Karneval in Samobor

Yesterday we took the family down to the Samborski fasnik which means the celebration of Karneval in Samobor (a little town near Zagreb). In Croatia (and most of Europe...I think) Karneval is a family holiday as opposed to a non-family friendly, adult event in New Orleans. The kids always dress up here and adults do sometimes as well. On Fat Tuesday, kids dress up in costumes and go around knocking on doors and people give out either 'krafne' which are basically donuts traditional around this time or they give kids money (something like $0.50). In Samobor they have 2 weeks worth of a festival and since it was a beautiful Saturday, we decided to dress the kids up and check it out. It's their custom to dress up in costume for this festival (and in general for other events around this holiday). We also wanted to take Lizzie to see one of her heroes, Fifi and the flower tots who were in concert. (Fifi is a popular cartoon character here). Lizzie thought that was pretty cool although she was just waking up from a nap so the pictures (below) don't show her true feelings. Anyway, here's some pics from the day. We had a great time.

Laura and the girls while enjoying traditional donuts called 'krafne'.

Lizzie went dressed up like a butterfly and was precious. Here she is getting a bird's eye view of the Fifi concert.

Here's Fifi and flower tots!

Bekah came dressed like a little flower. Cute, huh!

Here's Lizzie enjoying a krafna. Obviously she loved them.

Dear Americans...

Dear Americans,

Yesterday I purchased gas to fill up my car. I paid 8.39 kuna/liter. You may ask...what the who does that mean? Well, this translates into me purchasing 581 kuna worth of gas. You may still say...you're losing me, James. At the current rate of right at 5 kuna/1 dollar, this works out to a wopping $116. Yes, you read right. You may now ask...James, why are you telling me this? The reason is so that you may decide to be thankful for your seemingly high gas prices in America. Or said another way...stop your complaining! :-)

Prayer Trip

Yesterday I went on a prayer trip to Maribor, Slovenia with Andrej & Nina Lovse. They are our dear friends we've probably told you about before who are Slovenians living in Zagreb for their schooling. They have it on their hearts to go back to their home town (Maribor - 2nd largest town in Slovenia) to start a work among the youth and they've asked us to help them get ready for this.

The trip was highly successful! Our goal was to begin to get God's heart and God's strategy for that city...and this is what happened. We also met with another American fella who works with youth all around Slovenia. He was a great connect for Andrej and Nina and they will potentially have a deeper working relationship in the future. Here's a few pictures from the day.
Above: We took a walk up above the city in some vineyards. From there we could see the whole city. We went up there so we could pray for the different high schools and for the people of Maribor in general. In this picture Andrej is explaining to us the different sections of town, where the high schools, student centers, colleges, etc. are located.

Here's a picture of as much Maribor as I could get in one picture. Maribor is not huge (130,000 people) however it is the 2nd largest city in the nation making it a hub for the eastern half of the nation. High school students from about a 60 km radius come to high school in Maribor.

Here is a picture of Andrej, Nina, and Josh (the American working in Slovenia) in front of Nina's old high school which is also the top high school in town. We stayed there for a bit to pray and hear God's heart.

Here's a video of Bekah weeks away from walking free-style.

Winter fun

Yesterday (Saturday) Laura and I took the kids out to the lake nearby our apartment. We wanted to get the kids outside. Lizzie was going kinda crazy indoors (and therefore we were) and we wanted to see the lake frozen over. Here's some pics from our short outing.






On a different note, we had a great church service today. A new member of the church shared his testimony. I was helping teach the little kids so I unfortunately missed it. I know the basic story though. He was an old drug addict, gambling addict, and through that life, became involved in deeper criminal activity. He eventually spend some time in jail and during that time met Jesus. His testimony is that he made a mess of his life and the only one who could straighted things up was Jesus. We're thankful for him and his family.

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!