Malta, continued...

Our week on the island of Malta went by quickly. Most of the week was spent doing member care appointments for each of the families...

and a few Skype calls to some families in between sessions...




But on Wednesday, all of us spent one afternoon in town doing ministry among the Maltese. We passed out tracts and packets of information about the local Baptist church and prayer-walked the old capital city of Mdina.

We had one free afternoon and so we went into a nearby town to do a little "sightseeing" and check out the local grocery stores. My thing! We found Pop-tarts, cake mixes, frosting tubs, brown sugar, yellow mustard, Swiss Miss Hot chocolate packets, and Dr. Pepper (including Dr. Pepper ZERO!)

This was a gorgeous church!

We stayed an extra day to enjoy the sights and to put some margins in our lives.

HUGE cactus plants everywhere!

The whole island is nothing but rock! I'm not sure how anything grows since the soil is so rocky, but there were lots and lots of these yellow flowers across the countryside!

Glenn poses for the first of many photos that day.

We climbed down near the water which was very choppy that afternoon.

We saw this awesome rock formation. There are boats that take folks into caves right here, but not at this time of year because of the waters being too rough. Since we missed out on that experience, we'll just have to come back another time!!

On Valentine's Day, Glenn and I walked into town for our special dinner and as we were strolling through the square, we saw these posters of Superman taped on the side of phone booths and store windows. There is a Bible verse, Philippians 4:13, written in Maltese on the posters: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." It was just kind of unusual.

Thursday was the most beautiful day of the week but Friday morning Glenn and I woke to howling winds and gray skies. Turns out the winds were blowing at 65 miles per hour off the waters. Gale force winds of 5 and 6, whatever that means. Signs were blown off, trees lost their limbs, even a roof from a house was "relocated" due to the high winds. Evidently, Malta experiences these strong winds occasionally, but it really surprised us! I was surprised we were able to fly out on Saturday because the winds were still blowing, though not quite as fiercely.

We flew from Malta to Frankfurt, Germany where we had a 1 1/2 hour lay-over. When I went passed this water fountain, I was shocked! I've only seen an American-style water fountain one other place in the past four years! It's weird that something like a water fountain would be such a surprise.

And this was another surprise! Earlier today on our walk home from church, we saw this ambulance parked on the street and, if you can't read the fine print, it says on the side panel: Fire Department Pesthidegut. FIRE DEPARTMENT! The Hungarians have their own word for fire department so I was kind of surprised to see it written in English! Honestly, give me 10 years here and there won't be a language barrier anymore 'cuz everything will be in English!

It's good to be home!