Heidi und Holger

We have added a new gallery of pictures, which were taken on our recent trip to England. We spent a few days there to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and had a good time with friends in London and donkeys in Devon. You can find the pictures here.

It’s been a long time since we last wrote something here. That’s supposed to change… but it’s not always easy when there is so much happening and so little time to talk about it, especially since we like to spend some of our after work time away from the computer.

We have now been (happily!) married for almost 11 months and are already looking forward to spending our first anniversary in London. But of course we have also been travelling quite a lot since the last entry here – August was a long time ago. Last year in October we spent some time in Belgium (Holger did the yearly system administrator training and Heidi came to visit for a few days) and then relaxed for two days in Aachen afterwards. Heidi went on a business trip to Italy in November and in December we went to the East to celebrate Heidi’s mom’s birthday. Afterward we really enjoyed our first Christmas as a married couple back home in Solingen.

The first week of January brought with it our first trip of the year. We went to the UK for a week to meet with our bosses and colleagues for some things that needed to be discussed in person. After a very short weekend at home we then went on to be part of the GO conference in Mosbach for two weeks – after which we needed some time to get rid of the bad colds we “acquired” there. In the beginning of March, both of us travelled to the UK again for the International IT Committee meetings – Holger as a participant and Heidi to take the minutes. We were able to get away for the weekend and take a trip to Edinburgh, where we spent two wonderful days in great weather, enjoying the nice city. Right after we returned to Germany, we took another trip to the East for a birthday celebration and to visit friends and supporters.

Heidi’s trip to Belgium in April was cancelled because the other participants of the meeting couldn’t make it due to the ash cloud over Europe – her disappointment was very minimal. The next few months will bring a lot of travelling anyway. First there’s another trip to the East at the end of May, to attend a confirmation service and then in the beginning of June we travel to London for our anniversary. In mid-July we are part of the Transform 2010 conference in Rome and after that a family reunion in the East. In August we will take a few day trips to Holland for the summer GO conference… and then it’s finally September and we get to go on our long planned holiday. We will travel across the US from San Francisco to New York by bus. Our travel plans pretty much continue until the end of the year, but for now this is enough. We are hoping to integrate a calendar into this page soon, hopefully that will make it easier to see what we are doing and where we are.

In the last few days we have posted a bunch of new pictures to our gallery. First of all, we uploaded pictures from our honeymoon in Tenerife, so that everyone who supported this trip financially can see what a wonderful gift they gave us. And then we decided to take the pictures showing London at night from our recent semi-work trip to England and Scotland. We love those pictures – it’s amazing what a long exposure and a mini tripod can do even if the camera is rather cheap and simple.

We made it! And not only that, already we have three weeks of married life behind us. The wedding was a great experience that we’ll remember for a long time. A big thanks to everyone involved, be it as a guest, helper, visitor to the wedding service – you helped make this day special and it turned out to be exactly the way we always wanted it.

A very special thanks to all those who contributed to our honeymoon trip with their generous gifts. We enjoyed the time in Tenerife very much and got back quite relaxed from the stress of all the wedding preparations. Pictures from our holiday will be in the gallery soon. And the second part of our honeymoon – albeit with some regular work during the week – is already coming up. In only a few days we’ll make our way to England – first to London and then on to Carlisle (where our team has its offices) for about five weeks, before we make our way down to London for another few days. Our thank-you cards will thus have to wait a little bit longer – but we’re working on them.

We have changed our website a bit now. The information for wedding guests is now gone, so that the articles are now on the front page. You will also find our facebook status in the sidebar – we update it (with small updates) even more often than this website. And of course we have uploaded pictures. We don’t have all the wedding pictures yet, but we chose our favourites among those we already have and posted them to the gallery. We will certainly update the galleries a number of times in the next weeks, so it’s worth checking occasionally.

One more day until the church wedding – but yesterday we already went to the registry office and had the civil wedding there (don’t ask – in Germany it’s the civil wedding that counts and you can’t have it together with the church wedding). Heidi Kraft is no more… she’s now Heidi Rabbach.

It’s a bit strange to think that for many people, the little ceremony at the registry office is all they have for a wedding. 20 minutes and it’s all over; nothing but a few nice words. For us, the (legally unimportant) ceremony in our church on Saturday is what’s really important and the “real” wedding because we want to start our marriage under God’s blessing. If the civil ceremony had been all we have, something would really be missing.

In a bit, we’ll start setting up the church and church hall for our wedding service and evening reception. Hopefully it will all go a bit better than yesterday’s work on the wedding cake, which took twice as long as expected. Well, it will all work out in the end. And as much as we’re looking forward to the special day tomorrow, we’re even more looking forward to “normal life”, which starts on Sunday.

…is a lot less exciting than being a bride – maybe it’s because you don’t get to wear a white dress (at least I’ve been told that it would be a major violation of common dress code). But you still get to assemble furniture (20 drawers, 120 nails, countless screws) – the IKEA relationship test, which consists of assembling various pieces of furniture together, went without a hitch. And so the bedroom is now completely furnished and waiting for its inhabitants.

And it’s about time – only 10 days to go. That’s the actual reason for this article – we have created a new page with a rough schedule of the day. For those of you who (like us) like to know at least roughly what to expect on June 6th, here’s what we can tell you so far.

Recently I’ve been thinking how being a bride is so very different from what I had in mind as a little girl. Back then, my thoughts did not go any further than a white dress, a veil, a big celebration and a husband (in rather random order ).

In the meantime I learnt that being a bride does not start on your wedding day but encompasses the whole time between engagement and the big day. And so it’s not surprising that for a little girl’s imagination it just seems like something is wrong, when being a bride also includes painting walls, packing boxes and moving furniture around. Good thing the white dress doesn’t have to put up with all of this…

A perfect example of the many facettes of being a bride was how we spent last Saturday: We started off by moving things around a little more in order to make room for my stuff to arrive soon. That was followed by an extended sorting of a drawer full of international coins, which Holger had collected over the years and while doing that, I just couldn’t quite get rid of the image of Cinderella . But it was worth the effort and helped us to a little unexpected cash. Part of the day was also for me to do small sowing preparations for slight adjustments on my wedding dress; but that was not yet the end of our productivity. The groom launched into a major baking effort because I wanted a special expesive kind of wedding cake which we cannot afford. So he got what he needed and did a test run for my dream cake. By now I know that this is no unusual way for a man to show his love, so I gladly joined him by doing the dishes and thereby keeping the chaos in the kitchen under control.

This is by no means the kind of Saturday I enjoy the most. After all, the weather was quite nice for a long spring walk, at least for someone trying to escape such work… But I was very much aware of the fact that each little thing brought me one step closer to the day when I will actually get to wear the pretty wedding dress with veil and reception and everything; but most of all a wonderful husband. So I have to say, I do enjoy being a bride

Yes indeed, it’s only one more month until our wedding (only 29 days until the civil wedding). Time to look back on the last few weeks – since the dress arrived, we haven’t written any updates here. What we did do, though, is to write an article about our story together. It was published as a separate page, so if you haven’t seen it yet, you may want to go there.

In the meantime we have finished redecorating the house – living room and office (finally in separate rooms) are on the first floor now, as is the new kitchen, which we took over from our friends who used to live there before. The cupboards in the living room are assembled (hint: to assemble a 2m high IKEA Besta cupboard, you need a room that is 4m long!) and even have all their doors and drawers. On the second floor we have our newly redecorated bedroom and the main bath, as well as a guest room and the old kitchen we no longer use, but plan to turn into a room for one of the children we plan on having in the not too distant future. Even our bedroom furniture has finally arrived and now lead a lonely life in the bedroom, since Holger is currently using the guest room to sleep in, so he doesn’t get used to having the new bedroom all to himself . We’re very happy with all the choices we made and are very much looking forward to finally making it our bedroom.

We’re quite surprised how many points on our checklists we were already able to check. The number of open items has gone down considerably. If for some reason the beginning of June would come sooner than expected (say next week), we wouldn’t have to panic and would still be able to have a slightly improvised, but nice wedding. But there’s still lots to do. Not only does Heidi still have to move out of her flat and a lot of stuff in this house is still waiting to be stored and sorted – no, we also have four days of evangelistic youth events coming up in our church next week, which we are involved in. And of course there are quite a lot of things that still need to be planned (or at least the plans need some polishing) – mainly because we wouldn’t mind if everything worked great on June 6th.

Today we’ll also pay another visit to our jeweller – it’s our 7th trip. And that’s not because we’re buying so much… here’s what happened: 1) checked out the selection of rings, 2) ordered the rings we wanted, 3) went to pick up the rings… Heidi’s ring had a stone in it, which we didn’t want, 4) picked up the rings we actually ordered, 5) took the rings back after we discovered manufacturing defects, 6) checked that the rings were in the condition we expected before getting them engraved (again) and finally 7) pick up the rings. Good thing we started early…

After nearly two months the moment has come: I have my wedding dress! Ever since I received the news two days ago, that the dress was making its way from Suzhou, China to Solingen, Germany I was restless. It’s incredible to think that such a long distance can be covered in just two days’ time. And how great it is to be able to check the DHL tracker even by the hour as to how far my dress has come.

And all I can say is – it’s beautiful! Obviously I cannot say more, because more can be seen live in 59 days or on pictures afterwards . But I am happy to confirm that my Chinese friends did a very good job and the dress will certainly last for one full day .

My fiancé, however, had a hard time understanding why exactly I turned all nervous in waiting for the DHL courier. After all, he did not start dreaming as a small boy how it would be to one day wear a suit . Being faced with such an unusually squirmy bride-to-be, he may have even developed a few doubts as to what my main focus might be on June 6th. I admit I could not suppress a gasp when I first saw my wedding dress, but in that moment it was still absolutely clear that even such a beautiful dress cannot top the fact that soon I’m going to be his wife…

A little over a month ago OM’s new ship called Logos Hope was finally ready to go into ministry, after five years of conversion work and quite a bit of strain on the OM world’s patience. As model OMers we had to go and visit the ship in all its glory so we took the opportunity while it’s as close as it can ever get. Holger and I went to Scheveningen, close to The Hague in the Netherlands, which for us happens to be the shortest way to any ocean.

After a ride of three hours and quite a bit of traffic jam we arrived on board and were welcomed by my friend Svenja. She gave us a tour and to see the changes that happened since my last visit in February 2008 was really amazing: It’s incredible what carpet and a lack of construction noise can do! This everlasting construction place, the inhabitants of which were to be pitied greatly, has been transformed into a beautiful, warm, and welcoming bookship. I was not at all tempted to move onboard a ship yet again , however, there were certainly aspects that we only dreamed about when serving on the “old lady” of almost 95 years, the Doulos. In the late afternoon we had finished shopping books and admiring the ship and said goodbye so we could quickly visit the beach that started just next to the ship.

The weather forecast had not been very promising but as an answer to my half-hearted prayer the night before, we were able to enjoy the beautiful sandy beach with clear sky and sun. Although the low temperature of 6° centigrade and the strong wind were not really encouraging to take a bath in the ocean, we thoroughly enjoyed watching the waves.

As we were walking down this beautiful beach I suddenly realised that a dream had come true. Being a hopeless romantic, ever since I was a little girl I hoped that one day I would be walking along the sea shore with the love of my life. With Holger by my side the moment had arrived and I felt that I just received a hundredfold of what I had to give up when I joined OM five years ago. Without this step into the unknown, Holger and I would not have met and even more so, we would not be such a good match if it hadn’t been for my OM experiences.

Even if it first seems to lead away from hopes and plans, following where God leads really is absolutely worth it.