Life in the Community! (Jan/Feb. 2018)

The Polylux Family has grown a bit over the fall and winter, with 2 new additions being born!  Benaja (Ben-ai-ya) Klemme and Eliza (El-ee-sa) Rave joined our ranks in September and very end of December, respectively, bringing large learning curves for their parents and some lovely cuddles for the rest of us!

In the next few weeks we will also be celebrating the 7th “Birthday” of the Caribuni Family Centre (a sister project of Polylux’s run by the Caritas Organisation, but which is staffed and heavily supported by the Polylux community), with a neighbourhood party(assuming that the snow has melted by then!).

In other life, we held the first of our quarterly 24-1 Prayer Events in January and will be following with the 2nd, Easter-themed event later in March.  Then at the beginning of February a few of us(Ralf, Jonte & I) had the opportunity to make a quick trip to England, to take part in the European Communities Gathering, which is a weekend held each year, where leaders of the various 24-7 Prayer Communities come together for specific teaching  on Leadership & Community Development themes as well as being able to more intimately support and encourage one another than would normally happen at the big, annual Gathering in October.  This was a wonderful time of connecting and re-connecting with other’s across Europe who are in similar situations to us, sharing encouragements and struggles, as well as getting some great input from other Leader’s who have “gone before” in these areas!

Another exciting development that we are looking forwards to, is the possibility to host our first 24-7 Mission Team (short-term teams of volunteers who come to help, encourage and bless existing 24-7 Prayer Communities).  This will be happening at the beginning of June, and Katharina & I are beginning to plan and prepare for what that might look like, now!

So community life is pretty full at the moment, which is lovely but which is also always a challenge for a small community, continually trying to find and keep a healthy balance between involvement and rest and how to give fully to other’s while also guarding and growing our own young families, well.