that even with the throngs of visitors, churches like this also have areas reserved specifically for prayer and not for photos.

The Romans normally established outposts on riverbanks and Strasbourg is no exception. Today, much of the old city is between two branches of the Ill river (really, that's its name -it is a tributary of the Rhein). With old sections of cities, there is always beautiful old buildings to admire.


Here we are next to the Tanner's building. Delynn still doesn't have a hat on despite the sub-freezing temperatures, but she is at least wearing ear muffs. We are dressed in our standard two-layers bottom, four-layers top configuration for winter travel.

THIS IS WHY WE LOVE FRANCE! ('nuf said)

This is called the Kammerzellhaus (Maison Kammerzell) and is one of the most ornate and well preserved medieval buildings found anywhere in the Alsace. It is situated on Cathedral square and was built about 70 years before Columbus "sailed the ocean blue". It now houses a restaurant (we didn't even look at the prices) but pictures are free!

We didn't actually eat any of those cakes in the picture we took earlier, we just drooled over them. We did however find a quaint little place that served a brilliant French onion soup (they just call it "onion soup") and Tarte Flambé. By the time we stopped for lunch, we were all really, really chilled so when we found this restaurant, we were more than ready to enjoy the inviting atmosphere and warmth we found inside.

True to french culture, we sat and ate and talked until we realized that we had been in the restaurant over one and a half hours - just for lunch! We had arrived rather late for lunch so by the time I remembered to take a picture, most of the other customers were gone. Most every table below was occupied with happy, contented french-folk during our wonderful meal.

Our whirl-wind day-trip to Strasbourg was a delight. I know we say this a lot, but we feel so blessed to be able to live here, to experience new cultures (french and german culture are certainly different...) and have the priviledge of sharing our lives and faith with new friends and our precious students. We will be forever changed by our time here. God is good.

Good news and bad news

I've been struggling to get myself to start this blog entry because it carries with it some sad news. As some of you already know, Rhein International Academy will close at the end of this school year. The president of our parent organization, the Network of International Christian Schools (NICS), came to the school to meet with the staff and parents to deliver the news. The decision by NICS was not an easy one - NICS has never had to close a school before. It was a decision that broke the hearts of the board and needless to say, it broke our hearts also.

In the end, the sustainability of the school just wasn't there. Over the last five years, NICS has faithfully supported the school and covered each year's shortfall. Last year, RIA was able to finally have a year when no outside support was needed, but several of our families, some with multiple children attending RIA, were rotated back to North America or other countries and we just could not make up the shortfall.

Our focus right now is to continue to deliver the very best education possible for our students and to finish the year well. We are also working diligently within the international school community to insure that each of our students has a place to attend next year. This can be especially difficult as we support a number of special needs students. We would ask our praying friends for their support as we move forward with this tremendous task.

On a more personal note, Delynn and I have made our decision for the next chapter of our lives. We had been pursuing several ideas which included staying in the Dreiländereck region or returning to the States. When Delynn returned from her trip back to Vancouver during the Christmas break, we spent much time in discussion and prayer over where we would be in six months. I had my CV (resume) submitted to some companies in Switzerland as well as back in the U.S. We began to sense that our next home should be back in the Washington-Oregon region so that we could be close to family; to be close as Delynn's father battles cancer. To remain here, as much as we love the area, the relationships, our church, seemed a little selfish. But, as most of you know, the economic climate in the U.S. is not exactly stunning to say the least. Still, we felt a sense of peace, a peace which passes understanding.

Our answer came in the form of an offer from my previous employer, Intel. I had sent off an email to an old colleague seeing how the job environment stood. Once my former boss found that I was interested in perhaps coming back to the OS group, he and his boss went to work on a job requisition to which I could apply. The request for hiring had to get approval at the group's general manager (this is the person that reports directly to our CEO, Paul Otellini). In this environment, it was a miracle to get the approval. I was really humbled when they came back and made me an offer. It was truly and offer that I couldn't refuse and was an answer to our prayers.

We feel incredibly blessed to be moving forward with this decision. It is and will be a bitter-sweet time for us. We appreciate the prayers, responses and emails from family and friends as we work through the next several months. Thank you for your support.



Next week I promise to post some more beautiful pictures of our staff retreat. Promise.