Now I'll be spinning through Germany

Hey all,

Some of you know me a little better than others so here's some background.

I've finished studying 2 years of Mechanical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. I spent this summer (all the way up til this last friday) co-oping which was a great experience and I learned a lot. Now I'm taking care of final details to fly to Germany.

I'll be there for one German semester which puts me roughly October through February. I'll be taking classes getting all my liberal arts classes out of the way.

Here are some expectations for the trip:

- Become really Great at German

- Travel around Europe

- Make contacts for International Co-ops in the future

- See the culture first hand; work ethic, religion, and family values are of primary interest

Hopefully through all of these I'll end up with a better understanding of my future, and if Europe will play any significant role in it. I'm sure I'll have loads of stories and great pictures. I'll be keeping people posted on my blog. You can follow it, put it on google reader, Buzz, RSS it, or however you keep up with websites. The address is:

http://spinningsrnw.blogspot.com/

Keep in touch. I'll have this email address while I'm there and would love to stay in the loop on what you've got going on.

Auf Wiedersehen

--
Love and Peace,
Ryan Nathan Wilson

A Sad Illusion

Vocollect

Beautiful light blue glass building

Looks too much like sky

False hope

This is the all too common result that I find on the sidewalk in front of that expanse of beautiful skylike glass. I could try and read some far reaching principle into this but it would be forced so I'm just going to leave it as a sad story.

Harvest Moon

Full Moon

Autumn day 1

burnt colors

warm sun

cool breeze

Fall wins again

Favorite time of the year begins

12 hrs left to work

7 days to revel

a semester-

- Marvelous!

12 bar blues - ukulele

Stringed

So I've been getting more than my fair share of stringed instruments lately. They all look pretty together too. From top to bottom we have my guitar, my band teacher's violin, and my mom's ukulele (which is now mine and has a great case and is coming to Germany with me since the guitar is too big).

Track Star II

While we're on the theme of track... we had an olympic competition at work today where instead of countries we were split by department. I was on the hardware team. After our guys came through on ladder golf and corn hole (and failed at water balloon toss), we moved into first place over all by winning the potato sack race! Granted the other competitors were software guys... but we all got real cool metals pictured right.

Track Star

I picked up Lindsay from volleyball practice which gave me my first excuse to go into my high school gymnasium since I graduated. We finally got a record board the year after I finished high school so here I finally saw my name along side my record... almost makes me want to run again, almost

Getting Challenged by God

This weekend was spent with my church at a retreat (by a lake) designed to join us together in community and hear God's voice for our lives. It was all that I could have hoped for.

For background on this, I believe that God has called me to make money and give it away in support of his kingdom in radical ways. If I'm going to do that I can't be tied up with materialism otherwise I'll just make the money and use it myself. So God likes to send tests my way every so often to test my obedience and insure that he is still first in my life. Here is an example from this weekend.

So a game of soccer breaks out on the basketball court and despite wearing rolled up jeans and my brand new boat shoes I can't resist and I play anyway. In minutes I tear an ugly snag in my shoes. Not going to lie. I was a bit bothered by that. I bought them a week ago roughly. The next day, I'm still annoyed by it and God's like "HEY RYAN, they're shoes. You know they're really not at all important. You shouldn't let your day be affected by that! oh... and btw (that's how God speaks to me) remember those awesome khaki's you wanted to grab from H&M? you don't really need those. Don't get them." So that was it. God had taken his place again in front of the material again. I put the shoes aside as unimportant. It's a pity though, because I was going to get the pants on the drive up to Rochester but mom suggested I wait till next weekend. Now it's too late...

So the early theme was, don't hold on to the material too tightly. That was accented when the speaker said, "if a plan fits into your timeline, skill set, and resources, then it's probably not God. He requires us to step out in faith." Not a hard and fast rule but a good thing to consider.

So then later I'm talking with Pastor Don and some folks and he mentions that he's going to Peru to teach at a DTS with YWAM in Peru with Brent (the same school I did in Argentina but a different location). "Ryan, you want to come?"

Well from a resources/timeline perspective the answer is no. The trip is right when I get back from Germany. Not the greatest time to buy a plane ticket. I have class coming up and I'm supposed to go boating through the jungle to preach to tribes...

I'm thinking it might be one of those God things. There are still some details to look into, but at this point it's getting pretty well considered. I'm excited for what God will do if that trip happens. It'll be a challenge. I've not really ever stepped out into something that didn't sound like a good idea. There will be lot's of praying this month. God's challenges are always the scariest but most peaceful and satisfying. I love living this adventure with God!

Also for some sweet scenery from the trip see the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=222726&id=597026300&ref=mf