Busy Weekend

Well I was going to write a blog post about our busy but sweet weekend. Then I saw Peter and Jen's post about it so instead of trying to recreate the wheel I'll just send you to their blog, cause Jen did an amazing job. Double click on the title of this post "Busy Weekend" and it should take you to their Blog, or click on their link "Peter and Jen" on the lower right side of our blog.

Thanks Jen!

Here are a few more pictures for fun.









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Horsing Around

So some of our friends back home saw that Kaunas was in the international news a few weeks ago. Its true, there was a girl who, after a big student festival at KTU, got a little tipsy and made the mistake of climbing into the giraffe cage at the local zoo behind the university. Luckily she is ok, but if you want to see the article go to www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18562479/

The student festival was called Rafes and is held at KTU, which is one of the universities we work at. We went to the festival with our friend Dalia (above) who also happens to be our language tutor and a student at KTU. It was great, the school brought in a horse jumping competition, bungee jumping, and a bunch of fun and goofy games. In all it was a great day hanging out with students and partaking in the fun of the festival. Here are some pictures from the day.

Creative Prayers

We have our team Bible Study & Prayer on Fridays. This past week we covered Galations through II Timothy and then Peter led our prayer time. He had us each choose a different book from what we had read, then gave us about a half hour to come up with a prayer or response to things written in that book, then we shared what we had written with each other. I (Sharon) was excited to get my favorite book - Philippians! So I wanted to share with you the prayer I wrote for our team inspired by the book of Philippians:

"As you learn to live in the context of everything Lithuanian, remember that you are My Child. No matter what happens conduct yourself in a manner worthy of Me. My Child, seek to do everything without complaining or arguing so that those around you would see that having Me in your life makes a difference. I know that you are still learning what it means to follow me. Don't let past mistakes hold you back. Forget about those things - we've already dealt with them. Look at Me and press on. Stand firm My Child. I am so proud of you! I know it's hard so let me leave you with this: Rejoice! Yes, that's what I said - Rejoice! I am here with you. Don't let anxiousness overtake you, but bring it to Me in prayer - again and again as often as you need. And be thankful - I have good things for you in this. I will give you My peace in a way that's hard to explain. I will guard your heart and your mind - your feelings and your thoughts. Look at Me. My Child, receive My peace."

It takes two

Well for the last 2 months Sharon and I have been talking a tango class for an hour a week in hopes of hanging out with students and becoming more cultured at the same time. Honestly, its tough most of the students we started with dropped and know its just 5-7 of us and only 2 of us are guys. We have fun but I stink at tango! Oh the correlations I could make between dance and life and how leading an intricate dance is hard work. But that is for a different post at a different time.

Tadas, the guy on the left, is our master tango instructor and I am his whipping boy.

Good times in the dorms

Sorry its been a month since I last posted, its been busy and we've been tired. So to catch you up to speed....

Well a week and a half ago we were in the dorms asking students questions again. It was 2 in the afternoon and it had already been a long a frustrating day. I was upset about something and dealing with some unexplainable anxiety and Sharon was too, in fact the whole team was having one of "those days." But that was the clue that something was going to happen! So with bad attitudes and a begrudging motives we went to knock on dorm room doors for 2 hours. The first and only door Sharon and I knocked on that day was a second year student named Mindaugas. We asked him about his studies and stuff and then jumped into the questions, which were...

1. What was your religious experience as a child?
2. How has that experience changed you as a person?
3. Do you believe God exists?
4. Who, in your opinion, is Jesus Christ?
5. If you could know God personally, on a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your desire to know God?

*Interesting note: Some students will say that they don't believe in God or aren't sure if he exists for question three, but assert that Jesus is the son of God for question four. Everyone knows the religious answer for who Jesus is but yet many students don't believe in God so the fact that He is God's son doesn't matter.

Back to the story: We got to the third question and asked if he believed in God. Mindaugas said that he wasn't sure, but was still deciding. He told us that there are pros and cons for both sides. We told him thats true and that our job isn't to convince him or prove to him that God exists, that's God's job. Sharon and I shared our stories of who Jesus is and how we met Him. Then I said, "Mindaugas, tonight before you go to sleep pray and ask God to show if He is real or not." I also mentioned to be ready though because if you come to the conclusion that God is real then you have to do something with that knowledge, you respond by giving your life to Him and thats no small thing!

We continued to talk for an hour and 45 min and he asked great questions, Jason even came and shared his story so that Mindaugas could see that Jesus meets different people in different ways and that Jesus would meet him in the way he needed. We left and gave him our contact info if he had more questions. Later that night we chatted on the internet for an hour and I reminded him to pray and ask God if He is real. Mindaugas replied with "no, not yet." I told him that I appreciated his honesty and consistency between logic and life.

Please pray that when it is the right time God reveals Himself to Mindaugas.