In the 2 weeks since I last blogged...

Funny how quickly time can go by between blogs!  I didn't mean for 2 weeks to pass since the last time I was here.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I've been grocery shopping 5 times.  My grocery shopping is almost always limited to what I can or want to carry in my daypack or in bags.  A lot of times, just for the exercise, I walk to the grocery store.  It's a little over a mile.  I seldom walk home though burdened as I am with $15-20 worth of groceries so I walk about a quarter a mile and catch a bus back close to home.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I've been to the Children's Hospital and held abandoned babies 3 times.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I've hosted 3 dinners at my house- Valentine's Night for some friends, a Sunday afternoon for the kids from the Messianic Church and then again last Sunday for the guys/girls in our worship band at church AND I had brunch at a friend's apartment with a bunch of the same friends.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I got a haircut and participated in an all-morning staff meeting.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I've had 2 language lessons and 3 band practices.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I helped lead worship for a youth meeting and spoke at a youth meeting and attended a meeting about refugee ministry in Uzhgorod.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I've started working on 5 new worship songs in Russian.

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I took 2 days off; one of them I think I slept pretty much ALL day long! (My pedometer says I walked 129 steps that day).

In the 2 weeks since I last blogged I met two different Ukrainian friends for coffee.  That was only part of the coffee I drank in the last 2 weeks.

And in the last 2 weeks I since I last blogged I walked about 102,000 steps or about 45 miles.

Tie tying contest...um, yeah, Ira is showing them how to tie a Tie.

Qwiki

This is kinda fun.  I created this brief slide show thingy with a new App called Qwiki.  To me it looks sort of like a slide show/ mini-movie version of Instagram.  It's really pretty clever.  It can automatically pull pictures/videos with the same approximate date (or maybe some other identifying information) and then add stock music or pull from your library.  Or of course, you can exercise manual control in creating the sequence and adding music...like I did below.  

One drawback is it's necessarily pretty short...I'd love to use it to make a full length slide show.  

Qwiki is not just a multi-media App, it's also a Social Network like Instagram so you can follow and be followed.  Neat concept.

Another "Semester" is in the books.

We call our "Bi-Monthly" coaching sessions "Semesters".  I don't know why.  When I think "semester" I think of two units in a year.  We meet with the churches we're coaching every other month for 14 months and call each session a "Semester".  Again, I don't know why.

But I digress.  We just finished our Third Semester with the church we're coaching in Kalush and I have to say I think it was the best.  I absolutely meant it when I shared with the whole church Sunday morning that with each successive visit I love their kids and Youth Leadership team more and more.

I'm sure that's the reason why this past weekend was so much fun.  We're starting to get to know them and they're getting to know us.  Their leaders and their students are sponges soaking up the training and working hard to implement the strategy.

When we go back in April for the 4th "Semester" we get to do something with them all day Saturday "just for  fun" in order to both emphasize the importance of fellowship in their team and to give us all a little break.  You know? Teams that play together stay together.  That's the idea.

It's hard to imagine a weekend being more fun than this last one was though.

Be in prayer for them.  Their teenagers face all the issues kids back in the States face with one really noticeable difference: Most Protestant churches here are likened to a "sect" which really makes sharing their faith a challenge.