More snow...

Our yard keeps filling up with more snow.

Pentecostal Union meeting

Linas Snaras gave a great report on the progress at camp. He encouraged everyone to get more involved in their camp.

Our Bishop, Rimantas Kupstys, was interpreting into Russian. There are both Lithuanian and Russian speaking churches in the Union.

As always, lots of good food to eat :)







It was an end-of-the-year celebration meeting for the Pentecostal Union. In spite of some bad weather, there was still a good group of pastors and ministers from the Union and other churches in the area.

Panevezys Marriage Seminar

We had a wonderful time with the churches in Panevezys for a marriage seminar. These friends were open and eager to learn.

We are thankful for the opportunities God has given us this year to minister in several churches and at camp through the marriage seminar.

Matt's home!!!!!!!!

We welcomed Matt back to Lithuania today. He is home for Christmas and his Evangel break.

So good to see him again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First Christmas celebration

We were at the Vilnius Theological College's Christmas party to celebrate with our friends. They invite the people that have supported or worked with the college each year.

As is liked by all, we play the gift exchange game. Gita is opening her gift to see what she got. This year Olga disguised all the gifts by placing them in shoe boxes. That was fun!

VTK was thankful for their 15th year in existence. They do not have a resident program anymore but have a strong extension program around the country.

Finnish Visitors

Bob was privileged to take three Finnish men from the churches in Finland to visit the campgrounds. They were interested in learning more about the project and see if they could possibly help in some way. It was a great day and they were encouraged by what they saw at camp. Now they are going to present the need to their churches and possibly bring a construction team over to help too. PTL!

The Finnish brothers are on the left, Bob and Ivanas Shkulis (Vilnius Theological College President) are seated on the right, and Rimantas Kypstys is standing in the back (Bishop for the Pentecostal Union).

501 Campaign Update

More Leadership meeting...

Our Eurasia Northwest leadership team is a great group to work with. We meet twice a year to discuss issues in our Area. Our Area Directors are standing on our right in the picture, Norm and Heather Edwards.


We were privileged to have Nathan and Beth Davis, from AGWM Caring Connection, come to the meetings and present a seminar on Conflict Man
















Bob was in a great mood for the meetings :)






We stayed at a nice hotel in the mountains for our meetings.

Snow already...

We came home from Armenia to winter. This is the table in our backyard. Our temperatures are hovering around 16 F. right now. Maybe we will have a white Christmas??!!

Leadership Meetings

Our Eurasia Northwest Leadership meetings began and ended in Tblisi, Georgia One of our memories is the bread we had eaten when in Georgia on a previous trip many years before. You go to these small windows and there is always warm bread waiting to be sold.

Bob is paying about 40 cents for the famous Georgian bread!



Bob and Missionary Associate, Megan,
helping us buy the bread.













The bread tasted as good as it looks!!!!!!!!!!! The sign says Fresh Bread in the Georgian language.

More Thanksgiving...

Our grand table of friends eating our Thanksgiving feast.





Bob, Jerry and David watching some football :)

Thanksgiving

It was the day to count our blessings again. We truly are blessed and thankful for our friends and family!


Thanksgiving day was also Marel Morris's birthday and we were able to surprise her with a bit of birthday celebrating too. Marel is a missionary in Latvia.





Pies, pies, and more pies....can you ever have too many pies? Especially on Thanksgiving day, it is hard to have too many pies!

We had our share of DELICIOUS pies baked by our missionary team. Also, we ate turkey and all the fixings that were so yummy!

Conflict Seminar

On November 6th we were invited to a Catholic church in Vilnius for a one-day marriage seminar focusing on conflict. It was a great day together. The room was packed with people eager to learn. Nearly half of the participants were men. That is a first for one of our seminars and we were so excited to see couples there ready to learn and grow in their relationship.

We had two break-out sessions for everyone to talk about the teaching and look at their current relationship.

The decorations on the wall were interesting too. They took dried leaves and shaped them to look like a large leaf. It was very clever!

The leader of the family ministry, Nijole, was terrific. She was so organized and so eager to help families grow. Her ministry through this church is really touching lives and bringing help.

501 Campaign Update

Birthday time again

Bette Sue had a very good birthday this year. It started the night before (pictures on November 3rd post) with Jack and Lyra. Then on her birthday she had lunch out with Sharon and Kandra, two new restaurants were tried, and a walk along the river and dinner with Bob. LOTS of wonderful birthday greetings and many, many blessings!

ALL SAINTS/SOULS DAY

October 31st and November 1st are holidays in Lithuania. The first is All-Saints Day and the second is All-Souls day. The tradition here is to go to the cemeteries and put candles and flowers on your loved-one's grave. It is actually a beautiful site to see. This year we went to two cemeteries with our friends, Jack and Lyra Donavan. The weather was extra nice (usually it is cold and rainy) and many people were out walking among the graves.

As darkness came, the whole area lit up from the candles. It was beautiful. Our pictures do not show the full depth of the area that was lit up. It seemed like we were standing above a city at night time.

There were graves for soldiers from WWII. The ones pictured here are from Poland.

501 Campaign Update

OHIO and LAPEER TEAMS

Harry Lucik and Shirl Leek came from Ohio to work on a cabin and the cafeteria/kitchen. They even stayed in one of the cabins at camp the whole week. These men have been here several times and are a blessing to this project. (We went on a city tour since they have done all the usual tourist events we do with teams.) They helped prepare work areas for the team that followed them.








Lapeer, Michigan sent a construction team in September to work on the cafeteria/kitchen at camp. They were a fantastic help! Their hard work moved the project forward and made it ready for more teams to complete the building in spring 2011.

Thanks to teams like this we will have a more productive, private campgrounds for use by churches in Lithuania.

FALL IS HERE

The leaves are falling. Our colors did turn as vividly this year as we had hoped. Winter will soon be here.

TC VISITOR

Kevin Tyler, AGWM missionary with Teen Challenge, came in for a short visit to assist with some Teen Challenge Lithuania business. He was a great help and it is always good to have him visit.

Summertime visitors

It was a real joy to have Eliza and Brent visit us last August. Eliza is the oldest daughter of David and Kandra Millsaps, our fellow missionaries working in Lithuania.

It was great to meet Brent and welcome him to the family!

Teen Challenge weekend

We were privileged to attend the Lithuania Teen Challenge meetings over the past weekend. There was a meeting for pastors and leaders on Friday. Saturday was an open meeting for everyone. Our speaker was Joao Martins, former TC Director for Portugal. He was excellent and had the word of the Lord for each meeting.

Three men from Ireland TC came to the meetings too. Linas, in the middle, is a graduate from Lithuania's TC program and is now working at TC in Ireland.

We even had dinner on the TC farm with fresh lamb Shashlik :)