Big Stone Triangles

The culture is fascinating. The people are beautiful, the food is rich, the salesmen are aggressive and the sites are breathtaking. We played a bit of tourist this year before heading to the conference center where our 3 day festival will take place for over 20,000 people.

Our experiences included: a beautiful view of the river from our hotel balcony, a cave church, Garbage City (a community of 4,000 where they hand process all the garbage from one of the largest cities in the world, brought to them in huge bags by the truck load), several churches where Jesus and His parents are believed to have stayed while seeking refuge, a Nile river dinner sail, a museum with real mummies, a camel ride and of course the pyramids and the Sphinx.

It is amazing the extent these brilliant ancient people went to for a dead-end, empty religion. And just think…a pyramid is smaller than a speck compared to God!

Our Middle East trip at a glance

Wooden Shoes and Windmills

On our trip to the middle east we had an 10 hr. layover in Amsterdam. Our team of 9 took the train to Zaanse Schans for a real Dutch experience. We saw windmills, crazy wooden shoes and had some delicious pannekoeken. Though a bit sleep deprived, we had a great time in beautiful Holland

. At the airport Dustin and Justin (the illusionist on our team) and Dave Gibson (our missions pastor) shared their testimony, some tricks and the gospel with 2 Japanese business men. Pray for their salvation!

Day trip to Frankfurt for Kazak visas

Well, after a several hundred dollar day trip to the Consulate of Kazakhstan in Frankfurt Germany for our visas we have no feeling of satisfaction, no visas and now no passports.

From everything we read online, getting a Kazakh visa in Germany requires a personal visit to a consulate. So, on August 13 we left Sharnhauser Park at 5:19a to get to the consulate in Frankfurt before they opened at 9a. About 20 other people had the same idea, and we all gathered to wait for the gate to open.

Once entering, we stood in one of the lines and upon arriving at service window A we were directed to the back of the line at window B. We waited in line again and upon arrival at window B the person could not understand English (we don't know German or Russian) so we ended up being helped by the person from window A because they knew English and weren't helping anyone. Once we turned in our paperwork they said "Thank you, come back in 7 days." It took some time to help them understand that we could not return on the 20th of August to pick up our visas since we were leaving the country for Holland on the 18th of August. In the end, we had to go to the post office to get a postage paid envelope to leave at the consulate so they can send us our documents in Holland.

Please pray with us that our visa applications will be accepted and that our documents will find us safely and quickly in the mail!

Despite our disappointment about the wait for getting our visas, we still saw some neat old buildings and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and had a pretty good day.

Sights from Switzerland, Updates from Spain

It was wonderful to partner with our new YWAM friends at the Montreux Jazz Festival for these 12 events. The YWAM tent has quite a reputation here at the festival and many annual attenders come year after year to watch the quality entertainment and receive seeds of the Gospel. We heard of one man who learned about Jesus from the YWAM team at the Festival one year. It stuck with him and he thought about it all year. He came back the following year and gave his life to Christ! We have no idea how God is at work!

Dustin had several meaningful conversations with Nasar from Oman, pictured here. He is in our prayers!

Our last night in Switzerland ended quite spectacularly with a thunder and lightening show while Dustin was finishing up on the 10 footer, followed by a gigantic, nearly frightening hail storm as we madly packed up and headed for cover.

We got a report from the group we worked with in Baeza Spain that ten people have prayed to received Christ through the events of the Bible Festival and they have over 100 addresses for follow up. This town of 16,000 people which had no Christians at the beginning of July, now has a handful of baby believers in Jesus and we pray a church will come from this fruit. Please continue to pray for all these new believers and for those who heard the truth but have yet to respond!

O Canada!

Early June we participated in a weekend of outreaches in Moosonee Ontario Canada. After a smooth boarder crossing into Canada, thanks to the prayers of many, and 17 hours of driving, we unloaded then parked our van and trailer in Cochrane Ontario. All our equipment was then loaded onto a box car and we boarded a passenger car for the 5 1/2 hour train ride up to Moosonee, the only way into the town besides a small airport.

Rob, our Moosonee host, was in the band we toured with in Azerbaijan last spring. It was fun to reconnect with him and meet his family and in-laws who are very involved in community outreaches, desiring to serve and share Jesus with the locals. His three daughters kept us entertained and smiling all weekend and were amazingly well behaved and adaptable to the activities of each day.

We had a great weekend with 2 school assemblies, a two day youth conference and a community outreach where nearly 500 of the 2,500 population showed up! Rob's band, theBetween, also performed and Steve Tulloch spoke powerful messages throughout the weekend. Dustin was a hit and besides sharing Jesus, he inspired many to take up the challenge of unicycling. We had 10 extra unicycles for kids to try all weekend and many gave it a successful whirl!

To top off our Canadian experience, we enjoyed the tastes of poutine and Tim Hortons and had 5 moose sightings!