May 22-23, 2014

Wow.  So much has gone on in the past few days.  It has completely worn me out.  But I guess that's what happens when you share the Gospel with so many people and get twelve times more exercise than normal because you have to walk everywhere.  Oh well!!

But anyway.  Yesterday was such an incredible day.  In the morning I woke up and went to Caina Hisha and got myself a coffee and just spent a good time just diving into the word and learning more about a new style of studying the bible that we are trying to master during this project called a synthetic study.  I am so excited to keep studying this method because it seems like this is the method I would constantly use to study the Bible.

Anyways, later as me and my friend Taylor were sharing, we got to talk to three girls.  Each one of them were extremely interesting and had very interesting viewpoints.  It was still heartbreaking to hear about why they wouldn't believe in God, but we were able to talk to them in depth about what they did believe in and were able to share part of the Gospel with them.  Although we didn't see results of any sort, I am still trusting that because I stepped out in faith, God will provide the results, whatever they may be.  After we shared, Taylor and I had a little bit of time left and we just prayed.  We prayed for this wonderful country we are in, we prayed for the people that their curiosity would be sparked and they would seek what God has for them, we prayed for our team and all the other teams in all the other countries that are or will be sharing the gospel with the nations.  It was so encouraging to be able to do that and it just made the day that much better.

I honestly love these girls! Including Stormy who is
taking the picture!

After going back to the hostel, navigating our way through a foreign Aldi, and returning from the store with our goods, the staff had left for dinner at another Staff members house and the guys were all going out to eat, so all of us ladies on the project decided it would be a wonderful idea to have a ladies night together.  So, we all chipped in and started to create a wonderful home cooked meal that would make the guys jealous.  However, we didn't have any sharp knives to cut anything with, and all the large pots and pans were locked in a staff members room.  Butter knives were our solution to the cutting issues and as for cooking our meal, we had a grill!  It all worked perfectly right until we had to light the charcoal.  For 20 minutes Riley, Stormy, Katie and I stood around the grill trying to get some sort of flame going.  (It was only later when I found what we actually needed in order to light the charcoal.  Oh well!)  After so much frustration, we all linked hands around the grill and prayed that God would grant us fire.  And sure enough, after a few minutes and a burning washcloth that was covered with hairspray, we had a fire going to light the coals.  The chicken was cooked and a fantastic meal of cajun chicken, salad, fruit salad, and grilled asparagus and pineapple was consumed.  After dinner, we all went back to the center and indulged in gelato from Cacaos and spoke words of encouragement to everyone.  I am so thankful that I get to spend the next few weeks with such wonderful women of God.

Today was a little bit of a different story however.  First off, the morning was quite interesting.  The night before, my roommates convinced me to go running with them a little bit at 7:45 in the morning since we had to get ready and be at our meeting by 10.  So, the next morning rolls around and I wake up feeling pretty rested, but still slightly groggy until I look at the clock.  It read 8:30 and every single one of my roommates were still sound asleep.  So no running for me!!!  After a chill morning in the room, I was ready for the day.

Because most students travel home on the weekends, not many students are on their respective campuses therefore, sharing is a little harder.  So, instead of doing normal outreach, we had invited students to come to the local park and hang out with us.  It was a long afternoon of volleyball, conversation and fellowship with our project people and a few Slovene students that came to hang with us!  It was so much fun, until it got super cloudy and started to rain on us, although it wasn't bad.  Afterwards it was a nice afternoon and evening of just chilling at the hostel until we had to go to our weekly meeting, where we studied part of the book of  Ephesians and got to worship and interact with some Slovene students involved in the ministry here.

But of course, after the meeting we just couldn't go home.  No.  For night number 3 in a row, I got gelato with friends!  After we all go gelato, we walked around and found a gazebo where they were playing fun music and a bunch of couples were swing dancing.  Of course some of our people joined in and were soon followed by some extremely drunk guys who dropped their glass vodka bottle right on the stage and stumbled (literally stumbled) off soon after.  After hurrying to the bus stop, we had another interesting interruption with a man that was completely plastered, stumbling everywhere, holding an unlit cigarette, and was wiping blood off of a large gash in his forehead.  Thankfully, we had some great guys who distracted him and our bus came quickly and we were able to get away before anything had a chance to happen.

So all in all, a very interesting couple of days.  Stay tuned.  The next post will be about how I climbed a mountain just to get donuts



!