yesterday was a big day for americans. the bald eagle (our national bird), which represents freedom, has officially been removed from the endangered species list. if the bird is supposed to represent our freedom one could look it as our freedom being removed from the endangered list, but the berkeley in me just isnt quite sure if this is accurate yet. however, this is still exciting news for the bald eagle, and americans really, since the bald eagle has been on the endangered species list for the last 40 years (since 1967). but for those thinking that their removal from the endangered species list will give them the right to have a stuffed bald eagle hanging in their office (how funny/terrible would it be if tim or gary had stuffed creatures in thier office at the church) dont get too excited, the bald eagle protection act still makes it illegal for anyone to collect eagles, eagle parts, nests, or eggs without a permit (except for native americans who are able to possess these emblems which are traditional in their culture).

on a completely different note...i tend to go through stages with my favorite quote but currently every time i hear this one it makes me laugh...
"abraham lincoln once said, 'if you are a racist i will attack you with the north'" -michael scott, the office

ive been watching the tv show friends since i was in the third grade. while the show is controversial in some circles, it has always been and probably will always be my favorite tv show. dont get me wrong there are some great shows on television (like the office) that i really enjoy but you just cant beat ten years of great television, or all of the memories i have from growing up watching it. i own all ten seasons and have watched through them numerous times. my most recent commitment to doing so was upon moving into my house in east dublin. i just finished yesterday and it seems fitting to finish up all ten seasons as i finish up my time here. i move home in a couple of days, partially to save money (i will have no job as of sunday), partially to make it easier for my roommates (i wanted to give them a concrete date when they could start to find a new roommate) and partially to ease in the packing and leaving process. it will be weird living at home again but i think it will be good. it will be fun to have more time with my siblings (more so my little sister because we all know my brother is a punk) before i move halfway across the world, so i'm excited about that.

so i went to stanford to see the number one doctor in california about my knee. i wont bore you with the details but basically i get to get better! it will take about six months but i dont need surgery just physical therapy. i'm so stoked because originally they had said i would never get better so six months is really great news.
the people that i will be working with in germany wrote me a really wonderful e-mail that they wanted me to e-mail to all my donors and potential donors but i thought it would be fun to post it on here as well (you can ignore the part about funding if you want).

Dear Friends of Lauren,

Hi. My name is John Glaser, and my wife and I are serving with Young Life Military Ministry in Bitburg, Germany. We have been here for over 2 years, working with the 600+ middle and high school students whose parents are stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base. We have two middle schools and one high school, and we work hard to minister to these students.

In some ways, military teen are just like any teen in the states. They go through the same peer pressure, school drama, and grade pressure. But these teens also face the struggles of military life. Their parents get deployed and they don't know if they will come home again. Or the parents return from a deployment and have to work such long hours that the kids never see them. They are constantly moving, and so are their friends. About one-third of the school turns over every year because of moving. We as a ministry have about 1,000 days with each student before they move and we never see them again. Time is urgent. We have to start getting to know students as soon as they get here so we can have time to "win the right to be heard" and share the gospel with them.

Currently, I am the only staff. This base has always been a 2-staff community, but we lost a staff member in January when he went to begin Club Beyond at another base. Since then, we have worked very hard to continue doing ministry at the same level of intensity, but it gets difficult to do. There are so many students here to reach, and so little time to do it. Our volunteers are wonderful, but they can only commit so much time to ministry, as many of them are active-duty Air Force. We need someone else to do this full time with us. We have been praying fervently for a new staff member to join our ministry team here.

I had the privilege of meeting Lauren when she came over to Europe to attend our Service Project to Slovakia. I was very impressed with her passion for youth, and am excited that she was the intern selected to join our team. She will be a great fit to ministry, and we will plug her into ministry immediately. I can already see how we will work very well together.

Lauren is slated to join us in July, but has to reach 100% of her funding by the end of this week to join us then. She is almost there, but still needs a few more donors. Would you consider joining her support team so she can come in July to serve the teens here at Bitburg, Germany? Lauren is looking for committed monthly support and for one-time donations. No gift is too small. God multiplies what is given.

Thank you for helping Lauren move to Germany to work with the students of Bitburg High School, Bitburg Middle School, and Spangdahlem Middle School.

Sincerely,

John and Shannon Glaser

oh my goodness. so we (laura, mary, justin, jason and i) totally went and saw boyz II men last night. it was amazing. they were surprisingly awesome. i think because it was a "free" concert at the fair and because it was at the fair (worth saying twice) it gave us the liberty just to act like dorks. we danced, sang and just went crazy (well justin just watched us but i think he enjoyed it as well). boyz II men was the first tape (ya thats right, i said tape) i ever bought (spice girls was the first cd, and i'm so proud of that, seriously). the fourth through seventh grader in me was going crazy as the men (its hard to call people that are probably close to being in their forties by now boyz) played all of my favorite songs from back in the day. goodness it was so fun.

this weekend was crazy fun. i had some amazing conversations, one of which was with aly gary where she told me all about being ariel at disneyland. her stories are super great i highly recommend asking her about it if you see her. last night i went to the alameda county fair. i had a good time. we mostly just walked around and got really excited about things that wouldnt have been that exciting if we werent at the fair, it was great. i think were going back tonight, boys to men are totally playing, and i'm stoked. i cant believe they are still around, i guess they just never gave up on the dream.

at the age of twenty one i still do not know how to drive a stick shift which i think is kind of embarrassing. while i was expressing my desire to learn my good friend deej offered to teach me. (i had tried to learn once about four years ago, but it did not go well because my step dad thought he had me starting in 1st when i was actually starting in 3rd. i ended up getting it to start once but was incredibly frustrated by the fact that it was only once out of like fifty. by the time we realized what was wrong, i was over the stick shift.)
so yesterday i meet deej at the church and we drove to the mall where i learned how to start the car in first, it went pretty well (i think i only stalled once). however, its hard to gain speed to learn how to shift in the mall parking lot so we decided to head out to fallon road by the livermore driving range. well, i was doing ok, i had a few rough moments but was managing to learn how to shift ok. then deej decided i should learn how to do a three point turn and try to reverse. well i never really understood the proper way to stop the car (we went over how to start in great detail but not much on how to stop) so after i successfully started the car in reverse it wasnt until i had reversed the car over a curb that i figured out how to stop. it was pretty rough but also quite funny. deej was a good sport about it all and was patient with me when i got it wrong. i think i'm still going to need a few more lessons before i can say that i know how to drive a stick shift but after this post i dont think many people will be wanting me to drive their cars. o'well.

this weekend was crazy but so good. graduation, grad night and parties. goodness.
ok so i know y'all have been super curious about the rest of contents of the e-mail i talked about in the last post. so i'll give you another glimpse of what my life could be like in germany...

"I just wanted to let you know that over the last couple of months Shannon and I have been working to get a car and housing set-up for you before you actually get here. Right now we have a couple who is moving at the end of this month that is going to donate their 1987 Mercedes (Don't worry about the age of the car, most peoples cars here are older) to give to you when you get here. I want to say, however, that I would recommend that you don't take a car out of your budget because you still might need to put some money into this one. In the German system we have to get our cars inspected every year and this car won't get inspected before we get it turned over to us so to give to you so we won't know if anything needs to be done to it before we can register it until you get here...Before you start thinking this car must stink if it might not pass inspection know that most cars fail something in the inspection even if they are newer cars. The Germans are just tough with their inspections haha.
As for housing, we have been looking at a particular single airwoman who is one of our volunteers and discussing the possibilities of you moving in with her. She is very open to it and we agreed that we would get you both together when you get here to see how you all clicked and if it would work out and go from there. She currently lives on base but is looking to move off-base around the time that you would get here. She is a great gal and a fellow Californian so I think you guys would get along great but you never know until the both of you get together.
Shannon and I are also looking to find you some furniture and other things that you won't be bringing over here. My hope and goal is to get you settled into our community as soon as possible."

ok, so that was a lot, it was a really long e-mail. but i think the best part is how they are really taking care of me i'm not even there yet. it makes the idea of leaving a little easier to know that once i get there someone is really going to be helping me out.

i recently received an e-mail from the couple i will be working with in bitburg, john and shannon. i'm really excited about what they are getting set up for me. i just hope i am able to be there soon.
the e-mail was super informative but instead of copying and pasting all of it in here i decided i would give y'all bits at a time, to keep it interesting. so i decided to start with the part of the e-mail about bitburg itself.
"The area here is absolutely beautiful, it is very country with small towns throughout the area. Bitburg is a larger town but not huge and we have a larger city called Trier about 30 minutes from here. Trier is awesome and Shannon loves taking girls there to go shopping. Trier is the oldest city in Germany and it once was the northern gateway to the Roman Empire so there is plenty of history in this area. Not to mention that the "Battle of the Bulge" (Famous WWII battle depicted in the series "Band of Brothers") was fought in this area as well. I was a history major so I think these kinds of things are really cool."

yesterday i was getting my car smog checked and i was reading Time magazine and i read this in their numbers section "45 million Number of people who have voted so far in a Swiss company's Internet campaign to choose the seven "new" wonders of the world from among 21 historical buildings and monuments." well when i saw this i decided i wanted to be a part of history in the making, so i found the new seven wonders page and voted for: the acropolis, the statue of christ redeemer, the colosseum, the great wall of china, the neuschwanstein castle, petra, and the taj mahal. they will announce the winners on july 7th in lisbon, portugal. i can hardly wait.

i went and saw rodeo joe yesterday. hes actually one of the muffler men, which is kind of a big deal if you are into roadside americana, which i am. i dont know why but garage sales and rodeside americana facinate me. seriously.

as i write this i'm quite excited, i had plans today of updating y'all on the past week or so but today i got some really exciting news that seems to make everything else not so exciting. my exciting news is:

i got placed!

as long as my funding stays on track i will be moving to Bitburg, Germany in july. currently the funding is a bit shakey but i'm still quite excited about the placement (it's the base i was hoping for). its really close to france and belgum, check it out here on google maps (just search for bitburg, germany).

so stoked.