Dear Friends of Akebulan,

for our church, 2016 was very special because it was the year of our 10 years jubilee, which we celebrated. We regard this as a very good reason to be thankful and to review what we experienced during this time:

First of all, we can see that God provided for us anything we needed, carried us through and we could learn from Him and feel His presence. We are grateful for every single person who imprinted our fellowship for a shorter or longer time, enriched it and made it possible. Even though we never had a huge amount of members at a time, we can say that we always were a colourful church family with people from many different countries from almost all continents and from so many different backgrounds.

At festivities and at many other occasions, we were able to welcome a lot of guests in our midst. For us, a very important part of our work was our active partaking in many different ecumenical, intercultural, African and other networks. We are grateful to have found a head organisation which is the Mülheimer Verband e.V., in our second approach. Regularly, journalists and university students showed interest in our work. We received financial help from outside; especially to be mentioned the sponsorships from Aktion Mensch e.V., BAMF and EIF (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and European Integration Fund).

Our neighbour and landlord Dr. Knappe all the time allowed us to use the church building plus garden for more than fair conditions, even though he had a lot of attractive offers from “property sharks”.

Those of you who are reading our reports for longer time, already, know that if viewed from the outside, our church has had stronger and weaker times. Still, during the “weaker” times, our fellowship became more intensive; we got to know one another deeper, could see more changes in the lives of our members and sometimes even collected higher offerings.

What happened in 2016?

Thanks to the second sponsoring of Aktion Mensch e.V. for our inclusive Gospel project, we could travel to Woltersdorf for a common weekend with members from Akebulan. This was an absolute highlight in this work!

Steffi also could take part in a seminar for solo singing and choir leading which was lead by diplom- opera- and Gospel- singer Njeri Weth. With the choir, we had two opportunities to present some of our songs in public which was first at the Lutheran Service in Woltersdorf and secondly at an event of the Evangelical Blind People’s Service. In August, we were able to undertake a second excursion to Britzer Garden which again meant a lot of fun to all of us! As at our first visit there, we had lunch in the restaurant at the lake, then gathered nearby to sing “just for fun” and then, with those who could and wanted to stay a bit longer, walked to one of the large green fields with a playground for the children to spend more time relaxing, together.

In February, Sis. Christine organised a surprise- birthday- party for Bro Flavor after service. In April, Sis. Vida and Bro Charles got married at the registry office.

In May, we again took part in the joined baptism service with Pastor Slavisa at Südstern Church. This time, Peter could baptise Sis. Enisa and Bro Nelson from our midst as well as one Iranian woman, whom he had met via his work at the refugee’s camp. It was Peter’s turn to preach, and Phinissia translated him for the very first time.

She did it so well that from that time on, Peter asked her to translate in our church at any time she is there. For this and also for her strong support of our church worship, we are very grateful. One could think that it is “normal” because she is the pastor’s daughter. But for us, this is not at all something we take for granted. She is growing into adulthood and can more and more decide on her own, what she wants to do. Also unfortunately, our church still really lacks of young people of her age.

Part of our worship team were also still Vida, Christine, Alex and Peter; Wachuka and Irene joined them, too. Charles and Adam are in charge of the technique and also help Christine with the finances. In the kitchen we mostly have Ines, Vida, Wachuka and Irene; Karlheinz cooks coffee for us. Kobe, Charles, Alex and Peter share the responsibility for prayer, leading and preaching at our services. Ministers Ralph Webster and Ben Akpalu regularly come as guest preachers. Kobe also helps with the garden and Steffi continuously does the Sunday school.

Since the average age of the members our church is rather young, we are very glad that two elder brothers have found their way into our midst: One is Bro Winfried (“Shalom”) who has been our friend for many years. He has problems with his feet, but still manages to partake regularly and give us short impulses. The other one is his friend Peter O. who accompanies him and always comes a bit early so that he is able to relieve us by he opening the church door.

In summer, Bro Karlheinz again blessed us with some renovations inside our church. This time, Peter O. and Sis. Irene assisted him. Together, they redecorated the children’s room and the entrance floor. We are very grateful for this and for Karlheinz’ manual skills because our building’s fabric is very weak. Also, with his creative streak, the results always look especially nice and appealing.

One of the children who have been in our midst since they were small and who is now growing to be a young lady, is Sade. In summer, she moved to Frankfurt/ Main to stay with her aunty with whom she is very close and who affords her to visit an exclusive international school. In general, we really enjoy watching our children grow, ask bright questions about life and faith and who obviously feel to be at home at Akebulan.

During their Corpus Christi procession, our Catholic neighbours made a stop at our church garden. We put a table outside for them and interrupted our service to join their prayers and singing. It was very impressive to see them populate our plot and to watch the beautiful festivity clothes of the minister, his assistants and the communicants under and around the baldachin.

In October finally after seven years, Family Arthur travelled to Ghana. This was why we couldn’t attend service four times in a row. Many thanks to all helpers including Pastor Okito who shared the burden and made it possible that the services could be held during this time, anyway!

In November, we celebrated our above mentioned church jubilee. It was a memorable festive worship service with lovely guests. Thanks again to all helpers of our church for their great support and special thanks to our friend Pastor Reynaldo Frias who extra came from Köln with his wife and one of their sons to preach for us!

At the end of the month for the second time, Steffi took part in a seminar for email- partners offered by the internet mission “God in Berlin”. Pastor Peter successfully graduated from his intercultural theology studies in Hermannsburg with a B.A., this year, which is his second B.A. in theology. Together with Steffi’s parents, Family Arthur took part in the festive celebration on the campus. Also, Peter got invited to preach at the (Lutheran) St. Matthäus Church within a yearly themes row about “Reformation and The One World”. They published a book about it by “weltwert”.

SSIP e.V. (Social Science Study Circle for Intercultural Perspectives) finally was able to publish via Weißensee Publ. the long time announced memorial volume about the late Pastor Dr. Gerloff “Roswith Gerloff- On the Border. An In-Between Existence” which includes a contribution written by Peter and Steffi. Through the organisation of “Together for Africa e.V.” Peter, again, went to two schools to teach children about Africa. He also continued his part-time jobs at the above mentioned refugee camp from Stadtmission and in the Diaconal house for handicapped people in Biesdorf.

Our networking took us to another intercultural encounter with “Bible sharing” at Pastor Bekou’s “Shalom Chapel” church in Potsdam. We had several meetings with our Csi group (To be a Christian in an intercultural surrounding), the yearly APPA- conference in June and a prayer service before the elections with the Ghana community. There was another yearly meeting of the Mülheimer pastors in Berlin. As always, the wives joined in, later. This time, we also heard a word from a guest preacher from Australia who happened to be around. “Together for Berlin e.V.” invited us to a welfare party for Pastor Axel Nehlsen. He retired from his position as the First Chairman but has not stopped engaging himself in the organisation.

We give thanks to all Akebulan members and to our guest preachers for their loyalty and engaged support, to our network partners and our umbrella organisation for the fruitful cooperation, to Aktion Mensch e.V. for their donation, to all our supporters for their friendly contributions, to Michael Fleischer for his administrative help, to our landlord Dr. Knappefor more than 10 years tenancy. Last but not least we give thanks to everybody who carries us in prayer and to our good Lord for all His grace and His great blessing that we exist for so long time and have received so many good things from Him!

We wish all of you a blessed 2017!
Yours sincerely;
Peter and Steffi Arthur and Akebulan e.V.

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Räuschstr. 37, 13509 Berlin, Tel.: 030/ 773 28 487; Email: info@akebulan-gm.org;
Web: www.akebulan-gm.org; Chairman: Pastor Peter Arthur;
Tax No: 27/ 656/ 55070; District Court No: VR 25928 B; Bank Account:
Ev. Darlehnsgenossenschaft, IBAN: DE38 5206 0410 0003 9085 18, BIC: GENODEF1EK1