Gone to Greece!

Welcome to Athens, Greece

Glenn and I flew to Athens last Saturday for our Annual General Meeting which was for all our personnel in central and eastern Europe. It is a time of fellowship, worship and training. In all, we had about 900 men, women and children, and this includes our personnel and all the volunteers that came to help. (We had volunteers leading in worship, working with our children, assisting with educational testing and giving haircuts and massages!)


What is this????

WOW! I haven't seen one of these in a long time! Every once in a while we see something that looks out of place, like this water fountain. I'm not sure I've seen one of these since arriving in Budapest 2 1/2 years ago!


Evia Resort on Eritrea Island

We left Budapest at 1 pm, and after a 3 hour lay-over in Germany, we finally arrived in Greece about 9 pm, and had to wait for others to arrive from points across Europe. About 2:00 am, after filling our bottles from the icy cold water fountain, we boarded a bus and headed to Evia Resort on an island off the coast of Athens. It was a 1 1/2 hour trip, so we arrived at the hotel at 3:30 am! We were exhausted but were able to sleep until noon on Sunday.



Even though Glenn and I never had a minute free to enjoy the pool, we could enjoy the beauty of it as we walked past it several times each day. This picture only shows you about 1/4th of it! We had so many member care appointments and meetings, not to mention leading a session and having folks ask if they could talk with us about various things that we only made it to two of the sessions the whole week! (By the way, the session we led on developing interpersonal skills called Why Can't We Be Friends? went well. Thank you for praying for us!)

With our group being so large and our schedule so packed, we didn't have much time to visit with friends and meet new folks unless we had them for one of the member care appointments. This young lady though made sure to introduce herself to us and we were really glad she did! She had worked with our daughter for two summers in Senegal when Kari was a Journeyman, and now this young lady is working in Ukraine for 2 years.

Lottie Moon Christmas auction

Each year we have an auction as a fun way to give money to the Lottie Moon offering for foreign missions. Everyone of us save our money during the course of the year to be able to participate in the offering/auction and look forward to an evening of bidding against one another for coveted items. Each family brings a nice souvenir from their country and the volunteers that come out from America bring food items and the latest books or DVD movies to be auctioned. For the most part, the missionaries bid for the food, books and DVD's while the volunteers love to bid for the souvenirs from across central and eastern Europe. Our goal this year was to raise $100,000 through the auction and offering. The auction raised $80,000 but we don't have the total yet on how much was given via the offering.

Scoring tests

Most of the week, in addition to the member care appointments, I oversaw the educational testing we provided for our children. I had two ladies administering The Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Early Reading Diagnostic Test, and the Woodcock Johnson Test of Achievement to 50 of our children. I also had enlisted the help of a school psychologist to come test for learning disabilties for 7 children, and I had two volunteers from America who came as special education consultants to meet with our parents about their child's particular needs. Tuesday night we had a scoring party for the ITBS. One of the ladies, Barbara Guidetti, brought Oreos and Hostess Ding Dongs to keep our sugar level high as we worked way into the night. I think we finished scoring the tests about 11 pm!

Barbara meets with one of our moms

Barbara is actually our son's mother in law. Chris is married to Kate, and Kate's mother Barbara is a special education consultant in the public school system in New Jersey, so she came to be a resource for our parents. I was worried that there wouldn't be enough to keep her busy and that she would feel like she'd spent all this money to come but wasn't used; fortunately, the parents sought her out, but unfortunately, she was dead tired by time the week was over!

Our AGM officially ended on Friday evening and everyone was returning home on Saturday. Glenn and I had a horrible schedule for returning to Budapest! We were on the 2:30 AM (!) bus from the hotel to the airport, which takes 1 1/2 hours, to catch a 6:45 am flight to Germany. We then had a 7 hour lay-over in Munich, arriving in Budapest at 4:30 pm. We were to meet up with 2 people coming from the AGM in Greece to Budapest for medical care at 5 pm to help them get to the Eden House, but their flight was delayed 2 hours so we just had to wait in the coffee shop for them. It would take us almost 2 hours to go home and then turn right around to come back!

They arrived at 7 pm. We took them to the Eden House and got them settled in.

At 10:30 pm we headed BACK to the airport to pick up Barbara Guidetti who is here to visit with us for a week and to see our fine city. (We are looking forward to showing her our favorite places and introducing her to Hungary.) Her plane was slightly delayed. Good thing we'd both brought books!

Going through customs was a breeze

Her plane arrived at 12:20 am so we got home about 1:3o am (traffic isn't bad at that time of the morning) and went straight to bed! We were exhausted. We'd slept less than 5 hours in the past 48 hours.

Goodies from America!

We were soooo tired that we waited until the next morning for Barbara to show us all the goodies she and the ladies from her SALT group (Single Adults Learning Together) had brought for us. Books, DVD movies, CD's, food coloring, pen refills, brownie and cookie mixes, frosting tubs, Good 'n Plenty candy and pancake syrup! Oh, and The Maker's Diet book, which I will need after eating all the brownies and cookies and candy! I doubt if any of the SALT ladies read this blog, but if they do, we want them to know how much we appreciate their kindness and generosity, and how humbled we are that they wanted to share in this with Barbara-and they don't even know us! Thank you, ladies!

Apricots in abundance!

While we were in Greece for the week, our apricots ripened to readiness! This is our first year to really get any apricots from the tree. Our first year the street paving crew stripped the tree bare, leaving us only 3 apricots. The second year in the late spring we had a heavy frost that killed all the blossoms so we didn't get any apricots at all, but this year the weather was cooperative (and our street didn't need to be re-paved). Our tree is loaded!

We picked up all the rotten apricots from the ground and then gently shook the limbs to get the ripe apricots to fall off.

Glenn took 3-4 pounds of apricots to our neighbors and Barbara and I prepared the rest for freezing. There are still lots of apricots on the tree so we'll go pick more in a few days. Glenn is going to buy a dehydrator so that we can dry some for snacking through out the year. That will be a project for later this week!

We made apricot coulis for pouring over pound cake. (Kari, have you done this on your recipe blog?) We also froze some in large slices with a light syrup (2 bags) and some in smaller slices in heavy syrup (2 bags). Does anyone out there know how to freeze them (not in a syrup) for later use for making apricot bread and muffins?

Well, we're back in town for a few weeks and things should be pretty normal around here. I think our next trip is to Germany the first week in August, which will be to assist with member care appointments at the Annual General Meeting for our folks in western Europe.

Officially, as of July 1, our organization is under the new structure. Glenn and I will no longer be working only in the region of central and eastern Europe, but in all of Europe. Our land mass for which we are responsible has enlarged greatly, but we've also gained more personnel on the member care team. Other than that, we will just have to wait to see how much the changes really will affect us. Time will tell.

By the way, I want to wish my Dad (and Glenn's Dad) a belated Happy Father's Day! Living on another continent, it is really hard to keep up with the American holidays since we don't have reminders in stores, on tv and in the newspaper sales circulars. I have been blessed with a Dad who is very understanding and forgiving, even when his daughter totally forgets something as important as honoring her father on his special day. Thank you Dad for being so wonderful! You deserve much more! I love you.