"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference."
-Robert Frost
Where do I start?
I guess with the sad part. Remember how I wrote about my grandma with Alzheimer-Dementia? Well, she passed away just a few days after our blog update. Actually, she was already gone when we were visiting her for her birthday on June 12 (same day as Harrys birthday) because she was only a mere shadow of herself then. It is quite sad, but at the same time one is slowly letting her go instead of experiencing the shock of a sudden death. One nice thing in this sadness was to see family a week earlier due to their coming to the funeral. We got to spend a nice day with my dad, stepmom and brother, which was great.
About 10 days later we started our road trip to Croatia! Thank you for your prayers, because we were protected the whole time while driving through the night and Junia was able to sleep quite well in her seat and all those things we took with us. We literally looked like we were moving, the whole car was packed to the roof!!! We stayed in Zagreb for a few days spending time with grandma, brother, and uncles family before dropping my mom off at the beach where her partner lives and spending a very nice day on Croatias Copa Cabana Bacardi Beach in Baska (google it!) on island Krk. Then we took the ferry to Croatias biggest island Cres to reach our final Camping destination Valun.
Oh. my. goodness. What a gorgeous place. It is a super small place along the coast, no cars allowed (there is actually no road). There are only roads going up the mountain to the parking lot. We had a superb ocean view from our terrace camp ground, two amazing beaches, listened to the cicadas, ate some wonderful fresh fish. It was a paradise. We had only one storm lasting for a few hours before the sun came back drying everything and stenching us again.
From there we visited two smaller islands, bought fish there, cooked it illegally on our stove at the beach. We forgot the salt but washing the fish in the ocean after cleaning was enough. Then a little lemon, parsley and some wild garlic we dug out there along with bread. Perfect. We also visited a small viallage called "Lubenice" (water melon) on top of the mountain whose people specialized on wool and pretty much anything that can be made of it. The view from up there was breathtaking and I have to say once more that Croatia has such an incredible diversity of flora and fauna even though it is such a small country.
After a good week in Valun we went back to Krk and spent a beach day with my uncle and his family, which was so nice and too short unfortunately. But we had to go back to the main land to Rijeka because we went to see my dad and stepmom. Had a good time there, also with lots of sun, salt and beach. A couple of days before we left my auntie and her daughters came from Berlin and so we had this huge family party going on there, including the neighbors cats. It was nice to be together after two years. Junia learned how to "shuush" a cat with a broom, which was hilarious to watch. Oh, aaaand she "drums beating" became a human of the toilet two weeks before our vacaion!!! By now she is a pro. So, after we left my dad and stepmom we came back to Zagreb and went to Zagorje with my grandma. It's farmers land with rich, fertile farmer's hills and vineyards anywhere the eye is looking. Beautiful. And our house happens to be on top of one hill, which makes the view even more
amazing. Everything was blooming and growing and in a thousand colors. Oh the joys of summer... back in Zagreb we spent another awesome day with my beloved brother and having quality time with him was one of the biggest blessings of this journey because it is such a rare opportunity. He is an amazing young man. I love you, bro!
Well, and on the same day we had to go back to Berlin. :-( Back to work. Back to stress, back to schedule. We did not know then what crazy adventure of God's perfect timing was waiting there for us.
So before the end of August Harry gets about a thousand messages of the same content from one of his friends: "Contact me immediately, I may have an interesting job offer for you!" Since we are curious creatures we read the job offer. It was a position as high school advisor/counsellor/youth worker for a Christian high school in a little city called "Doberlug-Kirchhain". Since the job description fuelled further interest, Harry decided to go to an interview. And so did Junia and I. Remember how unhappy Harry was in some ways with his job in the refugee camp? Well, this new job would basically perfectly suit his passions of good biblical teaching/ theology, mission focused environment and a dash of whipped cream outdoors. Now, you gotta understand something about German "Christian" high schools here. There are only about 5 to 10% believers attaneding there, on top of that, this high school is located in the most atheist part of Germany (so they say... statistics actually show an increase in people joining some kind of faith all over the world). Harry grew up in this province while being almost the only believer in his own (not Christian) school. He is familiar with the flow of life there. For him, this is a clear step into something new that would suit his strengths perfectly and a healthier area outside the big city for us as a family (something we always wanted anyway). For me... it was harder to accept at first but I realized that it was the right direction to take even though we actually wanted to start expanding our family and I had a veeeery nice job with amazing colleagues and boss. So I said: "Okay God, here you have it all. It's kind of crazy
to move right now, so unplanned by us, but we want to trust you in your guidance and perfect timing." And perfect timing he has. And so he decides that its time for me to go on fully paid "sick" leave from work...
Because we are pregnant! (due date May 24th)! :-) So, let me rewind: I did not have to quit my work place. Instead, he gave us another little one to take care of, and lots of time to pack and wrap things up (since I am on sick leave and all). On top of that,it was not too hard to leave my work place in the end because I had to start working in a different group with different colleagues, which had a different understanding of working with children than I, so working together would have been a bit more challenging than before. Therefore, I was not too sad to leave. And I am so thankful to live in a country where government decided to protect unborn babies and pregnant ladies of hazardous work environment without taking away their money but actually still paying them!!! I had to go see a special "government" doctor for that and it turns out that I am one part of those 4-5 % of women in Germany who are still not immune against the common chickenpox. Whoops! Even though my mom sent me to every child who had them when I was little to get a little immunity booster! Well, at least I can't get shingles when I am old, haha!
But this story of God's perfect timing and planning does not end here. So, we have to look for an apartment obiously. And so far, we only found some we liked in other cities closeby but it would mean taking the bus or driving to work for Harry. Bummer. We found this really cute place that we liked a lot, but still asked the people we knew around Doberlug-Kirchhain if they knew of any apartments becoming free around there. And we get a yes. Turns out, this apartment is more than double the size of our old one, has a huge garden, the wooden flooring that we love so much, windows to the east, south and west, and costs about 60 € less than our current one. And it is about two minutes away from Harry's workplace. Walking distance. We walk in and the first thing we see is this huge trampoline standing in the garden. Junia was sold. And so were we. By now I can say that God is literelly breathtaking. He had everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING here, so perfectly lined up in a beautiful pearl necklace for us to move. We are in awe and wonder, pondering over what else God is going to reveal to us this year.
The soother fairy came by on October 6th... one night we could not find any soothers as Junia lost them somewhere in the house. So she slept without it and quite well. On the next morning there was glitter and a little gift with a letter in her room. The fairy said she was watching how well Junia slept without a soother last night so she promised to come by the following night to take the soothers to little babies that need them more but leave a gift for Junia behind. And she kept her promise. So our daughter made another big step into becoming a big girl and she did really well. There were some problems at daycare for a few days but in the end she conquered them as well. I know, people have different opinions about lying to their children telling them about Santa, fairies and so on. So do I. We don't have Santa here in our house. We bring the gifts because we love Junia and want to emphasize the big gift that God gave us with Jesus by celebrating Christmas with gifts. However, she was so addicted to her soothers for falling asleep that it was slowly becoming a problem for her teeth. So we made the decision to take the road of fairy dust (Who is saying fairies do not exist by the way? I mean we all know Santa was an invention of Coca Cola but fairies are old legendary creatures. Who knows?...). Anyway, next time we are going to just take away the soothers before the child is able argue by logical arguments saying we can just buy new ones if we throw the old ones away.
On October 22nd we moved from Berlin to Doberlug-Kirchhain and were again blessed with a very smooth move and lots of loving helping hands. Then we were blessed with an affordable used kitchen that had everything we needed (there was a kitchen in our old apartment, so we did not have our own. Having a kitchen in an apartment is not a standard here in Germany). The stove brand is the same my granny had back when I was a child in Croatia, which brings back lots of fond (and yummy) memories. No matter, from which window we look outside we see trees in their beautiful and colorful fall garment, cute little red rooftop houses, the horizon and its amazing sky. We breathe in cleaner air and enjoy less traffic. Now we are looking forward to meet new people here and to forge some real and deep friendships with some of them. Some fellow Christians here say that God is moving something here, something is stirring up, awakening, being renewed, and if we can be part of something that draws people closer to God, we would feel very honored and grateful. Looking forward to serve, to be served, to love, and to be loved.
November 12th marks the third birthday of our little princess Junia I. of Abbotsfordshire. It was a blast to sneak into her bedroom and to place all the gifts in there while she was sleeping (one of them was a kids trampoline). She loved every minute of her day, especially all the Smarties on her cake! Two days ago we celebrated Lunas birthday by taking a break from winter at Tropical Islands (google it, its awesome there). It was also a highlight day for all of us and so much fun!!!
And now we are looking forward to the nice time of Advent as we are slowly approaching the birthday of the man who changed human history and destiny forever.
Sending you all lots of greetings and hugs while Still in wonder,
The four Muellers :-)
Here are some new pictures from the second half of 2016. Enjoy!!! :+)
(There are captions on most of the picture, just gotta klick them. Password required and same as every time)
