Sitting on sore butt cheeks….

well we have not been able to post for two reasons: 1) no internet access in camp, 2) internet access was down at ministry base.  sorry.

It has been an amazing journey.  Thank you God for stretching us, touching our hearts, speaking to us, showing us many needs… Thank you God for keeping us safe during all the car travel.  The car that we drove around in had bad shocks.  

Bad shocks + Heavy load (talking about luggage not us) + horrible roads = Sore Butt Cheeks!!

The sore cheeks are now being tormented with the hard metal chairs at the airport.  Due to our early morning departure and the distance from our sleeping location to the airport, we were dropped off early at the airport in Greece… 6 hours early!  I don’t know what we were thinking but it is saving some money.

Pray for our safe travel back home!!

we look forward to sharing our experience with all of you so please stay tuned!!!

 

Pastor’s Conference

We had four days with 80 leaders, 35 of these were pastors.  It was an amazing experience.  Rex rocked the theology and Bob swayed the ladies.  Bob even had one wife dream about him, but that is a whole other post itself!!  I carried the bags…

These leaders were so hungry for God’s Word.  They had such a passion for our Lord… it was amazing.  The mornings started with a beautiful song of worship and then was followed by a large circle prayer.  Then we had a total of four sessions of teaching per day.  We were beat by 8:00 pm but the pastors ended the night with fellowship and crazy games… such energy!  well enjoy some photos from the conference!

 

Some Misc Photo’s from the Trip

here are some misc photos from our Balkans trip…. enjoy!

 

 

To My LOVE…

 

hi sara and daniel and clan, i miss everybody, everything about the trip so far has been great except a 4 hr train ride that turned into a 9 hr bus ride because of a strike and a forest fire.  went to see berea and see where paul preached and visited the tomb of alexander the great’s father.  i have not spent much time preparing my talks but much time seeking God and reading the Bible.  went to the aegean to swim, unbelievably nice as i am sweating all of the time.  discussions with macodonian outreach has been very helpful, but the stories are just heartbreaking.  saw our first romi village from afar and they live in garbage,very sad.  today we travel 3 hrs to visit romi pastor and visit romi people.  feel oddly unprepared,(sara you know this is not my way) but confident God will work through me.  richie and rex are great to have as traveling companions.  love to all especially sara.   bob

We hate busses!!

alrighty, our 5 hour buss trip turned into a 8 1/2 hour trip!!  there was a fire next to the highway and we had to take a detour.  HORRIBLE.  so we all decided to stay away from all busses!  other than that we are doing well and enjoying each other.  (our destination was Leptokaria, Greece.)

we have stayed at the home base of Macedonia Outreach for two days and the hospitality is AWESOME.  we are with such loving fellow believers.  it is always overwhelming to be served the way that we have been served.  i think we will be coming back nice and chunky.. while as for me chunkier!

we visited a synagogue in berea.  this is where paul had come (read acts 17:10).  it was closed but we snapped some photos of the front.  then we headed over to see the tomb of phillip the II.  that was an interesting place.  we learned that when phillip was murdered, that his son held a huge funeral ceremony.   the family would put all this gold and treasures with the body so the deceased person could take it with them into eternity.  one of those treasures was the youngest wife!  the wife would willingly walk into the flame engulfed tomb and be burnt with her hubby.  now that is true love!!  the only bad thing is… well… poor philips, treasure is still here on earth… silly rabbit! 

in the morning [7.18.08] we will be heading out to bulgaria.  we will be meeting up with some “frontline” pastors and workers.  bob and i are SUPER excited.  rex is also, however, he always has that calmness to him!  enough babbling, enjoy the photos!

FYI: we will not be able to post for the next week since verizon has not installed FIOS in those villages.

 

 

 

UPDATE

it is wednesday the 16th 7:51am here in athens.  we wre packing up are goodies and getting ready for breakfast.  after breakfast, we will jumping onto a bus, hopefully with air conditioning.  our ride will be 5 hours long and our destination… well i cant spell it nor pronounce it!

everyone is in good health and good spirit.  it is a true blessing being here with rex and bob. it is a awesome time of fellowship. we are quite a odd team but i know that God as something planned.

on a personal note, i am very excited that this day is here. we are finally going to start meeting some fellow workers in the ministry.  i actually was felling a little guilty being here in athens.  i mean my wife is at home with all three kids and my employees are working hard at two different projects that are not a cake walk and i am here. it has been somewhat of a vacation.  we have done some touring, some great eating and our rooms are pretty good.  quite the opposite of my past mission trips.  so after some disscussion with the two “wise men” and listening to God, these short two days are a period of rest and fellowship.  those two things are things that i have been lacking for lets say since i got back from india in march.  it has been a time of rest, renewing of the physical and spiritual.  God planned this well…  now i have this overwhelming sense that he has given us this rest because He is about to rock our world for the rest of the trip!!

we will try to keep all of you posted.

thank you for your prayers for us here and our families back at home…. KEEP PRAYING!!!!

Our First Full Day in Athens

First off, let me say that I thought that Bob was going to do all the blogging.  However after seen all the trouble that he had trying to send his love a email, I thought i better take over!  So i am new at this….

Today was our first full day in athens.  It started off with a huge breakfast in the hotel cafe.  It was good stuff.  eggs, fruit, meat, bread, jam, cereal and of course olives!

Next, Bob and I risked our lives by jumping into a rental car with Rex doing the driving.  Don’t get me wrong Rex is a great driver, however, you add the foreign driver factor…. wow.  There is a lot of traffic in Athens, much like India, traffic, traffic, traffic but no loud horns going off every second.  Then you have these crazy motorcycles weaving through traffic…   Despite getting lost three times, almost getting hit four times and almost hitting a few pedestrians, we made it back to our hotel safely!  Thank you for the safe driving of Rex and the navigation skills of Bob.

Our destination was Ancient Corinth.  Now I am not a history buff and this is where I wish Bob would jump in… Ancient Corinth is umm… old.  I can’t say that I would be interested in visiting old remains of an old city, however, knowing that Paul had wrote two letters to the Corinthians made it pretty meaningful. Some of the stuctures and pillars are awesome to see.  It was surreal…

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