New Blog Address

I have changed the address of our Sydnor Update.

Please click on the following link and then be sure to make a bookmark for it in your browser.

www.SydnorUpdate.com

Thanks for your interest in our life and work,

Paul & Reinhild

Summer Schedule

We will be visiting supporters, friends and family this summer. This includes about 18 churches and over 60 individuals, so it is always a huge job to figure out how to see everyone in just 8 weeks. It is a really busy time, and unfortunately, we are never able to see everyone during a short 8 week summer visit. We have already discussed our schedule with those supporters we can't make it to. These include ones in Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. Thank you so much for your understanding.

We will arrive on June 21st and we leave on August 25th.

Most of our visits will be in the Virginia area. We will be based in my mom's apartment in Lyncburg. We would love to see as many of you as possible. Please feel free to contact us about a good time to visit, if we have not yet planned a visit with you.

We would love to see you.

June 22 First Presbyterian, Lynchburg
June 23 First Presbyterian, Lynchburg
June 25 Forest Presbyterian
June 26 First Presbyterian, Danville
June 27-29 First Presbyterian, Hendersonville, NC
July 6 Bedford Presbyterian
July 13 Rivermont Evang. Presbyterian
July 20 Westminster Presbyterian
July 20 Northminster Presbyterian (afternoon)
July 25-28 Blacksburg Christian Fellowship
Jul 29-Aug 1 Richmond
Aug 3 First Pres, South Boston
Aug 10 Third Pres, Richmond
Aug 17 Elon Presbyterian

May hike

Back in May, we went for a hike up to Obernberg lake. It was a beautiful day, so I wanted to send you these photos.













It's a pretty popular place to go for an easy hike.












Once at the lake, we enjoyed the sunshine












And can you believe it, I even pulled out my computer!

anniversary

Here's to 18 years!

ministry conference

I have returned from our annual refugee ministry conference. About 40 workers from all of our different teams attended the conference. For the past 10 years we have been putting a lot of effort into developing and supporting our teams and leaders. This year we began to focus on our expertise in the area of relating scripture to refugees; muslim ministry; mobilizing workers; fundraising and pioneering new work. We began to look at each of these areas in order to collect experience and ideas. The plan is to make this information available to our teams on our website.

Encouragment

The missions pastor from the Rivermont church stopped to see us on his visit to Europe. I took him with me to Salzburg where I had a meeting with the Director of the Austrian Evangelical Alliance along with several other mission leaders. We are planning a forum for churches and others who are reaching out to immigrants and refugees. From there we went on to visit someone interested in working with us among refugees. I praise God for the the encouragement both from our supporting church as well as among the work here in Austria.

homeschool perks

I took Tessa to visit the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (highlighted above). This is a Museum that has over 700 paintings of the old masters. Going to a gallery like this is a great way to learn about History, Criticism and themes in Western civilisation, Biblical studies and Christian History. Everytime I am able to do something like this, I wish I could do more of it.

Tessa and I definitely seem to like the gruesome and tragic. My favorite is this one by Holbein - "The Martydom of St. Sebastian". The artist doesn't matter to me as much as the subject of the painting. It's a scene that many artists have tried to capture, and I think in all of them the focus is on the expression of Sebastian. It raises in me the question of how well does he endure his suffering? He suffers but he does not despair.

Tessa's favorite was "The Last Judgment" by Paul Rubens. It's over 18 feet tall. When they built the museum around 1830, they designed this room specifically for this painting. Tessa's comment about the painting. "It's big and real." Of course at that time the judgement was for all those outside of the catholic church, and we still feel the results of that today.