Sunday in Pictures.

Sunday I decided to take a bunch of pictures.  I'll explain a little about each picture.  

I got to church at around 8:30.  I then proceeded to take pictures of pretty much anything that caught my eye.  Since I think close ups of flowers are pretty awesome, I decided to take some!  (click on any of the pictures to see them in a larger format)

On the top left you can see Jonny walking by.  On the top right we see the front of the room where we do church.  Lower left we are staring at some tree branches.  Lower right is what you see when you look over the front church fence. 

Just some random close-ups.  You can probably figure them out!  As you probably have noticed, I have fun taking pictures and grouping them...  I'm kind of experimenting so far... 

I found this doll in Valenii when we pulled on to the church property.  I thought it was strange and wanted to share the feeling with anyone who happens to see this.   Enjoy.  

These last two pictures are for those who are interested in how the building is progressing.  As you can see, the roof is finished, and windows were just installed a few days ago.  It's going along nicely and its exciting to see it moving towards being finished!   

Thanks for taking a look     ☺

-Josh 

Sights and sounds.

This morning I got up at 5:30 to watch the sunrise.  When I got up it was already light outside, by the time I got out past the houses the sun was up as you see it below.  Since I wanted to see the whole sunrise I was a bit disappointed.  The time I love most to see is when the sun is almost out but not quite, so I missed that.  Plus, the batteries in the camera were pretty much dead when I turned it on, that way I only got three pictures...  Still it was a really pretty morning.  

One thing that was pretty cool was when I got out past the houses and was in the open field, I could hear the whole town waking up.  Dogs barking, lots of roosters crowing, cars going through the intersection in the center, and many other sounds, some recognizable others not.  This got me to thinking later that sometimes I'm so surrounded by so many sounds that I can't hear them all...  they get muddled, and confusing.  Houses block certain sounds while other sounds close around us drown others out.  But when I go out where there is comparative silence, I can hear so many things that I couldn't, and was distracted from hearing before.  This is where I want to take it, I know its simple, and it should be obvious, but I find myself forgetting so often that it might be useful to someone else.  Its this:  We are so surrounded by distracting things in life that we forget to listen for what God wants to tell us.  Life gets really busy a lot of times, but we need to make time for that little bit of silence and just listen.  We can easily be missing the big picture, and what God wanted us to be about.

New things!

Again, sorry that such a long time has past with no new posts.  Its mostly because I've been rather busy,  and a little because I really didn't feel like writing in the free time that I did have...   Even so, I'm back with quite a lot to write down here, so without further introduction I'll get started.   

As you may know the construction of a new building on the church property has been underway for a while now.  I'm going to give you a kind of slideshow here and explain just a bit about the pictures.  

First, The old buildings needed to be torn down so the foundation could be laid.  Below this step is in progress.

Next, the ground was leveled, ditches were dug for the foundation, steel was laid in place and on in came the cement trucks and we filled it up!  

The next step was to get the building itself up.  A team from our supporting church in the states came and got to work helping get that done.

The walls went up, and the roof was to follow....  and soon the whole frame was up. 

Yes, I realize that I abridged this terribly but it will have to for now...

Obviously the building isn't finished at the stage above, so since the team left we have continued working on the roof.  We are currently trying to get the roof covered to get the wood out of the rain.  

More new things... four of them actually...  Kittens!  Yes, very cute small and fuzzy...  their mother isn't a large cat in fact she is kind of small, so you can imagine how she looked with four kittens inside her.  :)   

 As always I intended this blog to be rather different, but this is how it came out...  maybe some day I'll get better at it and be able to cover everything I want, in the way I want to.  Until that day, bear with me!  

Catching... Stuff.

Well, I was planning on writing more often on here, but I either found nothing to write or forgot altogether (which of the two was more prevalent).  So this is my attempt to put into words what has been happening (before I forget again).

First, between my last post and this one I've become a legal adult!  Yes indeed, it's true.  Some were rather worried on finding out... but so far I haven't done anything dreadful that I can think of.  It happened on the 13th of this month and if you had asked me what it feels like to become an "adult," I would have answered that it feels rather normal...  that's all.   :)

On the 21st, me, my Dad, Jonny and about 25 other guys went fishing in a nearby lake.  At two, me and Jonny went over to the church where there were a bunch of other guys waiting for my Dad to get back from picking up more guys from two different towns (one about 45 minutes away).  It took a while so we just hung out until he got back.  When he finally did get back, the first group of people set off in the van to sort out where exactly we would fish and to set up some fishing poles for the people who couldn't do it for themselves.  Finally the whole group was safely at the lake and fishing.  Not a lot of fish were caught for how many people were fishing, but it was fun nonetheless.  One thing that we all thought funny was that the biggest fish caught was caught by the youngest fisherman!      

(This is him.)

I hope I don't need to point out that the size of this fish is smaller than it appears....

As it started getting dark everybody packed up and the first load left for home.  Me and my brother being in the first load we got home and watched, first, the end of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and another Sherlock Holmes movie (I forget which), then a marathon of "Alf'" till everybody got home.  You see, we had the house to ourselves because when my Dad went to pick up guys in Valeni, he also took my Mom, the girls, and some other people up there to do a women's meeting.  I remember they got home rather late too...  

Last week we watched  "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." At first I was rather disappointed at finding the movie different than the book, but I got over it somewhat and watched it as just a movie the second time.  Overall I enjoyed the movie, I think they could have done better in certain areas, but it's a hard book to turn movie in my opinion...  

Sorry for the way this blog post sounds kind of like a list or log...  The details of things have slipped my mind so all you get is just generally what happened.  I'll try in the future to write the happenings closer to  the time they happened :) 

Green fields!

Last week had a few memorable moments but overall it was a pretty ordinary week.  A highlight of the week for me was the Wednesday night study taught by Cristi.  The thing that really caught my attention was this: God wants to work on us wherever and whenever we are!  People get sick of the place they are at, with the things that go on around them, and tend to think that somehow God can't and isn't working in their lives through the hard stuff they are going through.  Like it's all for nothing.  Well, I abridged this extremely (and probably butchered it) 'cause it didn't seem to come out right...  But the study really spoke to me on several levels.  It was very appropriate to where I was at.   

Moving on then!  Yesterday among other things, I went on a Mo-ped ride with my Dad.  We headed out to some fishing lakes to see what the price would be to fish there with some of the boys from church.  It had been really nice most of the day and it just so happened that it got rather more cloudy when we set off...  and was colder too.  I happened to be only wearing a long sleeve shirt and a hoodie, but somehow I didn't get too cold.  Anyway, on the way back the sun came out as we were passing these incredibly green fields of I don't know what.  The sun shone off that green like you wouldn't believe!  It reminded me why that shade of green is my favorite!   I really wish I could have taken a picture...   a few minutes later we were taking a turn back onto a dirt road, and I came right past this dead dog.  The fact that it was dead wasn't the interesting part however, it was the way it had decayed.  I don't believe it had to do with a morbid curiosity but more marveling at its design.  You see, it looked like one of those programs where you can see the different systems of a certain animal in 3D, and it kind of layers them (muscles, skeleton etc.)  Further description might be boring to the reader or looked upon as strange, so here is where I stop.   See you later!  

- Josh 

Here we go!

I know, I know... a year and something later and I finally decide to take up blogging, again. But now in earnest.... as long as I have time and things to write about I WILL.

How did this come up? Well, I realized how much I can forget from an eventful week just a short time after, and it disconcerted me slightly to know how much information just flies by without stopping to be remembered properly. Maybe its not even certain events but a certain state of mind or something that interests me, and since I don't keep any sort of journal this will record my experiences. So even if no one reads my blog, it will have it's purpose. Don't get me wrong though, It would be nice to have some readers.... :)

I feel as though I'm beginning a new chapter of my life that will continue to be eventful. I will finish school this year, and after that its a mystery waiting to be solved... Well, mostly... cause I'm pretty sure I'm headed toward bible school. YES, very exciting! I feel as if everything is and will be changing for me, not just in scene and events but in mindset and... feeling I guess is the best word...

Alrighty then, lets get to what's been happening around here. Last Saturday a team of four from the bible school in England (lets call them James, Megan, Amanda, and Caroline) arrived in Romania on an undisclosed flight in an undisclosed airport at an undisclosed time... AND YES. They all stayed at my house. They stayed a little more than a week, so since I can't relate it all, let me hit on some of the memorable moments (for me). OK... Harder than I thought (I don't even know where to start!) OK there is only one thing coming to mind... the rat.

On tuesday, in the morning, I did some school while the team and others cleaned out and started to paint a room at the church that would become the nursery. Everybody came back to the house for lunch, and soon after that we all went back to the church to resume work. They had demolished a shed in the back yard of the church, so we started cleaning out the bricks and rubble. And amongst the dirt and bricks a mummified rat was found. Everyone was deeply interested in this rat, (myself being the foremost of these) and the rat was consequently inspected. The work went on however and before long a second mummified rat was found! It was in a much worse condition than the first so it was set by our first rat [I forget his name] and then lost at some later date). But the first rat kept coming up... it was somewhere in the yard all week long, and being found by the dog it lost the majority of its facial features... it was interesting.

OK, way too much about the rat but now that reminds me of some other stuff that happened. Pardon me for being out of order but I'm just telling you these things as they appear in my mind. That said, on Monday we (most of my family and the team) had the great idea of going to the zoo, and since my Dad had stuff to do in the city he could drop us off. The idea failed though, seeing as the zoo was closed. Having nothing else to do we went on into the city, got some doughnuts, and just walked around looking in shop windows and entering them occasionally (actually we stood and ate the doughnuts then walked around...) Anyway, we eventually got back home, and just... chilled. Other stuff happened that I'm not mentioning though, for example James suggested we "burn this town". This by the way is what we named our new band that consisted of Me, James, and Caroline. Which brings me to my last thing to tell you. Not from lack of material but because I'd rather not bore you so much that you never come back...

Our band, ("Burn this town!") covered some songs that I will be posting sometime soon, so check back on my page in the near future to see and hear. (I'll post a link here too when I upload) See ya!