Hello Croatia!

       Off to West Palm Beach for Orientation

         Hello to all of our supporters and prayer warriors! Thank you so much for all of your prayers so far, they have definitely been felt. After our 13 hour layover in Germany we were ready to turn around and come back home. We finally made it to Croatia and have been nonstop ever since.

        

      We got in late Friday night and our leader had our apartment ready for us. This is our apartment building for the summer. As you can tell their apartment buildings are pretty plain from their time as a communist country, but they are all very nice inside with a lot of room.

     

      Saturday we met with our team here to discuss plans and details for our trip. We also got a small tour of the town we are in so that we are able to get around and go to the market. Sunday we were able to go to a Croatian baseball game, because our leader is an umpire for the league. After we got back from the game we went to a village just outside of our town where the Roma people live. Roma are what we would call gypsies. They are very poor and their houses are in pretty bad condition. They get most of their things by going through the garbage and or asking for money. Very dark community in desperate need for hope. We got to be a part of a kids club that they do on a weekly basis. The kids seem to love the club, but mainly the attention and love they get from the leaders. Their goal and ours while we get to participate is to love on these kids and be able to share Bible stories with them so that one day they may receive Jesus. Then also to be able to reach the parents through this. A long process ahead, but God is good and anything is possible. We also got to go to the center court in town to watch Croatia play in the first rounds of the Euro Cup. This was lots of fun and definitely an experience to see all the dedicated fans, as you can see in the picture we dressed for the occasion also.

        From Monday until Wednesday we have been working at the church that they have started. They have just bought a new house so that they do not have to rent out a building. They are doing a lot of construction and so we have been transporting bricks, scraping bricks, working on the house, and saving as many bricks as we can for future use. I've had the opportunity to help in the kitchen and learn how to make some Croatian dishes, while most of the men do all of the hard work.

       This week has been fun so far, we will hopefully start language classes in the next couple of days. We are excited and ready for these classes because the communication barrier has probably been one of the hardest things. Please continue to pray for us as we get to minister to the Roma children and for strength as we work at the church. Also for us to form relationships with the locals around us so that we may be able to share the gospel and invite people to church. We are only here for a short time, but would really like to use all of our opportunities to glorify God.

       We got to celebrate our 2nd anniversary at a local restaurant, which was beautiful and delicious. They also had an English menu which was a plus :)
       Disasters thus far, is that I can't use my hair dryer or straightener because I didn't realize I needed a converter instead of an adapter. But before I realized all of this I tried to use my adapter and blew the fuse. So now we have no adapter to the European sockets. Secondly, I almost broke our washer, and we wouldn't have been able to wash clothes, but luckily I stopped it before that occurred. Lastly, our landlord forgot to inform us that we are supposed to drain the water in our shower very slowly, or else it will leak into our neighbors below us! So we had a Croatian man come out of his apartment and try to explain the problem to us with little ability to speak English.