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“while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” (Titus 2:13-14)

Dear Coworkers,

We thank God for Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who gave himself for us. We cannot but thank him from our deep hearts, day by day.
May Jesus find us eagerly doing what is good on the day of his Second Coming.

After the youth conference, God blessed us with another way of being strengthened spiritually. This time, Dr. Mark Yang came to serve us with deep Bible study.
He came to Germany with broken-hearted prayer, arriving from Latvia where he had served the late M. Caleb Kim's family and coworkers. We joined his prayer for the good work that has been sprouting there.

After serving ministries in Heidelberg and Bonn, Dr. Mark Yang served six senior shepherds in Cologne for one day.
Together with P. Abraham Lee, Eberhard Gross, Knut Rohrmoser, Michael Pohl, Rainer Wieland, Volker Keller, and Walter Nett were assembled.
We deeply studied Paul's letter to Titus, encouraging this young coworker to be a faithful servant of God's church in Crete, doing what is good and encouraging others in the same way. We realized that we need to keep growing in our inner person and also in our readiness to serve.

Through a slide show, Dr. Mark Yang then reminded us of the basics in message preparation. Although we all are "tent-maker" messengers, we must give enough time and thought for each message, beginning with prayer, Bible reading, memorizing, more prayer, etc. I had to realize that I depended more on knowledge and technique than on God in my message preparation. May God forgive me and grant me to come closer to him, again and again, like in those earlier days.

We also studied some helpful background material, "The Gospel-Centered Life" and "The Gospel-Centered Community" by R.H. Thune and W. Walker.
Through these we could have a better understanding of how to see ourselves and others and how to serve them with the gospel.
We were very thankful for this opportunity and that everyone could take the day off from work (except for one teacher who had to serve classes in school until past noon).
May God help us to serve Cologne 1 UBF with prayerful and thoughtful messages, appropriate for this young generation, through the work of the Holy Spirit in, among, and through us.

Dr. Mark Yang also served our congregation with English Bible study from the 15-lesson house church series with about 30 people attending. We studied Gen. 1 - 2 about God the Creator of the family and the center of the family.
Both married couples and those who are still single could see the importance of having a clear, Bible-based view of marriage.

Again, our missionaries had the opportunity to study the letter of Titus in Korean.
This time, 30+ people joined, including coworkers from neighboring chapters and M. Andrew Chaa from London. This Bible study was also deep and lasted for some four hours; everyone was challenged to pray for himself or herself and for the young leaders-to-be in our ministries.

We thank God for the whole-hearted, untiring service of Dr. Mark Yang, for his prayer and love for our community.
May God continue to use him preciously for His world mission purpose.

In Christ Jesus,

Walter Nett