We are alive and well and hoping spring will come soon!!

Yikes! I have not posted in quite a while. Well…I think it’s because I haven’t taken very many pictures lately and I don’t like to post with out a picture! Anyway, we have started our spring semester of language learning and are enjoying it very much. I have been praying that God would open up our brains and we would really make connections and that this would be a semester of huge growth and progress. Brad and I are seeing small signs that God may be answering my prayers. We really love our teachers and do feel like we are making progress. Please keep praying for us in this! Last week Brad went to Czech for a church planting conference. Pastor’s from all over came including a group from Slovenia. Brad really loved the time with our Slovene team and the teaching. Landon and I stayed with our friends Trish and Caleb and had a great time hanging out with them. The week went by quick and now we are ready for a week of normalcy with our family all together again. Lastly, we have had a crazy cold, snowy winter and I was starting to feel that spring was on it’s way until…it snowed again! Thankfully it didn’t stick and the sun is out again today! Here is a picture of some pinwheel’s that I made for my friend’s baby shower yesterday.  Pinwheel’s remind me of spring and I am praying and hoping it will come soon!

Surprize in the mail…

A few weeks back Grandma and Papa (Brad’s parents) sent Landon a manila envelope with a special art project in it. Landon’s wonderful Grandma had cut out all sorts of nature pictures and wanted us to make a collage out of the pictures.  Landon was SO excited about it. We looked over each picture and spread them out all over the table. He made 2 collages and carefully picked out each picture. It was interesting to see which pictures he was drawn too and which ones he wasn’t. He was really interested in the hummingbird pictures-which was a surprize to me! He kept pointing to the hummingbirds and said “they beat their wings really fast and eat flowers!” Thanks Grandma for this fun project we had so much fun doing it together and sure wish you were with us!

Tea Party!

A few days ago some ladies from our team got together and had a tea party! Our friend Trisha was the host and what a host she is! It was so much fun to get together, be a little bit fancy, and just talk about…whatever!  Our team is very busy doing so many different things that we  do not get to see each other all that much so it was so fun to have an excuse to get together.  This winter has been very cold, grey and SNOWY! It was so fun to see spring colors on the table and have something fun, cheerful and out of the ordinary to do together.  Thanks ladies for a really joyful and meaningful time together.

This kid’s got personality!

Baby #2 is on the way!

Most of you probably have heard this from us directly, read it in our latest update or saw it on facebook but I thought I would announce here anyway just in case somebody hadn’t heard! Baby #2 is on the way. I am 10 weeks pregnant and my due date is September 15th. This just happens to be 4 days earlier then Landon’s due date (course he was born late!). We are so thankful to the Lord that He has blessed us with another child and that they are going to be almost exactly 4 years a part in age! When asked what Landon would like, a brother or a sister, he replied with “I just want a cowboy!”. We really are not sure at all why he said that but he continues to say that and it has stuck! We keep calling the baby a cowboy-oops, could be a cowgirl I guess! We would really appreciate prayers for a healthy pregnancy and safe delivery! Thanks everybody!

English Weekend

Last weekend Brad and I had the privilege of teaching English for the weekend.  A Catholic HS in Ljubljana has asked our team to put on these weekends several times a year and to make them “as spiritual as possible”! So of course, we tried to oblige! Our teammate David did a few talks and did a great job. Brad and I taught 4 English classes and had a great time with our 7 girl students. Landon was fabulous and patiently watched movies in his tent during the classes ! The last night we had a great discussion with our class about the talk that David did. It turned into a huge conversation about God and if he existed and lots of other BIG questions.  Only 3 out of the 7 girls believed that God exists, we loved talking with these girls and are praying that the seeds that were planted that night would continue to grow in their hearts.

Teaching English

The night I (Brad) got home from snowboarding I started to not feel very good.  Apparently I drank some bad water up on top of the mountain and apparently my body didn’t like it very much.  You can fill in the blanks.  The bummer part about this, aside from being violently ill, was that Laurel and I were supposed to join 3 others on our team to teach English in a Slovene school.  So, I stayed at home while Laurel joined the others and taught English all day, while I joined them the next day.  We taught a total of 10 classes, talked about the “American school system” until our faces turned blue and meet some really great students.  It really was a great time and really funny to hear their perception of American schools…they get most/all of their information from movies.  Trisha and David led the charge and did a fantastic job.

Snowboarding

Last week I (Brad) was able to go snowboarding with 3 other great guys, who are on our team out here.  It was incredibly refreshing to be up in the mountains on a gorgeous day with great company.  During the winter here in Ljubljana it is cloudy almost EVERY day.  It’s amazing actually.  So, to get up on the mountain and see God’s beautiful creation (and the sun) here in Slovenia was worth the trip.  But, aside from great boarding, beautiful mountains, good friends, the last run of the day made our stomachs hurt because of laughter.  Johnny and I had to return our rented snowboard boots at the TOP of the mountain, which left us with the choice to slide down on our snowboards.  It was like sledding times 10.  Because we were trying to steer with our feet the snow would shoot right up to our faces.  There was one moment where I actually panicked because I couldn’t breath with all the snow going into my mouth!  Here’s a few pics and the video…notice the progression of speed and David laughing at the end.

Marriage Conference

This last week Brad and I drove with Nina and Andrej to Krakaw, Poland. It was a super long drive (10hours) but was well worth it! Josiah Venture put on an AMAZING marriage conference. A foundation donated money so that we could attend the conference and not pay anything! Our whole Slovenia team was able to make it.  The teaching was EXCELLENT, stuff that we are going to look over and continue to talk about for the rest of our lives. God met us and spoke to us specifically and transformationally revealing heart issues. We are so thankful to Dave Patty for the great teaching.  The conference was at a beautiful really fancy hotel with great food!  We were so blessed and encouraged.  The only thing-it was -15C which is around 3F! It was freezing! When we went outside our faces burned from the cold.  Other then that it was amazing! Landon stayed in Slovenia with some friends of ours, thanks Christian and Ute for watching him! He keeps talking about you guys:)!

Sledding!

Today we went with our tutor Helena, her husband Aleš and their daughter Julia and Hondo, Trish and their son Caleb to go sledding!  We had SO much fun! First we walked and walked and walked up and up (in switch back fashion for at least an hour) all the way to the top of a huge hill. Up on the top is the border between Austria and Slovenia so that’s pretty cool. Then we all hopped onto sleds (Brad, Landon and I all on one) and rode all the way down! It was so crazy, in many parts it was super bumpy and you have to watch out for people that are trekking up the hill. Also, if you want you can go REALLY fast. We were extremely impressed with other sledders steering and navigational skills and were aware that we were lacking in that area! Slowly we got the hang of it and worked together pretty well. It was so much fun and we just laughed the whole way down! We really enjoyed being with our friends and were so thankful for this fun time!