On Sunday December 26th, 2010, despite the bad weather conditions on the roads and at the airports, we gathered together at the mission house “Salem” in Mosbach, Germany,
The motto of our youth conference was “Singing explorers and missionaries”.
At the very beginning of our meeting we happily discovered that we were a varied group of young people coming from ten different countries: Spain, Holland, Austria, Bulgaria, Argentina, Canada, Finland, Ukraine, England and Germany.
The program was challenging. We had a wonderful time together in the museum “Experimenta” and ice skating on the rink in Heilbronn. We also had the opportunity to renew old friendships and get to know new brothers and sisters.
Spiritually we shared new things and made startling discoveries. In several discussion groups we talked about the importance and the effect of a person’s outward appearance and his character.
On Wednesday we had separate programs for boys and girls, responding to the question: “How can I be a man/woman according to God’s will?”
On Thursday evening Sister Ines Müller conducted an anonymous survey of the participants. The boys were to describe: a) I would like to be considered by girls/women as… b) I don’t like if a girl/woman is… The girls were to describe, from their perspective, their views on the same points. We experienced fascinating, funny and unexpected results which showed us that both sexes often have different points of view.
On Friday evening we divided up into four different groups; the topics were: “Teenager–striving for appreciation;” “Single–not incomplete!” “Head over heels in love;” and “Marriage starter”. We realized that these topics are important for us young people and should be discussed in more depth. Among the speakers we also had brother José Giner, leader of the youth department of the General Conference, who dealt with some of the themes and had the divine service on Sabbath.
The focus of our meeting was the preparation of a public New Year’s concert on January 1st, 2011 in Mosbach-Neckarelz. Under the direction of Jacqueline Mößlacher we formed an international choir and rehearsed ten hymns in this one week. Our choir leader was very patient but also had fun with us; and with the help of Miguel Cabrera was successful in joining us together harmoniously and inspiring us, although a lot of people got sick with the flu that put them out of action.
A bit nervous and full of expectation we looked forward to the public performance. The varied concert program was completed by a Power Point presentation with impressive pictures, instrumentals and the reading of Bible verses and other quotes. Among others we sang Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s song, “By Gracious Powers,” and asked the attendees to sing along. We were very happy to see familar faces in the audience: brothers and sisters from the churches of Mosbach, Heilbronn, Bielefeld, Lahr, Winterbach and Solingen had headed to Mosbach-Neckarelz in order to participate in this happy event. Furthermore a reporter from the “Rhein-Neckar-newspaper” was present who published an enthusiastic report about our concert. The event was a complete success and all our worries turned out to be groundless. We owe a debt of gratitude to Markus Hartmann and his assistants who took care of the technical issues. During our meeting a “Youth project 2011” was presented as well: a charity campaign for a school garden for the “Maranatha School” in Uganda which yielded 200 Euros.
We would also like to thank Brother Boris Gardew, his wife and all the other helpers in the kitchen who cared for our well-being, the translators and interpreters, who made the communication between the different language groups easier, and finally our leader team for organizing and carrying out the meetings.
We look back with thanks for an interesting and joyful get-together and hope to soon experience a similar opportunity.
Manuela Di Franca