Back to School

We did our semester kick off yesterday by heading to one university to talk to students about God. We tried out a new tool called "soularium" which is a set of 40 pictures of random things. We asked students to identify pictures that...
1. Describe their life right now.
2. What they wish was part of their life.
3. Select a photo that describes God.
4. What they have experienced spiritually.
5. What they wish were true of their spiritual life right now.

So, by students selecting photos to describe their life and spiritual views we get an amazingly quick and often deep look into their experiences and how they see things. It opens the door for questions and great dialogue. We also get to share what we believe about God, how we have experienced Him, and how He can change their life and give them hope. If you want to know more about this tool you can go to the soularium website by just clicking on the title to this blog post.
So we did that for a few hours and then went to the other university that evening to meet students in the dorms and hand out welcome back gift bags and do some evangelism too. This too went really well and we had a student who has been a part of Agape come with us, which made it even cooler.

In all it was a brilliant day. My team did a great job, I am so proud of them. They Rock!

Conference call

So, we got back from our stint conference in Spain a week ago. It was great to go be with other stinters from all over Europe who are doing what we are doing and know what we are going through. We also got a chance to meet some really cool people and have some sweet times of Bible teaching and worship In English!!! (I say that because we rarely get to sing worship songs in English, so it was cool.)

We were also praying that God would use this week away to help us figure out what is next in life for us after we leave Lithuania in 5 months. I think He did answer our prayers and helped us narrow down a little more what's next for Sharon and me. More about that later though...

Praise God for Kickers!!

Sharon and I just got back from vacation to Rome. It was amazing to get away with my wife, to rest, and to think. The funny thing, is that we weren't planning a vacation this year but our Crusade mentors encouraged us to take one when they came to visit us at the end of November. So we started thinking and both agreed that Rome would be the highest on our list of places to go in Europe. We found some great tickets on a low fair airline and decided to get away. We were planning on using money from our savings back home to finance the endeavor but then got word of how much our kicker check from last year's taxes was and realized the cost would be much more affordable. So we had a great time thanks to the great state of Oregon; that is for taking too much taxes and giving some back!

Some highlights were obviously the food, history, and art. I personally loved visiting the Vatican and especially the Sistine Chapel. Sharon was quite fond of the Colosseum. We both however are not fond of sleeping in the Frankfurt Hahn airport, but it was an experience.

We took a lot of shots we took along the way. Click on the photo below to see a few.

Rome if you want to

B dayz

This last week was also a week of birthdays for our team. Jason's was on Monday and Tiana's on Thursday. For Jason's big day we went bowling, got some pizza, and then took our vintage sweet car (84 civic) to a parking lot where we could "play" in the snow and ice. We took turns driving and drifting as we raced and slid around the old parking lot. It was fun.


For Tiana's big day we met for pizza with our team and some of Tiana'a Lithuanian friends and then had some tasty chocolate cake at the girls place. In all is was a very celebratory week.



Glad we got such a cool team!!!

Baltic Staff Conference

We had the Baltic Staff Conference last week (2nd-7th). It is a conference for all the Agape staff in the Baltics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) to come together to be encouraged and renewed spiritually. Each year a different country is in charge of hosting and planning the conference and this year was Lithuania's turn. It was a great conference and Sharon and I got to be a part of the planning and production of the conference. Sharon helped to co-lead planning and I was the MC. Also, both of us got to teach workshops. Sharon taught on how to use life coaching strategies in evangelism and a workshop on discipleship. I got to teach on the power of using a Bible read through for discipleship. In all we had a great time meeting the other amazing and really fun people who have given their lives to ministering here in the Baltics.