Monday, July 18, 2011

LT summer and getting ready for US visit









Our Lithuanian camping trip was near Plateliai lake. Our "guide" for the experience was our dear friend Grazina who has been a part of our lives much more lately. She was able to check out the trails when it was too difficult to sleep. (She had offered to have the boys in a tent with her and that was part of the challenge!) So we got to hike, pick ground strawberries, see wooden statues, cook Shashlik, and more!


The Stave family returned from their visit to the USA in time for a few visits from the kids. The boys especially wanted to invite Isak this time and it was his first real play date.





Friday and Saturday we participated in the Free Christian Church Men's camp. "We" because we were all heading to Alytus after that... see below. And translator Grazina was with us too. Housing was together for our family so, it was not quite a break for mom, but I didn't have to cook! and there were some meeting times I could skip :)





we had a trip to Alytus after the Men's camp to attend the newest of the Free Christian churches there with missionary family Marian Kozak from Germany. The boys had a blast playing at their yard in the afternoon... especially because there was opportunity to do rough housing things and play football (European style of course).

We decided part way through June that we really did want to visit family this year especially since we did not have intense ministry scheduled for July into August and because Gregg's family had been having quite a lot of trips to the doctors and we wanted to be able to see them. Enter frequent flyer miles program... that made it possible to get the rewards for loyalty to a carrier over these years of travel back and forth to Lithuania. Just as we were packing to go David lost his first tooth. And Erik had a fall twisting his wrist very badly and was in a cast. So that was their "surprises" for the grandmas when we got to America.