4000 Disrobe!

My mother sent this to me and I thought I woudl share it with you all...:)


4000 Monks Disrobe!
Wait! It is NOT what you think!!

I heard an incredible story this morning from colleagues in a country that are among the peoples in the South East Asia Affinity Group. It seems that over the past several years that the Gospel message has been finding root among Buddhist monks in a country rife with poverty and political oppression. It is a dark place spiritually and even the “spiritual leaders” have discovered the hopelessness of the Buddha!

Because of outreach and a strategy that employs scripture storying a significant number of these monks have “disrobed” (cast away their robes, walked away from the priesthood, and left Buddhism altogether) and committed their lives to the One who can bring them hope and meaning in such dire circumstances. The total number of monks who have left Buddhism is 4,000. You read it correctly—four thousand!! It has become such a problem in one area that a monastery that served a larger number of monks has closed completely—because there is no one left there who follows Buddha!

Meet the new additions...

Meet Thing 1 and Thing 2! The baby birds have hatched. The hatched about five days ago and the birds are very ugly. I know pidgins are ugly birds but I never thought the baby birds would be as ugly as they are. They are little and yellow. It took about a day for me to actually get a picture of the birds and by then they were both hatched so I got a picture of both. The pictures I have are from yesterday. The funny thing is about the time I took the first picture the mother bird came back and was mad. The only sad part of the baby birds is through the night one did not make it. It made me sad when I looked at them this morning and say that only one lived. The mother has been gone a lot today and I think she was only able to truly take care of one bird. The bird that has been sitting on the nest and is taking care of the bird is not the bird that laid the eggs. We think this bird decided to be even lazier than Bonnie and took Bonnie’s eggs and then “threw” her out of the nest. Anyway the bird that is taking care of the nest is even uglier than Bonnie and the babies are uglier still. Thing 1 is beginning to make some noise and move around, he opened his eyes today. Now we are just hoping by the time we get back from vacation the baby will be out of the nest and we can try to save the raspberry bush the nest is in. Here are the few pictures I took, I hope you enjoy them!

Here they are close up (they have huge eyes and beaks and are curled up together)

Here they are from a distance (you can really see how small they are)

Mad "momma" coming to see what is going on

Food for thought...

This was given to me and I thought I would share with all...

GOD LOVES YOU UNCONDITIONALLY
A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this."
He proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up. He then asked, "Who still wants it?" Still the hands were up in the air.
"Well," he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. "Now who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air.
"My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless.

Check it out...

Go check out our team blog...the link is on the left hand side of the page. Here the whole team will be posting. No I have not yet...but I will too, don't worry. :)

Bonnie, Clyde and ...

This makes two in one week, wow; I am getting better at this Blog thing…:)

So anyways, my roommate and I were talking about getting ourselves a pet. A cat to be specific, I am a huge do fan and so is she but we wanted a pet and a cat is much easier. So in the mist of all this talk we end up with two small animals we call Bonnie and Clyde. They came to us one day much to our dismay, but we are enjoying watching them in daily life. One goes, the other call to him, and he comes back and the day goes on like this. They are not noisy and they require little can. But they are still fun to watch. So to back up let me start from the beginning.

We live on the fourth floor of an apartment building so no it is not a cat or a dog. Last week there were two pigeons trying to nest in one of our flower boxes. I spent a lot of time shooing them away that morning. Then, much to my dismay, two days later they were back, with TWO twigs and building a nest in a pot on our baloney. The two birds decided that having a nest that was half way done for them was nice. Over the past week the nest has grown, a little. Then yesterday/last night, Bonnie laid her egg. We were so proud of her. We have 15 more days to wait until there is a baby bird in the nest with Bonnie and Clyde. But for now we enjoy taking pictures and watching them interact.

Two pigeons were not the type of pets we were looking for, but in a month we will be cat sitting for six months so I guess we can wait until then to have something soft and “cuddly” in the apartment with us. So here are some pictures of the two new "additions" to our appartment:

Meet Clyde (on the rail)

And Bonnie (in the Pot with the plant)

Meet the egg (we have not named it yet, so it is just the egg for now) mom had gotten up for a minute to move and we ran for the cammera's.

Momma and her baby (She 'saw' movement in the apartment and decided it would be wise to make sure her egg was safe.)

Hope you enjoyed the pictures...as things happen I will take more pictures and keep you updated. Have a blessed day!

Present and Accounted for...

So I thought I would begin by saying I am sorry for the long span of time between blogs. Thank you to all who check and see if I blog...I know your out there. Also, there are times I am the worst at keeping things like this updated, sorry.
The last time I wrote anything was three months ago...wow. I had only been teaching for three weeks then, and now I only have three weeks to go. We will be finishing up the second and third grade years in three weeks. The girls cannot be more excited. I have loved teaching them and watching them learn and grow. I will begin next year teaching third and fourth grade and eventually gain a sixth grader. I cannot wait. I have always enjoyed teaching and this is definitely why God created me.
Ok...what has been going on in Poland. Besides school {a huge chunk of my time} I have been going to a coffee shop, working in different villages teaching English, learning Polish, and watching the weather change. I am in aw of how creative our God truly is. Having lived most of my life in Florida I know different season: Hot, Hotter, Hottest, and Hurricane. {You all know it’s true} In Poland we truly have four seasons. I arrived in the middle of winter. It was gray, overcast, and snowing. It was nice to see the snow and a different type of weather and season. Then about late-March the weather really stated to change. The snow melted {yeah} and the world began to gain some more color. This was nice because it started to warm up. Now that we have hit May most everything is in full bloom and very colorful. I am loving it. I am looking forward to seeing the next two seasons. I feel like the kid who has never seen snow and is seeing it for the first time with this season changing thing, I love how much detail is put into everything God created.
Something fun and exciting has happened in the past month. The pastors wife at the church I go to had her baby. His name is Peter, and he is a cutie, but the cool thing is I have been able to hold him since he was less than two weeks old. You say so-what I say YEAH! In Poland no one but mom and dad get to hold or touch the baby until they are at least two weeks old. It is a germ phobia thing. Anyways, his second Sunday morning he needed to be watched and I was asked. He is a wonderful baby but he woke up, and I got to hold him. I was told I am trusted with her son and I have watched him several other Sunday mornings. I love my baby time!
Other than that all is going well. I am looking forward to the end of school and summer vacation. I get to begin my vacation in Greece and on a cruise. This I cannot wait to do. I will take pictures and post some and tell you all about it later.
Thanks for all your support as I live God’s word in Poland. :)

I am still alive

Wow has the last month been a whirl wind. I have been teaching for 3 weeks now, started my forth week today actually. I am really enjoying teaching. The girls are great and we have a blast daily. They are a new joy each morning. Because my job is teaching I spend a lot of my time planning how to teach the kiddos all they need to know. I spend the next main part of my weeks studding language. I only have class for two hours a week but I enjoy being able to absorb all I learn in the two hours. It takes me a while to learn a new language so I am happy for the absorption time each week. Other than that I go to the coffee house each week and talk to those who come. The last two weeks in our area of Poland, we have been on winter break so we have not gone out to the villages to work but beginning tomorrow village work will begin again.
I have been going to the church in one of the villages we work in on Tuesdays. I have enjoyed the last few weeks out there. I understand very little of what they are saying, but I am starting to be able to sing along with the songs. The Poles at church love to try to talk to me, but because it is all in Polish we have a language barrier. The man who plays the piano, one neat thing is he is blind, speaks English and we talk after church during coffee and tea. I am hoping my language improves so I will be able to commutate with those at church quickly.
As far as fun times, we had a team Valentine’s Day party on Saturday and we all had a blast. I let the girls make Valentine’s on Friday and you would have thought I gave them gold. They were able to spend about 1.5 hours working and letting their creative juices flow. My favorite line of the day we “Miss Naomi don’t look at my desk” it made me laugh all three times. I gave the kiddos roses and I loved the looks on their faces when they realized they were theirs and no one else’s. The three year old had the best face of plain aw and happiness. We spent time playing games and eating pizza and fruit dipped in chocolate and homemade cookies and cupcakes. All in all it was a great evening.
I am staying warm…well as warm as possible. It SNOWED yesterday while we were at church and I really did not have on the clothes and shoes needed for that amount of snow. I was fine as long as I was inside or in the car, but outside I was cold. The sun was out until we were about half way to church (a 30 minute ride or so), and then it basically snowed for the rest of the day. Today the sun was out again, which was such a blessing, and I was able to spend some much needed time out in it. It has started to stay light longer, it used to be dark by 3:45 but it is 4:15 and still light out right now. I love to sun and am very glad it is staying light out longer. I can do without the sun at 6:30 but all will be good. At least I know I am up when I need to be up. Life in Poland is becoming easier and more routine, it can still use a little work but it is getting there. God is using this time to help me to rely more and more on Him and I quit enjoy our time together. Thank you for all your prayers and support.