missionaryMAC

A missing parrot! If I were going trick-or-treating, that would be my joke. Thanks Carrie ;) P.S. This is how Freddy is sitting as I am now writing this post. Today is Halloween/Reformation Day, but all my celebrating was done early. YLM and San Pablo have had a busy weekend, starting with YLMHC's 2nd Annual Golf Tournament on Friday. More on that later, today I'll focus on the festivities. First up--bilingual Reformation service. It was a little odd to do it up big yesterday instead of today since Reformation Day conveniently fell on a Sunday, but there are always tons of volunteers (mostly from Juarez) around on Saturdays that we wanted to include, plus it served as a joint celebration with all the Lutheran churches of El Paso and several of our Juarez affiliates that are all having their own services today. It was neat to see the huge procession of all the pastors and hear all the choirs (including a bell choir) playing in unison, and today's service was actually really ...

Picture time! I limited myself to just a couple highlights from each port and a couple from the ship itself so as not to make this post as long as the path from the port to the town of Santorini (see below). I'll give brief explanations too so you know what you're looking at, but if you want the full story or the links to my complete photo albums, just ask! Of course if you know me at all you know that a scrapbook will soon be in the works too...it won't be done for probably at least a year though! The ship departed from Venice, so we arrived with a few days to sightsee first. Part of the city is on the mainland, but I loved the allure of the historical portion which is located on one of 118 islands where no cars are allowed--all travel is done by boat or on foot. There are DHL delivery boats, boat speed limit signs, and even boat gas stations! Another of the islands, Murano, is known for the glassblowing trade and abounds with showrooms and shops. St. Mark's Square as ...

Well I am safely back from my European adventures! We left Barcelona at 10:45 am Wed. morning and arrived in El Paso late Wed. night after 24 straight hours of traveling. Normally I cannot sleep in planes, cars, buses, or anything like that, but apparently I can after being up for about 22 hours first! It was an incredible trip--cruising is a totally different and much more luxurious mode of travel than I am used to, and we saw soooo many wondrous sights, both natural and man-made, that it felt like we had been gone forever by the end of the 2 weeks. If I had to pick a couple favorites though, I'd say Venice, Santorini, and Dubrovnik. I'm working on organizing and captioning my pictures as we speak, so in the near future I'll post a blog with some of my best shots, and then once I integrate some of my traveling companions' pictures (most of the ones of me are on other people's cameras!), I'll post several facebook albums; there is a link on there for sharing wit...

in the LCMS Mission Month photo contest! All the photos are in this facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=524116&l=04ba6f94a8&id=74660970541 The photo with the most "likes" wins; you have to "like" the LCMS World Mission page before you can "like" the photos. I'm pretty sure you have to have a facebook account to vote. The prize is a Skype session with a LCMS missionary (hehe...technically I AM one!), and materials for hosting a mission fair...I'm sure we could use that SOMEHOW! Voting is open until October 15! If you want a preview of the photos we submitted, or don't have facebook and can't view the album, here they are: THANKS! Until next time, blessings!