Up and running again......

We had a summer team come for two weeks at the end of August/beginning of September. They were an amazing group of people! Left to right- Bob, Anita, Paddy, Erin, Noah, and Julie. God used them in incredible ways here; not only in reaching the students, but also being a huge encouragement to us. Thank you, P-Town Team!



During the afternoons we would split up in teams of 2 and go do surveys. Jen organized about 650 gift bags for us to give to the students that we met while we were in the dorms. We gave away about 500 of them! I get so excited just thinking about how many students heard the gospel and/or experienced the love of Christ last week!



Our first event of the week was a suppose to be Field Games outside, but God had other plans. It ended up pouring Monday night so we ended up meeting in a pub that is on the main university street by KTU (Kaunas Technology University). It was a perfect place because the European Basketball Championship started last week so we played pool and then the guys got to watch the game with the students. That night 16 guys came! That is unheard of! It is always girls and maybe 1 or 2 guys.

This is Tadas. He is a student that came 3 out of the 4 nights.









The second night we went to a bowling alley, but there was some misunderstanding and we could bowl as a huge group. However, the second floor of the bowling alley was all pool tables so we played pool again! This time there were about 20 guys!!




The third night we had a scavenger hunt around the city the P-Town Team planned. We split up into 4 teams and hand an hour a half to find certain things around the center. This photo we had to find Anita at a statue and put on clothes and have our picture taken.




We had to buy a Kebabi and share it amongst the team.
Jen and I took this task very seriously! :)










Here is our team. We got 2nd place. :)







Then we went to a pub called Fortas and watched the basketball game. The last night everyone was invited to Tiana and I's flat for games and a slid show of the week. There were 13 students that came! It was a great time to have one on one conversations and to start building some friendships.

A day in the life of me

My amazing mother had been putting together a love package for me which had many names; "Fun Box," "Giggle Box," "Enjoyment Chest," "Laughing Box," etc. You get the idea, it was suppose to make me laugh and joyful. She was very excited about this package that when she went to mail it she made sure it would get here as soon as possible.
It came in a week which is VERY surprising. I had to go to the center post office to pick it up which is about a mile or so from my flat. I found the "special package" post office which is down an ally, in the back, up some stairs and then you open a door and it is about a 5 X 5 closet that you stand in to get your special packages. :)
It took the lady about 10 minutes to find the package and I had to sign for it and then she showed me a piece of paper that said I had to pay to get the package since it went through customs so I handed her my debit card and she told me we don't except them. I ended up having to walk around to try and find a ATM, I finally found one. As I was standing at the ATM, it started pouring. After I got money I ran into a store and bought an umbrella and then headed back to the ally.
Package in hand, I started my mile walk back home, hoping that the rain would let up. It didn't. It just started raining harder. So here I am, in a T-shirt, flip-flops, and Capri's with a package walking down the prestige catwalk of Kaunas called Laisves Street, in the pouring rain. I wish I would have counted all the looks I got. I could only imagine what I looked like to the Lithuanian. Their looks just put me over the top, I started laughing. By this time I had to stop and put the box down because I was laughing so hard I couldn't move.
I was half way home and I stepped in a puddle and at the same time a car went by and splashed water on me. I ended taking my flip-flops off and walking barefoot the rest of the way because they wouldn't stay on my feet. Now I was a real sight. :)
I couldn't wait to get home to call my mother and tell her that her packaged lived up to it's name even before I opened it!

Flat Stanley

This is me and Stanley. He is a pretty good looking lad, isn't he? My nephew's class made flat stanleys and mailed him to different places. The goal was to see how many different places Stanley could travel to. He came and visited me all the way over here in Lithuania so I figured the least I could do was take the guy on a date. We walked around and I showed him some cool places in Kaunas. We even decided to document our travels.
He is a quite guy and a great listener! He flew back home a week ago. I sure will miss him!
P.S. I'M STILL ALIVE! Hopefully I will get a couple more posts on here about the last couple weeks!

Driving!!!

Wooohooo! I got to drive yesterday!! It has been 8 months since I have drove a car! I was really excited so I thought I would share that with you! I drove to the grocery store! It made it a lot easier too because I didn't have to carry my groceries home.
Oh, I am working on the directions for the Family Game. It is quite difficult to explain so I am doing my best. I will post it soon!

Mysterious Game called "Family"

In answer to a comment (Matt), I will describe how to play Family:
You have a facilitator who directs and runs the game, but does not play.
Everyone gets a piece of paper and thinks of someone famous that everyone would know and writes it on the slip of paper, not revealing their answer. (I.G.-Actor/Actress, Athlete, Some one in government, Fictional Character, etc)
Then the facilitator collects the slips and reads through them twice and then chooses someone to start the game.
Goal:
To be the head of the family and then have everyone join your family so you become the Grandfather and win.
Objective:
To guess which person wrote what. If you guess right, that person becomes a part of your family and then you work together to guess other people's answers. When you guess wrong the next person in the circle goes.
For example, say I put on my slip of paper Snow White and someone guessed that I put Snow White. I then would go over and "join" their family. This goes on until everyone is in the same family and the head of the family wins.
This game isn't that difficult, but hard to explain. If you know how to play the game and noticed I left something out or didn't explain well, PLEASE leave a comment.
If you don't understand something, just ask and I will try to explain better!

This is a picture from our Dinner and Discussion night. Once a month we just have a game night and hanging out time. This was after we played a game called "Family."

Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

This weekend I hung out with one of my friends. Her name is Ramunė or Daisy. :) I met her through a survey and we hit it off right away. She was the only survey I did that day, I ended up talking to her for 2 hours. She is a very sweet girl with a great heart. She is very open to the Gospel and wanted to go to church with me this last weekend, but wasn't able to make it. However, we ended up hanging out most of the day anyways. Here are some pictures from our time!

This is one of my many weak points

I do realize that it has been over a month since I have posted a blog and I apologize for this. I wish I could promise you that I would write something everyweek with tons of pictures, but frankly I am horrible at keeping this thing up and running. I will try my best to atleast let you know I am alive and kicking every couple weeks. That is the best I can do, then IF I start posting more it will be a treat! :)
So, in the meantime... here are some pictures from the last month! :)

Ah, True Colors Come Out Behind Close Doors!

This is what ends up happening after a long day of work!

Here are some pictures from Spain. It was a joy to be able to see a sunset again! I forgot how beautiful they are.

Spain

This last week I was at Campus Crusades' mid-year conference for STINTers. It was great to be able to see the sunshine and wear flip-flops! The first day I was there I went out to a view point above the mediterrianian. I climbed over and walked out to the edge and sat there for over an hour watching, listening, and praising God for His amazing creation! It was a great comfort to my heart because it reminded me of my time at ECOLA and where I fell in love with the Lord. Now I am back and ready to hit the ground running with the coming semester. I believe God is gearing up to do something big and I am excited to see what that is.

Christmas was a beautiful day with sunshine which is a rarity so we decided to take advantage of it! We had ourselves a little photo shoot.
Christmas was good, but it didn't feel like Christmas. We hung out, played games, ate, laughed, and had a great time of fellowship, but it just felt like any other team night. It amazed me how I can know the true meaning of Christmas, but what makes Christmas feel like Christmas is familiarity. The pattern or practices that I associate with the event of Christmas. The congnitive content attached to the event is how I determine it's reality to me. I thought a lot about this during Christmas Eve and Christmas. I realized that I get caught up in the experience of Christmas that I don't meditate on the reason for the day. The conclusion that I came to is that I got to celebrate Jesus' birthday not Christmas the event.
It was hard to be away from my family and the traditions of Christmas with in my family, but having to spend Christmas away I couldn't have asked to celebrate it with better people! I praise God for the blessing this team is and continues to be!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! I pray that you will have a very blessed holiday season. One that is full of laughter joy, fellowship with remembrance and reflection of our King!
LINKSMŲ ŠVENTŲ KALĖDŲ! LAIMINGŲ NAUJŲ METŲ! ( "Happy Holy Christmas! Happy New Year!)

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine invited Tiana and I to her church to hear a guy preach. He was from France, but was a pastor in Sweden and the sermon was going to be in English. I think it was one of the funniest sermons I have been too. Not so much because the guy had a great sense of humor, but more because of the dynamic of the evening. You have a Pastor who is speaking in English with a VERY strong French accent and a translator who is trying to translate something that sounds like, "....spanking God..." but is really "speaking to God." And then people from the congregation shouting out to the translator what the guy is saying. Translating is hard enough, but then you add 2 people that English is not their first langauge and then an audience who is more than willing to help you. It makes it a little more difficult. To say the least, it was a very amusing sermon! I think it was something about Moses spanking God.....? But the evening only got better.
Afterwards we went out with 5 students to dinner. Before I go on there is one thing that you need to know about Lithuanians, something that I admire and enjoy about them. They are very straight forward and there is no beating around the bush. They say what they are thinking with out a filter.
With this said, I was speaking to a student whom I had met before and we were talking about life and doing ministry here and the conversation ended up going like this,"

Student: " I hear you have started language?"
Me: "Not yet"
Student:"I would ask why, but I'm not sure if I care."
Me: "HA HA HA HA HA!"

I started laughing so hard I was crying. I don't think I have had someone ever be so honest before. It was quite refreshing. Well, I know who to go to now if I need an honest opinion!

The week of Thanksgiving the courtyard by our flat was being decorated with a HUGE Christmas Tree and lights being put in the trees surrounding the courtyard. November 25th was the lighting ceremony which was a big deal, evidently! I thought there would be a few people, but their was hundreds! They also had a program for the evening with famous singers and dancers. However, the coolest part was the fireworks! We were about 30 feet from where they set them off, they were right above our heads! IT WAS SO COOL! Anywho, this is Tiana and I as the fireworks were going off.

These are some photos from Thanksgiving! It was a great time of fellowship and building deeper relationships with the Vilnus team and just having fun! Which, I will never complain about!

I go to a "Free" Church which is a non-denominational church. It is a small church, there was about 40 there yesterday. The service yesterday however stood out to me more than normal. The sermon was preached in Russian by a really cute elderly man then one of the elders translated it into Lithuanian then our translator translated it into English. In front of me a woman was translating it into German for someone. Also there was a Spaniard who was listening to the English translation as well. I looked around and saw about 5 cultures represented and all of them were hearing a sermon in a tongue they understood. What an amazing example of how big our God is! He isn't just Lord in America, but all over the world! For some reason this concept smacked me upside the head yesterday. I love those moments!

Last night I experienced my first Lithuanian holiday, All Saints Day. It is in a way like our memorial day. The tradition is to go to the cemetaries and place candles on the grave sites to remember those who have passed away. I wish I could adequately describe what I saw, felt, and encountered, but it is not possible to portray such an image in mere words. It is something that has to be experienced to understand the exquisiteness of it. One would have to see the thousands of candles lit over acres of forest in complete darkness, to hear the wind gusting through and rustling the leaves, and to feel the somber atmosphere brought on by remembering how each candle represents a life lived and legcy left behind, both good and bad. To wonder where all of these hundreds of souls are now? How many of them heard the gospel? How many refused the gospel? It makes one stop and ponder his own life, how it has been lived and how it should be lived.

One month anniversary! On October 18th I have offically been here one whole month! A lot has happend and changed in one month. I moved to a whole new world, found an apartment and moved in, have had many misunderstandings because of the language and cultural barriers, but I wouldn't take any of it back. It has been an experience I will never forget.
Last week we did all our planning for this year and this semester and this week we started doing ministry! Yesterday we went to the universities and did surveys. It was so exciting! I thought I was going to be scared out of my mind to do them, but I had a blasted being stretched. However, I must admit that God really spoiled my first survey experience. The first one Jen and I did together and the girl, Ingre, was really responsive. She wanted to know more about Agape and gave us her telephone number! After she left I jumped up and down and hit Jen telling her

"That was amazing!"

Jen and I split up to do more surveys. I talked to a couple girls and they did the survey, but they were not very interested. The third girl I was talking to didn't speak very good english. I asked her the question, "What do you think are 5 struggles university students deal with in Kaunas?" As I asked her this question a guy passed by and stoped right behind me. I ignored him for a lit bit thinking he was a friend of hers. Finally I turned around to see what he wanted and in perfect english told me,

"These questions you ask are very interesting."

He wanted to look at the survey and talk about it. The girl I was talking to lost intrest and left. This wanted to sit down and talk more so we went into the university and for 45min we talked all the way through the survey in depth. He would fill out the questions on the survey and then explain his answers. I would ask further questions as the Lord brought them to me. I don't think I stoped praying through the whole thing! I just wanted to be available to do what God wanted me to do and say. He spent last year in Japan studing abroad, you can imagine the spiritual concepts he picked up while over there. He had a Buddhist mentality towards spiritual things. He also enjoys philosophy so our converstation tended to sway in that direction. When he was done he looked at me and wanted to know what brought me to Lithuania and what were my goals while I was here. My thought was,

"Oh, I'm so glad you asked!!"

So I went on to tell him about Agape and what I was here to do, to tell university students about Jesus Christ. He said, "So I have heard of this Christianity. Tell me more about it." WHAT!!!!! God just kept paving the way. We started to talk about the fundamentals of Christianity and the Gospel. As we got into it he looked at his watched and noticed that he was late for class. One of the questions on the survey was, "Would you like to talk more to some about the meaning of life?" He put maybe, but wrote down his number and wanted someone to call him and talk more about

"philosophy."

I think I skipped all the way out of the university!!!!! My first day doing surverys and I got to see God work in a practical way through a survey! It was incredible! He gave me a boldnes that I never thought I had, to ask questions I thought I would never ask! Well, I guess you never say never to the Lord!

We are taking 3 days to seek God and His plans for this semester and for us as a team. Yesterday I walked around the park close to my apartment and found a really really old church. It was run down and falling apart. As I got closer I noticed that there was a door open going into the church. I walked in not knowing if it was allowed, but I didn't care I was so intriged by this mysterious building. When I steped in there was an old monk sitting in a folding chair by the door reading. He showed me where I could read about the history of the church and that I was free to roam. I kicked into indiana jones mode. LOL! Inside is so worn and rusted. It has been through two fires, war and many other things. It is a catholic church and all the original paintings are still up on the walls. I walked around looking at them, most of them I couldn't even make out. I found myself standing in front of one that I could barely make out, but I could see Christ hanging on the cross. The painting was very faded, rusted, stale, and Christ was just a glipse. Then it hit me, this was a picture of Lithuania. I started to cry. Lithuania's heart is faded, rusted, stale and there is but a glipse of Christ here. I sat down in front of the picture crying and started to journal all these thoughts. I stayed there a while until the monk came up to me and told me it was time to go becasue he had to leave. He noticed that I had been crying. He tried asking me questions, but we couldn't understand each other. I had so many questions for him also. Lord willing I will be able to ask him someday.