Gettin' Chilly and Headin' South

Michelin Mama Longs for a Wood Stove

It's starting to get cold here and I'm wearing so many layers, I'm starting to look like the Michelin Man! I know you're glad I don't have a picture to share!! Even as I sit here writing, I am wearing four layers!

The houses in Prilep have no heat built in; most homes heat with wood stoves. Even at the kids' school, each schoolroom has a little wood stove and throughout the day they throw in logs to keep the room toasty.

If you look behind Daniel you can see the stove in the corner.

We bought electric heaters (convection) for our house. Since Kyle has been travelling so much we thought it'd be better if I didn't have to worry about chopping wood and starting the fire each day. However, after our last electric bill, we are now reconsidering! Even wearing my four layers, I'm still cool and as I said, it's only STARTING to get cold!! As it is, we keep all doors to all rooms shut, hoping to keep in what warm air we have while trying to shut out the cold air. Walking out into the hallway or stairwell is pretty chilly! Many Macedonian families all sleep in one room (usually the living room) in the winter, so only one room has to be heated; we're considering that option too!

Last night we were visiting some new friends and their living room was so cozy that we are now very tempted to get a wood stove. I may have become a master wood-chopper and fire-starter by the next time you see me!

Christmas Party

Wednesday nights we hold conversational English classes as a way to meet the people of Prilep. As a result, our Arkansas volunteers were invited to visit some students' homes, some students joined the guys for football on Thanksgiving day, and some have come to our house for coffee. This Wednesday night will be the last class for the semester – except it will be a party instead of class and it will be at our ministry center. You may remember that our Arkansas volunteers helped paint it. We now have carpets, couches and curtains – and a Christmas tree! We'll have some of our Macedonian Christian books to give some away to our guests.

We will have another grand opening in January, when things get going again after the holidays, and we'll have regular gatherings in the ministry center (or cafe or reading room!).

We are so excited to get things started with the center. Our teammates Jeff & Amy Williams have really put a lot of time and effort into it! Thank you to all of you who have contributed to our center! We'd love to have you stop in for some coffee!!!

Christmas in Kenya

Kyle's parents, Cherry & Vance, have graciously invited us to Kenya for Christmas. We will be leaving Friday and will go first to visit Kyle's sister, Cara, and her family who are serving in Tanzania. We have never been to Cara's home so this will be special treat for all of us. Cara says it is “hot, hot, hot!“ there so I'll be shedding some layers before we leave!

Rebekah will turn 12 years old while we're there and is going to her very first MK (missionary kid) retreat and even though she's a European MK who'll stand out among African MKs, she is so excited to be going with her cousins Caitlynn and Laurynn!

We'll be in Tanzania for a week and then go to Kenya for the rest of our visit. We'll actually celebrate Christmas after the New Year when we're all together.

I'll do my best to update the blog from Kenya. Email seems to work well enough but we'll see how reliable the internet service is; I promise to write it all up offline and at least try to upload it!

Thanksgiving comes to Prilep

Thanksgiving Thursday
We had a great Thanksgiving – we celebrated twice: on Thanksgiving Day with eight Macedonian guests and again on Saturday with our team. Our Macedonian guests only knew of Thanksgiving from movies, so we enjoyed introducing them to dressing, green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole. (I know the pic looks like we didn't feed them, but we forgot to take the pic until after we had cleared everything!!) They seemed to like it all but especially liked the sweet potato casserole – which, truth be known, I make with pumpkin since sweet potatoes aren't grown here. Anyway, they loved the faux sweet potato casserole but they all took a bite or two, then saved it for dessert with their coffee!! But they liked it enough to have seconds, thirds and maybe even fourths (we sat around talking a while!).

We also carried on our tradition of giving everyone a slip of paper with „I am thankful to God for ...“ and asking them to finish it. Then between the meal and dessert, we draw them from a basket, read them aloud and try to guess who wrote what. It's a lot of fun and they seemed to enjoy it too.

Thanksgiving Saturday
On Saturday our friends from the town of Ohrid: Brian & Mandy and Baby Kate Davis, and of course, Jeff & Amy Williams from here in Prilep came too. At the last minute, Lee Bradley and teammate Brandon (sorry, can't remember his last name) from Albania were passing through town and came to the celebration too!

Prilep's First Football Game
In the morning while the ladies shuffled around the kitchen making ourselves busy, the guys and kids went out to play football. Four Macedonians played: Borce (from English classes), Gabriel (from the Sunday Bible study) and another Borce (the landlord for our ministry center) and his 10-year old son Ivan. Borce and his wife and Ivan had been to our house for Thanksgiving dinner.


They played on a field where teams often practice soccer and Saturday morning they had quite an audience as you can see in the picture above. It was very muddy and there was lots of slipping and sliding, followed by lots of sore muscles!! It was great fun and a tradition that can't be left out!



Our Team Thanksgiving in Prilep

After football, the muddy guys returned to clean themselves up before the meal. Then the feast began – and went on and on and on! I must admit that there was at least one advantage to Kyle's many travels this past month: he was able to buy a Butterball turkey and bring it home! Macedonian turkeys are typically about 9 lbs. max; this one was a good 20 lbs!!!




The food was fantastic and the company was as close to family as we could possibly get, so it was a special time for all of us! Unfortunately, if we harp on the „family“ analogy, Kyle and I are the grandparents, so we'll just move on now!


Pin the Beak
After dinner we played „Pin the Beak on the Turkey“ which Rebekah had graciously designed for us. Brian from Ohrid won, but Josh and Mandy tied for an extremely close second place. And as you can see, Kate did pretty well too, but she didn't wear the blindfold!






Thanksgiving Sunday
Our Macedonian friends really enjoyed trying out football so Sunday night we invited them over to watch a REAL football game on TV (it was Giants vs. Redskins), giving us the chance to explain the rules better. By half-time, Borce (#1) began planning out how we can start an American football league here in Prilep! Though there is currently nothing that we know of here in Macedonia, there are two leagues in Serbia, and I'm reading John Grisham's book right now about football in Italy, so who knows?! Of course, though it'd take a lot of organizing, football would be fun -- but if it does happen, we're hoping it will be key to reaching a whole segment of men and their families for Christ. Pray that if this is part of God's plan for Prilep, we would know how to pursue it.

All in all it was a fabulous holiday weekend. It seems that we have made huge bounds in deepening some friendships with a few here in Prilep, and that is beginning to feel nice!