On the road again...

This is an LST trip year for us. Patrick and I are going on a 2 week project to Niteroi, Brazil with the Wilburn family. We leave tomorrow which means today is spent thinking, organizing, praying, concentrating, searching, shopping, and finally packing. We fly through Houston, departing there at 8 pm for a 10.5 hour flight into Rio de Janeiro, arriving at 8 am on Tuesday. Missionaries Wes and Carrie Gotcher will meet us at the Rio airport and help get us over the bridge to Niteroi.

We will have a planning meeting Tuesday afternoon and that evening will hold an information meeting where we will meet with our readers for the first time and schedule our first reading sessions for Wednesday morning. Lots of excitement and nerves for all of us!

Please be praying for our trip and that God will send us the readers He has selected for us to wok with. We've been praying for them for several months and can't wait to meet them!!

Sighting

Oops, knew I forgot something. It is now an annual mission trip tradition to report any international Elvis sightings that we have. Even though my sister is the only one who asked about it this time, I know you ALL are wondering! Here you go:

Pinball machine in the game room at the resort in Porec, Croatia.

Display at the Hard Rock Cafe in Munich, Germany. This is one of EP's karate outfits.

Wrap-up

As you probably have already figured out, I was away from the internet for the last week of our trip. When we last visited, we had just held a bar b que and game party for church members and visitors last Saturday. We enjoyed another worship service with the church on Sunday, had a Father's Day lunch at the square, then caught a bus to the coast.

Here is where the annual "international incident" happened. We were so excited because the bus that pulled into our bay was this gorgeous 2-story beast. Our seats were upstairs and we settled in for a comfortable 4 hour ride. The countryside was beautiful, we traveled through mountains the entire way. After a couple of hours, we make a scheduled stop at a litte town called Riyeka. One of our teens understood a local to say that we had a 30 minute break. We all get off the bus, walk around the block to stretch our legs, find a rest room, hit the market for snacks. The Sweeney family made it back to the bus after about 15 minutes. It was not where we left it. We looked around the whole parking area and just as we were beginning to feel a little panic, the rest of the group showed up except for Kyle and Vicki. We looked around a few more minutes and came to the conclusion that the bus had definitely left us! We were stranded in an unknown town in a foreign country where noone seemed to speak English. Just as real, identifiable panic set in, the bus came around the corner with the Grahams hanging out the door. Apparently, the stop was only about 7 minutes long, the bus had indeed left us. Kyle, Vicki, and my new German friend who was in the seat in front of me (and spoke NO English) convinced the conductor to turn around and go back for us. He was less than thrilled with us messing with his schedule. He was the only person we met on the whole trip who was not friendly to us~

We finally made it to Porec (pronounced like "porridge") late that night and found taxi's to take us to the Luna Resort. On Monday, we walked to the old town of Porec to see the beautiful, ancient city. Lots of tourists, mostly from Germany and Italy. In the evenings, all visitors were gathering at the cafes to watch the soccer games.

Tuesday we split up, some going into town, some renting bicycles, some staying on the beach. We caught a late afternoon bus back to Zagreb, enjoying the ride through the mountain villages again, to stay at our hostel one last time.

Gelato is an art!

This is an aloe vera plant! Sunburn anyone??

On Wednesday morning, the leadership at the church in Zagreb invited us to a delicious breakfast and "closing ceremony" before giving us a ride to the airport. It was a lovely opportunity to end our project well with them and to be able to say goodbye. This is Mislav, our brother who helped coordinate our project.

After a group photo in front of the church, it was off to the Zagreb airport for a quick flight to Munich, Germany to spend the night. Patrick got to spend his birthday in 2 different countries!
The Croatians sang to him in the morning and before bed, he was eating apple strudel in Munich for his birthday cake. Pretty memorable!

We can't thank you enough for the way you have participated in this trip. Whether you donated funds, kept our names lifted in prayer, or kept up with us in this blog, we consider you partners in our work. We couldn't and wouldn't want to do it without you. We thank God for you and pray that next time, some of you will be with us on the plane!

Reallly working for a living!

On Friday, the team traveled to a town about 1 hour away from Zagreb where there is a new church plant. They have bought a house that needs a lot of work to get it ready to use as a church building. Our team spent the entire day scraping and painting stair and balcony railings.

This is Mislav, our project host, sneaking off to climb and eat out of the cherry tree.

Why am I not in any of the pics? I stayed behind to do the team laundry. 10 hours to do 4 loads. It takes 2 1/2 hours to wash one load, plus an hour to dry. I am NOT complaining! Last summer in Peru, we were washing in an outdoor sink!

This afternoon, we had a bar b que and had about 20 guests from the church, Bible Institute, and youth. Some of the young people stayed for several hours and played games with us. We taught them "Farkle", "Scattergories", and a card game. Fun!

We leave for the coast tomorrow afternoon for a couple of days of fun. I will not have access to my laptop so probaby won't be able to blog until we get home. We return to Zagreb on Tues night to stay one more night in Buzz Hostel, fly to Munich Wed. afternoon, celebrate Pat's birthday in Munich, return to Tulsa on Thurs. Our return flight is United 929 from Chicago, scheduled to land at 5:45 pm. Pretty sure we'll be going out for whatever food we can agree on that we've missed the most. Join us!

Love you!

Working for a living

Good morning! It is 11am Saturday here. Patrick, Emily and I just got back from breakfast while everyone else slept in. Breakfast to us is walking about 10 minutes, stopping at the bakery for a chocolate croissant, then walking to an outdoor cafe for coffee. Both the lady at the bakery and the waiter at the cafe know our orders so they just automatically bring what we want without us having to say anything. Love that!

It's time I updated you on the status of our work here. As you know, the work that we trained for was to have discussion groups with local teens to help them practice their English while discussing selections from the book of Luke. The week we are here happens to be the week of final exams for local teens. The grades on these exams affect their future educational opportunities in a way that we can't understand in the US. So as we were visiting outside local high schools to invite kids to our discussion groups, we heard over and over that they were too busy with their studies to meet with us this week. Another hurdle is that it is the qualifying rounds for the World Cup. Croatia keeps winning and will have their 3rd game this week at 6 pm tonight. Mladen says this would be like the Super Bowl happening for an entire month in the US. For each game, thousands of people meet in the main square and stand to watch the game on a huge screen with a concert to follow. In the rest of the city, the streets are completely empty while people are glued to a tv somewhere.

We have had a 16 year old girl come for reading sessions with Callie and Madeline the last 2 days. We have also obviously had to find other ways to be of service here. On Thursday, our group spent several hours at a nearby orphanage where preschool age kids live after 1)their parents have died, 2)being removed from their homes due to abuse, 3)their parents can't afford to care for them. This was a state-run facility and I was prepared to be very emotional. It was a surprisingly well-run and happy place. The ladies working with the kids were fantastic with them and it appeared to us to be like a good preschool where the kids spent the night as well as the day. We have lots of time to play and sing with t

he children and watch them enjoy their lunch.

We had bought outside toys to use at one of our parties. Since this event did not happen, we were able to give these toys to the kids at the orphange along with some candy.

Next blog: Friday and Saturday activities.

Zagreb

Eating lunch on a park bench.

Bok! Yes, I'm quite good at Croatian now. I can say hello and thank-you. This is the least of any language I have known before visiting a country. Most people here can speak enough English to tell you how much something costs or what a menu item is. And they are all so patient with us.

Train station and local park.

I'd like to show you some of this beautiful city. It has quite a history and we spent a full hour with Mladen the other day while he relayed it to us. I know that sounds boring but it wasn't at all! It is totally different to hear history from someone who lived through it, especially when he has an interesting accent and pleasant voice. We learned all about the country before and after it waws a part of Yugoslavia, the problems between the Serbs and Bosnians, etc. Fascinating stuff.

This is my favorite street. Very ancient and beautiful in a way that we never see in America!

58 flavors of gelato in this cool shop!Lots of influence from Italy here in the food.

2 different views of the national cathedral, the "most important church in the country".

Lots of stairs in the city center. These take you from lower town to upper town. These two parts of town had different names and used to be separated by a river and the "Blood Bridge".

Some of the kids have much better photos than mine but no way right now to download them on my computer. I hope to show you those later, after we get home. Emily has a spectacular one in black and white of the ancient street that I love.

I will catch you up on the work we've been doing tomorrow morning. Right now it's 9pm and as soon as Madeline and Callie feel beautiful enough, we may get to eat dinner!

Love you all!

Flexibility

I never knew so many people would be concerned about me not being able to sleep with Elvis. Sorry I forgot to tell you that he and the rest of our luggage made it just before bedtime on Saturday evening. We're good and have all that we need...

Except readers. Our enemy has really been at work trying to discourage our PP mission teams this summer. For our team, it was participation, details, and finances. We knew that our timing was going to be a bit of a challenge because of the end of school here and exams. What we didn't know was how much this timing would affect our work. We have spent the last 2 days hanging around different high schools, cafe's, and shopping centers visiting with English-speaking young people and handing out fliers about our work. We are also looking at other ways to bless the church and/or neighborhood here. While scouring the area for readers, we have gotten to see a large part of this city and we love it! My next blog will be showing you Zagreb.

We are back at the hostel for the moment. Erin just took the teens to the market to find something for dinner and are going to cook. The hostel has a small kitchen available to residents so we will cook our first meal here. We have been enjoying local restaurants up till now and love the food here. Ever tried Gnocchi? Yum!

We had a mean game of Spoons with some girls from the youth group last night and laughed till we were sick. Tonight, we might try to include some of the young people staying here at the hostel. There are people here from all over the world. We are sure they are in our path for a reason!