White Christmas

This is the front of our apartment building. Our entrance is the lower stairwell in the center of the picture.

We enjoyed a quiet, peaceful white Christmas this year. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well.

Church Christmas Party

This year we debated about where and how and when we ought to have a church Christmas party. We knew it would be a great opportunity to invite friends who normally wouldn't come to a "church event". Our issue was, if 20 adults plus kids all come and they all invite their friends, where are we gonna hold this 50 person party? The Masseys sacrificed their house as it was really the only option. We decided to have a big feast with a huge spread of Croatian Christmas dishes, then have some singing after which Goran would share a quick message, then we'd give gifts to the kids. My part in this was the singing, which was an interesting task. This was not an easy task as it meant learning Croatian Christmas songs...and I don't just mean "Jingle Bells" translated (although we did sing that). What ended up happening is Croatian Christmas tunes are all from the Catholic Church and there are only a few in our church that have a Catholic background. (Many of them grew up atheist or just not attending church, therefore they did not know the songs.) I ended up having one of our brothers help lead a few traditional Croatian Christmas carols which turned out to be a lot of fun. Anyway, the whole night was really great! We had a bunch of people there...I'd guess some where around 35 adults and 15-20 kids. It was crazy, but really successful. So, here's some pictures from the evening.

Above: The table of feasting. Pictured are (left to right) Jaksa (new church member), Damir (my worship partner), a guest (I didn't catch her name), Marica & Stef (the Masseys neighbors who sell them goat milk).

Above: More feasting. That's Roger Massey in the foreground on the left.

Above: Dalia (just got baptized last month) and Maja Mehanovic (Damir's wife)

Above: From left to right - a guest who came with Nerka (the girl in the middle), Nerka (new member of the church...engaged to Jaksa who was pictured above), Erin Massey (our teammate).

Above: Besim with our little girl, Bekah. Besim is a long time friend of ours who Laura knew even before we came to Croatia. He's a true friend and feels more like family than friend.

Above: The kids sit and listen to a beautiful Christmas story read by Dalia (pictured above) complete with slides on the TV.
Above: Who is that freaky looking Santa?!? That's right...it's Roger Massey (our teammate) handing out gifts to our little ones. The kids loved it!