Paris, France

We arrived here in Paris around 2pm. Jumped on a train then took a cab to our hotel, located only five blocks from the famous Sacre Coeur Basilica. In fact... check out the view from my room.

We walked around Paris for a few hours taking in a few of the sites. This is just a short layover before we head home tomorrow afternoon. Looking forward to seeing all my family and my friends again. Here's a few more pics...

Serbia - Continued

We had an incredible stay in Serbia. I absolutely love the people there. I must say that it was a highlight of my trip. God also opened up some cool opportunities for future ministry there. One ministry is already praying that Global Outreach will be able to bring a team in August of '08. It is amazing how god orchestrates those kinds of things.

We stayed at a bible college in Opovo, about an hour outside Belgrade.


One evening we went to an English speaking "chat club"in Novi Sad. This is a place where students gather to practice English with native speakers. It was fun to chat with a few students and get to know some of the impressions people have of America.

We wrapped up the workshop this morning and headed off to Paris, France. More on that later...

Belgrade, Serbia

We arrived here in Belgrade around 11:30am. Our flight from Spain gave us all of 20 minutes in Milan, Italy. We barely saw the airport there. Here are a few photos:

The Alps from the air.

If you recall recent history you will know that Serbia was involved in the Kosovo War from 1996-1999 and it is obvious as you drive through the streets of Belgrade.



Gotta love the YUGO!


We just got back to the TWR (TransWorld Radio) office after stepping out for lunch. They like meat here. I had something like a giant korn dog with pork and cheese inside. It was amazing!
We are heading to a bible college where our team will present the stewardship workshop. We won't have internet access there. So... bye for now.

Off to Serbia

We head to Serbia in 3 hours. I am up late trying to update this blog so that those of you who are reading it will be able to see some of what I am up to. Web access has been limited and we expect more of that in Serbia. Uploading the pictures takes a long time so I am done with that for tonight. I will post again next time I have web access.

Until then... Peace.

Divine Dinner

Do you believe that God might care who you sit by at lunch? Do you believe that He may have a purpose behind who you sit next to on the bus? Do you suppose God is able to use you in profound ways simply through the situations of your mundane life?

I do.

I sat at the dinner table on Friday night with the teaching team and we were joined by two ministers from Spain. One was an American missionary here who has been here since 1984. The other was Maximo, a pastor here in Spain. We were enjoying a delicious meal together and then he started asking some tough questions. He asked us all if we were prepared for our children to become prodigals. We were all thrown off a little by this question. We weren’t expecting it. Some offered a few different responses and gradually we began to see why he asked the questions he did.

Maximo has a daughter and a son who have both walked away from God. His son walked away because at the age of 9 all of his hair began falling out. His son cried out to God but God did not respond with healing. As a result, he simply walked away from God saying, “If God won’t listen to me, I won’t listen to him.” My eyes filled with tears as I sat with this man who was clearly distraught about the spiritual condition of his children. We all decided to pray for him and his children right there at the dinner table.

This whole thing got me thinking… What is the story of the person sitting next to me? In any given situation I hardly ever really know. God has taken me around the world to show me how to listen, and to teach me how to care about the person sitting right next to me. So who is sitting next to you today? How does God want to use you to bring comfort, healing, or encouragement to their lives? Does God want to use your prayers to change their lives?

We will never know unless we listen and respond in the spirit of Christ.

Madrid, Spain – Day 2

The seminar on Friday was not scheduled to begin until the afternoon, so our hosts took us to a nearby Monastery in the morning. This was built 500 years ago for Phillip II. The building process took 40 years.

We were unable to view the inside of the castle because the line was too long for the amount of time we had, but were able to walk through the courtyard and the basilica. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside and I found that out after taking this picture of the ceiling inside the basilica.

There was so much to take in that a camera just can’t do it justice, but here is one more picture.

Our stewardship workshop began around 4pm on Friday. This was my first time to hear the presentation with individuals responding to the issues that are brought up. There was a good amount of dialogue and questions that made for a very interesting session.

Madrid, Spain – Day 1

Spain is beautiful! Sunny and 65. It’s a big change in climate from Bulgaria and Ukraine, which were both cooler and continuously overcast. We arrived here Thursday afternoon. Took a cab to the bus station, which is also a giant mall. We ate lunch and had some time to kill so we walked to a little place nearby.

Did I say place? I meant Palace!

From there we rode the bus for an hour and a half up the mountains to San Martin. We are staying at a camp called Royal Pines. The name comes from the history of the area because the camp is situated along an ancient road that Phillip II used to travel to this area. The campus is beautiful, as you can see from the pictures below.

Our rooms overlook the region of Avelia. Maybe you are familiar with this region because of the writings of St. Teresa of Avelia.

Kiev, Ukraine - Day 3

In the U.S. we talk a lot about the issue of abortion and as Christians we are obviously pro-life. I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this problem is a global issue. Today I became all too aware of that reality.

This morning we had a great meeting with two women who are involved in “life” ministries. Larysa is the director of Life International for all of the Ukraine and Lena is the Director of a crisis pregnancy center in Kharkov.

These women work intensely to battle the issue of abortion in the Ukraine. From them we learned that it is not unusual for them to counsel women who have had seven abortions. They said of these women, “The pain is so big they can’t get a hold of it.” The goal of Lena, Larysa, and many other life ministries here is to help women get a hold of the deep pain they have experienced and to find healing through Christ.

One of the ways that takes place is through small group meetings that they are doing. Again the statistics they shared are unimaginable. In a group meeting of nine women, they said it was not unusual to have 55 to 65 abortions among the group. These gatherings are focused on naming the pain that they have and getting in touch with the reality of what they have experienced.

Last year in Russia 8 million babies were aborted and in the Ukraine 450,000 were aborted (roughly the population of Grand Rapids, MI). The population of Ukraine is 46 million (roughly double the size of NYC).

At one point the statistics looked like this:

For every 100 babies born… 126 were aborted.

This statistic has dropped but primarily due to increased contraception education, not necessarily the change in attitude or lifestyle.

Unlike in the U.S. the option of adoption isn’t a good “selling point” in convincing young women to keep the baby. Here’s why. There are 150,000 abandoned babies in hospitals across the Ukraine and there are 175,000 street kids. The government doesn’t have a well organized system for dealing with unwanted babies. Typically babies left for adoption are caught in the “system” for at least 9 months. This means that hospitals are filled with babies from 0-9 months that are lying in cribs staring at the white ceiling. As a result these babies are behind developmentally and often show sings of emotional instability due to neglect. With that picture of the “adoption” process, few see it as a viable option.

My heart was broken by hearing these stories.

But there is good news… These women are on the front lines here in the Ukraine, talking with women everyday, saving lives, and bringing healing. It was a joy to meet them.

We spent the rest of the day running around Kiev meeting with ministry leaders from Universities and Associations. Watching God orchestrate all of these meetings has been wild. We came here with only three contact names and had only received confirmation that those three would meet with us the day before we arrived. We leave tomorrow morning at 4:00 am with 32 contacts here and met face to face with about half of those people. What a wild 2 ½ days!

We are unsure of our web access in Spain, so I may not be posing anything for a while. I don’t know. This whole trip has been an adventure. Meeting new people and allowing God to open doors and create opportunities for us.

New view of Bable

I have a new appreciation for God's judgment at the Tower of Bable. For all of you studying languages, keep it up. We would be lost here in Ukraine without our translator, Servietta (who happens to speak Ukranian, Russian, and English). I feel dumb!

Kiev, Ukraine

We arrived here around noon yesterday. We met our contacts at the airport and they took us to the House of Gospel, a Baptist church located in the city. Many of the churches here also have rooms to rent. We ate lunch in the basement which doubled as a fellowship area, as in many churches. On the menu was the classic Ukranian dish, borsch, a soup made from beets. It was delish’. Over lunch we met with the leaders from Gateway to Life, a ministry that focuses attention on anything dealing with the preservation of life (ex: crisis pregnancy, those with disabilities, care of the elderly, etc…). We spent the rest of the day getting familiar with our surroundings.

Today we had a 9:00 am meeting with a representative of a Christian university accreditation association. From there we were invited to their staff worship meeting. This was the highlight of my day. We began with a few hymns, they were familiar to us in English so we sang them in English while everyone else sang in Ukranian. It actually sounded pretty cool. Brett (one of our team members) was asked to share a quick word from the Word, and that was followed by one of the pastors also sharing a few words. Afterward (no pun intended), the pastor went to his knees to begin prayer (and we all followed suit). I couldn’t understand a word of his prayer but I was overwhelmed to tears by the experience and the presence of God in this humble meeting. We sang an few hymns and then went on to another meeting with the head of the all Ukranian Union of Associations of Evangelical Christians Baptists (yes, that is directly off of a business card!).

From there it was back to the church where we met Alex from TWR (TransWorld Radio). He took us to lunch and then to his office across the river. All six of us crammed into his little car for the 40 minute ride. It looked like that familiar homecoming game at JCS!

On the way we drove through the center of Kiev and the plaza where the Orange Revolution took place.

Next we just happened to (by God’s grace) meet the Ukranina directors of Christian Camping International, who just happened to have offices upstairs from the TWR offices. Did I mention that this whole leg of the trip wasn’t supposed to happen? Our original teaching in Bulgaria fell through at the last minute so we came to Kiev to make contacts for future ministry opportunities. It’s been a full day.

On the way home from our last meetings we stopped off to walk around downtown on the main drag in Kiev. It is very modern but still has that “old city” feel in many ways. Now I’m back in what has become our favorite stop the “Coffee House” (pictured above behind the trolley). Check out this Latte!

Tomorrow we have another full day of meetings with ministry leaders here in town, and on Thursday we leave here at 4:30am to head to Madrid, Spain via Germany.

I am thinking a lot about everyone at home. As I type this I know that school is just getting out but it’s almost 9pm here. I have been slowly reading through the 3x5 cards that several students gave me. I am encouraged by many of them. I hope the Squirrels are safe.

Sofia, Bulgaria

Arrived here in Sophia around 2:30pm local time (7 hours later than J-town). It makes for a really weird day when all you get is a few hours sleep while curled up in a window seat on an A330.

We met up with Stoyko, who showed us to our hotel (very nice). It is wild to drive through the neighborhoods that were built under the socialist regime. Most are looking pretty ragged now. They have all been individually purchased now since obtaining independence from the Communist party in 1990, but it seems many still have a lot to learn about ownership of private property.

It has been a whirlwind this afternoon. Stoyko led us through some of the hot spots (literally, we saw some natural hot springs) and we ended up at Coffee Heaven (it's the real name of the coffee shop) where we talked ministry strategies for the future here in Bulgaria. Later we swung back by the airport to pick up our 4th team member and went out for a Bulgarian dinner complete with Bulgarian dancing.

Our original plans here were to stay for 4 days but at the last minute things changed. This city is filled with history, it is a shame we won't be here longer than 20 hours. Tomorrow we leave for Kiev, Ukraine. Here's a few pictures of Sophia...

The St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral, Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Sophia Bulgaria.


Former house of the President, now a museum.


A church building that dates back prior to the 11th Century.

Dinner out with the team.

Chillin' in New Amsterdam

Arrived safely in New Amsterdam, Netherlands, around 7:00 am. Had about 3 hours to kill before our flight to Bulgaria. Found this cool statue thing in the airport.