Catching Up!

That's what I'm doing today, catching up. I've been away for a bit, but i'm back. It's funny how much I miss this whole blogging thing when I don't do it.

Anyhoo, we had out Spiritual Conference with Bro. Bill Smith and it was fabulous! He did and outstanding job and covered many of the battles our people are currently going through.
We had a great crowd each night and many people praying at the alters. Sadly there were 3 unsaved people at the conference and they remain unsaved, not because they didn't have opportunity.

Here are some pictures I took, not many but some. Here's the line-up (literally) of our men at the conference, not all but the main ones. L-R Bro. Rajko is the national pastor that Johnny trained, Johnny is next (handsome huh?), Bro. Bil Smith, our honored guest and Bro. Dave Fraunhoffer, missionary in Hungary. Bro. Smith preached four times each night, over three days we covered 12 lessons or sermons. It was great and he did an excellent job. Oh yea Bro. Rajko translated for him every night.
On Sunday morning we had the priviledge of hearing Bro. Fraunhoffer preach to us. He did an wonderful job and brought the sermon we all needed to hear. Here is a picture from one of the meetings. You can see the crowd and the building. If you think our building looks sorta American in style that's because it is, we had 23 men come from the states with all the material and they built this building in 8 days. Really! We have a very unique building since it's probably the only one of it's kind in the country.

Anyhow, the conference went great and we look forward to seeing Bro. Smith next year as he returns to preach out 2nd spiritual conference.

Oh lest I forget, guess what wonderful thing is happening over at Sew, Mama, Sew!? She is hosting a tutorial contest and it's great. There are already some great tuts and I can't wait to see what else comes in. Oh yea and she's offering a $25 gift certificate to the Sew, Mama, Sew! store and trust me, they have great stuff! So, if you have a tutorial you would like to enter, please do. I can't wait to see all the entries.

Guess what? In less than three weeks my friend, my bosom pal is coming to see me. I can't wait, it's gonna be so much fun. They will arrive at the end of this month and be here for 9 glorious days. We're gonna be so goofy and have so much fun. Oh yea and when they get here I don't know how much I'll be blogging but I'll be taking lots of pictures!

Well I'm going to do some decorating today, well actually just putting some more stuff on the walls. I don't know if that's decorating or not but I'm gonna finally get that black frame grouping up. I was thinking of doing some vinyl lettering for it, but I decided against it. I thought about cutting out, "Today's moments are tomorrows memories" but I don't think I will, not now though but maybe later.

I have some new blooms in my yard. Actually one one is a bloom, I'm not sure what the others are. I love, love, love the purple Magnolias, aren't they pretty??
Then this critter and it's yellow blooming berries, I guess. Please, if you know what it is, leave a comment and let me know.
Lastly this tree, I figured it would have some blooms but this isn't what I expected. It's pretty though and the red is a nice change.
A new name, Praise the Lord Jasmin was saved yesterday evening. He's 20 and he'll be coming to church on Sunday. Pray he will decided to be baptized and get faithful. One more soul down, only 4,300,000 to go!

Have a great Weekend Y'all!!

Pretty Busy for a Few Days!

As I sit here and type I realize it's the calm before the storm, not a bad storm but a storm of activitiy. Today we start out Spiritual Warfare Conference at church. We have guest speaker Bro. Bill Smith flying in to speak for us. He'll be making his way down from Budapest, Hungary with missionary Dave Fraunhoffer and three of his children. We're so excited to have them and our kids can't wait to speak English to someone. :0)

We start the conference off tonight with a 45 minute secession and then dinner together and then another 45 minute secession. Tomorrow and Sunday night we will do the same with a 1hour service Sunday morning.

I have lots of cooking on the agenda. Tonight the church will provide roastil chickens and we will fix all the sides, Croatian style. Tomorrow we'll be having real Italian spaghetti. Croatia is right next to Italy so we have some pretty authentic cooks. Oh yea and real Italian isn't the same as the Olive Garden! :0) I personally prefer American Italian but that's a different thing!
Oh yea and Sunday night will be Goulash. The Northern part of Croatia was once part of the Hungarian Empire so they're pretty good at making Goulash too.
Should be some good eats!!

Oh yea and I'll be taking lots of photos too, so stay tuned!

Oh yea for all you Texans out there, look what I found. Did you know that there are blue, white and pink bonnets in Texas. All my years in Texas and I never saw a pink blue bonnet, :0) but they're real. Aren't they pretty. I actually have some blue bonnet seeds here in Croatia that I'm going to plant this year. Hey now that I think about it, there is probably a law against planting foreign florals, I bet, but ignorance is bliss!!

I read the "story" of how the pink bonnet came to be...They say that after the battle at the Alamo with Santa Ana, the pink bonnets were discovered growing down stream from the Alamo. They say the blood of those brave Texans colored the bonnets pink. In truth, the original pink bonnet was first found south of San Antonio growing along side the road. Very interesting.

Also they say that the flower of Texas isn't the blue bonnet but instead it's the species of bonnets that include all three colors (white, blue and pink). Just so you'd know!

Oh yea before I forget, Tracy over at Unless the Lord posted a wonderful tutorial for making a crochet needle case. I tried to make one of these the other day with out much success. I'm stubborn and tend to want to do things with out instruction and usually have to go back and redo it. So I'm going to redo it using Tracy's tut.

Happy Sewing!

Oh yea one more thing, I keep remembering all the things I wanted to tell y'all. :0)
There's a new craft blog for kids, The Craft Crow, it's really fun and has lots of links and ideas for things to do with the kids.

Praying you all have a great weekend and Lord's Day!!!

Just Life and Stuff

One of the blessings to serving in Croatia are the people, not all the time but most. We are very blessed to be able to work with the Roma (Gypsy) people and some of our dear friends are Gypsy.

I got a surprise the other day form some of our Gypsy friends, Johnny came home with a huge bag of pork, an uncut slab of pig. So guess who got to weed through the stuff and figure out what was what and how to cut it.

Now you have to know me, I'm a city gal and not to keen about cutting up sides of pork but I'm pretty proud of myself today. This is what I got from the haul. 3 bags of pork cutlets, or I think they are, some ribs and a pretty big chunk of meat that I couldn't identify that I'm going to use for chopped barbecue.

I'm going to cook some of these cutlets later, I'll let you know how they are tomorrow. :-)
Okay now for some not-so-gross stuff. Spring has sprung really early in Croatia. Usually we can have snow until April many times. Since the first of the year we had not had any snow and I guess that has hastened Spring, but you won't see me complaining, I love Spring.

NAME THAT PLANT

I went out and looked around the yard at some of the plants and bushes in the yard. I found lots of evidence of spring. This little rounded plant/bush, don't know what it is but I'm sure it's gonna have some nice flowers soon. If you know what this plant is, please leave a comment and let me know.
Oh yea and I think these are some sort of willows and they are blooming. Oh my isn't the little peak of yeller nice? Same as above, if you know what it is please leave a comment.
Finally my next one, is a pretty little tree and it looks like it's gonna have some nice big blooms. Okay what is it??

Oh yea, one more thing, I added some new links to the sidebar. I actually added a new list, Super Cool Tuts I love following tutorials online so I linked to some of my favorites.


Please go by and check out this totally neat link, 56 Free Apron Patterns and it's for real too. Very cool link and the site is cool too. Enjoy!!


Oh yea for those of you who don't enjoy Mondays.

Happy Monday!