JUST KERSTIN, BUT KERSTIN!

HI, my name is Kerstin Berthold. I love my name. It means: Belonging to CHRIST! My name is the program of my life! I am glad to be Kerstin and not anyone else! In the past 2 weeks, God has renewed my mind and soul and I feel He gave me new and fresh water to drink. I realize how much I felt overwhelmed with the idea of being a missioanry sent to a different nation. Now, not only my mind, but my heart udnerstands what it means to be called, sent and loved in all the processes. God called me, Kerstin, with all my good and all my bad traits, feelings, thoughts. I am glad that I am not a superwoman...just Kerstin. God has called me to bind up broken hearted, to point to HIM and talk about HIM, to be a living testimony of HIS love, hope and strength on this earth. I am ready! I am ready to be Kerstin, be renewed on an ongoing basis ........

My identity in CHRIST

This was the title of what I spoke about last wednesday and it was exactly that topic that God chose to reveal to me in a deeper way. I am humbled and thankful. I am so thankful that God has not only made me wiser but stronger in HIM over the past couple of days!! It all started with my teaching. I felt extremely unworthy to preach about that topic for I felt not like a princess or a child of Go dor an overcomer in CHrist at all. I fought with tons of stupid lies that seemed bigger than they actually are. The day after my teaching I actually fell into a depression and I was physically down as well. I knew that I believed lies instead of God's truth at that point, but I only knew it with my mind. God reminded me of what He had shown me about the fact that I should just come to him with what I have and with HIS touch only it would turn into something. A night later I went to a seminar and was prayed over and that was when I realized somethign extremely important: I had tried to find my identity in my role as a long term missionary instead of in Jesus. I had tried to figure out to do everything right, to read a lot to learn a lot and to do all that is required of a missionary like me. I stopped seeing myself in CHrist first. As I said in my last blog entry, I am not a superwoman! I have never been a missionary and I have never done what I will soon be doing. I simply have no clue and only with the touch of Jesus something can happen here...only with HIS touch. Funny how God let me teach about it to start the process of introspection and now I see, now I understand and I am glad that He has shown me ....here and now. Here, Jesus, this is all I have, I give you Kerstin, ALL OF HER, and with your touch we will touch the world to do the impossible!!! Kerstin, a child of God, HIS masterpiece

Jesus: here is what I have, only with your help we can move things!!

Yesterday, as I was walking to catch my train my mind went back to this last week. Jesus wa so gracious to me. He stooped down and caught my soul and changed my heart and my inner man. I suddenly had to think of the situation when Jesus was about to fee the multitudes. He had just taught and talked to the diciples and it was later i hte day. Jesus asked his disciples to go and get something to eat. I could easily see myself as one of those disciples...I felt suddenly right in the middel fo the story: Did Jesus just tell us to find something to eat for all these people here? I looked at this multitude...men, women and children.........how on earth.... oh well all of us split up and tried to buy as much food as üissble with the little money we had. After a while we got 5 pieces of fish and 3 loaves of bread. I felt so bad. This is not enough! We need to find more! We need to. In my hastiness I ran around trying to find more. ALL THIS HAPPENED IN MY THOUGHTS WHILE WALKINT TO CATCH THE TRAIN TO FRANKFURT DOWNTOWN!!! Suddenly I realized something. I would have run around to get more on my own for hours. HOWEVER, JEsus wanted me to come back with what I have and say to HIM: Jesus this is all I have, only with your help we can do the unbelievable! Now I transfered that to my situation:

Jesus does nto want for me to be the perfect Missioanry who understand everything and is superwise. He knows me, He knows what I can do and what I cannot do and still HE chose me. HE wants me to come to HIm and say: Jesus, here I am, it is only me, Kerstin, not superwoman, only with your help I can be the Missioanry, only with your help I we can do unbelievable!

wow, what a revelation!!!!

Tidbits about Germany....ready set gooooo

1. Living in Germany permits me to drive to my church service 160 km per hour = 99,5 miles per hour 2. The German social 'bubble' is much smaller than the American one 3. The Germans have the best GELATO outside of Italy because our first immigrant workers came from Italy. A lot of Italians still live here in germany with their families! Molto bene!! 4. Germany is famous for fantastic bread and Broetchen!!! 5. When Americans say: "Hi, how are you?"..they only mean HI. When Germans ask you: "How are you?", they await a detailed answer (at least a lot of them) 6. We have the same color changes in the fall as in the States: beautiful sun yello and fire red..... 7. Driving on German streets is so much different for there is much less space...; the definition of 'street' seems to be different (grin).

to be continued!!!