Schmidt’s Prayer Letter 15/ July 2008

Dear Mission friends and prayer partners,

We thank you for your interest and engagement in our work here in Berlin!

The decision is made – we thank God that He heard our prayers, and your prayers, and has given us clarity about our next steps. Our work of sowing the Gospel here in Hohen Neuendorf has come to an end! We are now fully involved in the work with the Vietnamese and plan to move to the south-east side of Berlin. I have been called to the position of “teaching pastor“of the Vietnamese Church; Hue Nhat (Joshua) is the main pastor, the evangelist and shepherd. We feel very blessed to be working together as a team within “Team Berlin” of DIM.

                                                            Home Bible Study

Berlin and beyond. There are around 30,000 Vietnamese in Berlin, including an estimated 20,000 illegally here. Our goal extends much further than Berlin. We want to reach out to the Vietnamese living in the relatively near-by cities of Frankfurt on Oder, Potsdam and Cottbus and plant cell-group churches of mature Christians. This is our goal:

• Maturity and self-sufficiency of the believers
• Support of further church plants and training of Vietnamese as church leaders and planters both here and in Vietnam

Around 200,000 Vietnamese live in Germany. This is a huge mission field! 100,000 are so-called “boat people” and their descendants who, after the Communist conquest of South Vietnam,

escaped by boat over the South China Sea. The other 100,000 come from Communist Vietnam and this is the very special group of people with which we have begun our work. Unfortunately, these two groups feel contempt for – actually hate – each other. (Even the Christians in each group want to have nothing to do with each other.) However, we dare to dream: perhaps it is possible to reach all of Germany’s Vietnamese and unify them under Christ! First of all, it would be wonderful to reach all the poor, lost “illegals” with the Gospel before they are caught and sent back to Vietnam! Think of Dinh who travelled illegally to Germany, came to belief, turned herself in, was returned to Vietnam and under threat of death has led dozens of people to belief. All of this has led to the creation to a church planting movement in Vietnam. This is the “fruit” which we want more of! Please pray!

Home Bible Study

Vietnamese Church: Great joy: Six Vietnamese were baptised Easter Sunday! Great sadness: Our small Vietnamese Church group has recently experienced a division and now consists of 16 adults and older teens, plus a number of children. An influential brother whose bossiness and hunger for power led him to chose to finally leave the church. He was being used by the Vietnamese Secret Police which attempts to destroy churches led by pastors not chosen by the Communist leaders. This man took his family, some other adults and their children with him. For the sake of the Lord, and this man’s wife and children (12 and 18 years old), I go to his house for Bible teaching on Friday evenings; please pray. I meet with the adults remaining in the church weekly in four different home Bible studies. Additionally, I will soon begin discipleship training for the older teenagers.

Joshua: He has begun his 9 week speaking tour in the US and Canada. Please pray for him; including prayer that he will be able to build up a support group even though the Vietnamese there are “Boat People” who want nothing to do with the Vietnamese coming out of Communist Vietnam…

Barbara: Besides doing Sunday School class, she has found a good, practical way to help and, in this way, to promote the Gospel: she offers Vietnamese teenagers, and others, free help with English. All students here inGermany learn English as their first foreign language.

Thanks for:

• God’s mercy with us
• Clarity of our “path”
• Conversions
• Baptisms
• Brotherly, practical help – for example, extremely low-priced printer cartridges
• Support in prayer and financially
• Our children

Prayer Requests:

• An inviting apartment south of Berlin
• Progress in learning Vietnamese
• Openness to the Gospel in the Vietnamese population
• Conversions and stabilization of mission work in Berlin
• Expansion of the mission field
• Dinh in Vietnam
• Toan in Berlin
• Increased contributions to DIM in support of our mission work

Your thankful missionaries,

Albrecht and Barbara

PS: Are we worshiping a “left-over” God? Isaiah 44:12-17: “The blacksmith with the tongs works one (an image) in the coals, fashions it with hammers, and works it with the strength of his arms. Even so, he is hungry, and his strength fails, he drinks no water and is faint. The craftsman stretches out his rule, he marks one out with chalk; he fashions it with a plane, he marks it out with the compass, and makes it like the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house.  He cuts down cedars for himself, and takes the cypress and the oak; he secures it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a pine, and the rain nourishes it. Then it shall be for a man to burn, for he will take some of it and warm himself; Yes, he kindles it and bakes bread; indeed he makes a god and worships it; He makes it a carved image, and falls down to it. He burns half of it in the fire; with this half he eats meat; he roasts a roast, and is satisfied. He even warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm, I have seen the fire.” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”

Here Isaiah is mocking the Gentiles who make gods for themselves from their “left- overs.” This is naturally a very grievous action which will bring judgement. Apart from the truth that even as Christians we tend to create our own gods – because this is a tendency of the human mind – we also tend to give to God our “left-overs.” Most non-Christian Vietnamese have their little alters where they offer food sacrifices to ancestor and/or other spirits. They offer little dabs of food; it doesn’t hurt them to do so. How is it with us Christians? Do we also only give to God what doesn’t hurt to give away? Let’s pray to God that we are willing to adopt a life-style in accordance with Romans 12:1.

If the Lord should lead you to support His work in the Berlin area:

UK: Stewardship Ministries, Oakwood House, Oakwood Hill Industrial Estate, Loughton, Essex, IG103TZ. Please include our account number at Stewardship Ministries: 83072, Schmidt

USA and Canada: Northside Christian Fellowship, 4400 Colburn-Culver Road, PO Box 772 Sandpoint, ID 83864 USA ; for work Schmidt

Hello friends,

Schmidt’s Prayer Letter 14/ April 2008

Dear Mission friends and prayer partners,

We thank you for your engagement in our work here in

metropolitan Berlin and we give thanks to God for you!

Hohen Neuendorf: Perhaps you have long wondered why we have written so little about our work here in Hohen Neuendorf. The reason is that the work here has simply not moved forward - at least not in the visible world. The church-planting strategy of DIM is that of multiplication, meaning that Christians multiply by pointing out Christ to others and helping them come to belief. The missionary is, after initial increased sowing of God’s Word, simply the trainer/mentor (2 Timothy 2:2) and strategy planner for the local believers. However, since no-one here in Hohen Neuendorf has come to belief through our work so far, naturally the question is: What’s going on? In the last two years I have guided people to belief – but not in Hohen Neuendorf! A further signal is that my health has gone down-hill since moving here to Hohen Neuendorf. We feel that our two years here were not a waste of time and resources. There has been abundant Gospel sowing (including around 300 New Testaments); a home Bible Study and a regular men’s prayer group have been established and will hopefully continue without us. We are confident that, especially, the Gospel sown and the men’s prayer group will bear fruit in the future.

Decisions: On one side, here the work is standing still. On the other side, the work with the Vietnamese has greatly increased. We ponder the consequences; what shall we do? Should we give up our work here and be 100% active in church-planting with the Vietnamese? Shouldn’t we be active where the Almighty God clearly blesses our work? And a move to an area where the air is cleaner would certainly help. Is it God’s Will for us to move, or just to move to another town, or just to another apartment? We wish to include you in these questions and decisions, and pray with us that we learn God’s Will! A further question would be, where in the greater Berlin area should we move?  We will continue working with the Vietnamese; however, it is not necessary to live within Berlin to do this. Our mission board has given us a free hand in the decision of where to live – as long we make the decision in the fear of the Lord, looking to Him, the Almighty God.

Comfort: In this situation, we are comforted by God’s Word: likewise, the Holy Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. We don’t know what we should pray, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26).

Baptisms: Easter Sunday six Vietnamese and one Chinese were baptised, the youngest 12, the oldest 54.

Asylum seekers: Recently Barbara, Joshua and I visited with Vietnamese detained in an asylum-seekers facility. Four were mothers with very young babies which had been intentionally conceived so that the mothers would be able to remain here in Germany until the children are 18 years old! What woe! Those who know the misery in Vietnam, who have reasonable insight into the Vietnam behind the curtain, and know the ethical position of the Vietnamese are able to understand the choice these women made.

Gods and Spirits: Generally, Christ is unknown or at best one of many gods and spirits. Christ must be proclaimed to these people! One or another of them may return to Vietnam and spread the Gospel. (Dinh’s abundant sowing of the Gospel upon her forced return has produced a cluster of churches with over 300 people.) Only the Gospel can alter the physical desperation in this land. These four young mothers turned their lives over to Christ after multiple visits. How serious they are and what their final motives were, only the Lord of Eternity knows! We pray that repentance was real and that they are not just Christians for the sake of material gain!

I’ll tell you about the request a Mafia gangster made to Joshua. This Vietnamese man came to Hue Nhat (Joshua) and confessed that he had recently killed his brother. Now he was afraid of his brother’s spirit and other spirits which would support his brother’s spirit. Since Hue Nhat is a pastor, he demanded that Joshua go to his house, build alters for each of the spirits, pray for this man and offer sacrifice to appease these spirits. Joshua would be killed if he did not do this; Joshua naturally refused and told the man why. Luckily for Joshua, this man was arrested by the German authorities shortly thereafter.

Family: Thiemo began his studies at the University this month! He wants to become an engineer for bridges and ecological buildings. The circulation disorder in his right hand continues; however, with renewed infusions, is much better!

Barbara and I persevere in waiting on guidance from the Lord.

Prayer Requests:

Clarity regarding the question of whether we should move and, if so, where…

Clarity about how to reach more Vietnamese…

Serious acknowledgement of sin among the Vietnamese we have contact with…

Please pray for rapid spiritual growth for those baptised…

Physical safety in the work with the Vietnamese…

Your thankful missionaries,

Albrecht and Barbara Schmidt  

Hubertusstrasse 3  

16540 Hohen Neuendorf 

Email: schmidt@dim-online.de

www.xanga.com/barbaluschmidt