So here’s what happened in June…

Ok it has been a month since I wrote my last blog which means this entry could easily be 5,000,000 words long. There has been a lot going on in the past four weeks, some things we do on a regular basis and then some others are just for fun or an every once in a while thing. This is definitely the best WWW internship ever because no matter what we are doing it doesn’t feel like work everything is a blast. Our mission work here is a lot different than what you would think. Most everything we do here is more about relationship building and strengthening. One of the most important things we have been doing is spending time with the Massey children and other missionary kids here in Croatia. Every week we have discipleship with the two older kids and just spend time helping them in their spiritual development and then a large portion of our time every day is spent just playing with them or helping them with homework. Missionary kids often feel very alienated from people because they don’t know any americans there age or have many christian friends in their schools. A lot of times they feel like they don’t fit with the culture they are in or with americans because they grew up in a foreign country. So we spend a lot of time just hanging out with them getting to know them and developing friendships. We also spend time every morning in prayer and discipleship with Erin which has been the biggest blessing to my growth and development as a christian. I feel that one of the biggest reasons God brought us here is to bring some much needed relief to the missionaries here. Each weekend we have one night where we split up and babysit the massey children and the albright girls so that the adults can have a date night together and usually about once a week we go over and help James and Laura Albright as they pack their house in preparation to move back to America. Sunday mornings L’nae teaches the elementary age kids in bible class and has been doing a series on worship with the kids teaching them why and how we worship so that they may be able to join their parents during the worship service. They made tambourines and learned many worship songs. I teach the middle school and high school kids and we have been working our way through the steps to freedom in christ. They each made a prayer journal and have been practicing different types of prayer. Whenever we have a nice sunny day, L’nae and I go out to the garden with Roger and work on weeding beds or harvesting. It is such a joy to grow your own food and be able to just walk outside and make a full meal out all these beautiful fruits and vegetables. Every other week we make a trip over to our friend Ruza’s house. She is from Bosnia and came to Croatia during the war when they invaded her village and took her home, she now lives in our village with her son Ilia. We usually just sit and have a drink and some of her son’s smoked bacon and salami but a few weeks ago she taught L’nae and I to make Pita (Bosnian) or Borak (Croatian) which is this awesome pastry type food that can stuffed with eggs, cheese, meat, or blitva (swiss chard). L’nae and I decided that we wanted to have a date night with each of the kids where we take them out to do something fun and spend one on one time with each of them. Cameron and Ian decided that they both wanted to see the new X-men movie for their date so we went on a double date L’nae with Ian and Me with Cameron. After the movie we got dinner in the mall food court and both of the boys decided they wanted mcdonalds while L’nae and I had some delicious Lasagna. Addie chose to go shopping for her date so we went shopping at Mercator in Samobor. We bought her a dress there and took her to have creme schnitte and cappuccino. We also had a girls night with Erin where we ate at an italian restaurant and went to see source code and several shopping days with just the two of us. Last month we went to Catez with all the kids in the home school co-op as an end of the year treat. Catez is a waterpark in Slovenia about 45 minutes away with several water slides, a lazy river, and a wave pool. Then about three weeks ago we went on a family camping trip with the Masseys and the Nelsons (another family from Minnesota). The campground was on a river so we spent most of the week laying out in the sun and floating down the river. We were there for 5 days and had tons of fun. Cameron found a snake in his shirt and lost a tooth, the kids made a skit for us, we had 2 attempted robberies by gypsies, played kickball football ultimate frisbee and I lost my only pair of glasses in the waterfalls. L’nae and I made a friend named Sylwa on one of our Zagreb outings a couple weeks ago. Sylwa is applying for grad school at ACU. We took her out for ice cream and invited her to our church. At the end of June Cameron was chosen to play his flute at an awards ceremony held by the mayor of Samobor. We met a lot of new people after the concert and found out that the mayor actually knows quite a bit of english. He told me I looked like I was 15 and didn’t understand why my parents let me get a real tattoo lol.