For the past several days  I've been staying in Elk, Wash., near Rand and Becky Miller (pictured below, right) and four of their eight kids – along with other extended family, friends, nine Arabian horses, three dogs, four cats and a small batch of chickens!

The Millers are leaving at the end of the month for a 4 1/2-month trip to Meuselbach, Germany.
They've got a recording studio there and for years have been creating contemporary Christian music with and for the youth of Eastern Europe — a population they feel has been neglected by other Christian evangelists. 

Becky was in Berlin in 1989 when the wall dividing communist and free Germany was torn down. She is still impacted by what she saw.
On the west side, "There were neon lights, flowers in buckets. Everyone was wearing Nikes. People were moving quickly. I can't remember one person wearing a coat," she recalls.

"But on the east side, everyone was wearing coats, dark wool coats… There was not one building painted. The walls were so worn down. The streets were completely potholed."

Becky believes spiritual and cultural echoes of that divide remain to this day.

To hear some of the music the family has created, check out:

www.myspace.com/blacktaxxi

www.myspace.com/loveshopefulsorrow

Becky paints, too!
www.arabianart.net