Team Christmas Party

Christmas came early this year. Isn’t that great? The good thing about having many friends and family is that you get to celebrate Christmas almost the entire month of December. For instance, we already had our team’s party, we will be heading to Zagreb on the 21st to be with our church family, then just the three of us will be making some cookies at home, sharing the Christmas story and enjoying ourselves, and for the finish we will be heading to Maribor to spend Christmas with our parents – Christmas Eve with Nina’s parents, Christmas day with Andrej’s parents and brothers and sister with their partners and kids. What fun times! Our prayer for this season is that Jesus would be evident in our lives, that he could be talked about, thought about, and shared with all who don’t celebrate this holiday for the right reason!

Here are some pictures from our first party…

Lots of great food prepared by skillful people

Our youngest team members

Eva's first sight of a Christmas tree

Singing Chrismas carols

Praying and thanking for the blessings of Christmas

Catching up (Gloria in the picture is another Slovene team member with Sebastjan, they ar expecting their first child in March)

Josh shares the heart of Christmas

Captivated audience
Saying goodbye to Christina who was serving in Slovenia for 4 years

Lina was there too, of course!

Since Eva couldn't stay up that night, she got her first Christmas present in the morning - from Luke, Josh's youngest)

Eva loves her present

And will now eat her belt ...

Photo Session

This morning Eva and I were having lots of fun, taking tons of pictures. Eva is a great model (no wonder, coming from a mom and dad who BOTH like to take pictures and like to be in the pictures, hehe…), and she was posing in many ways. Just wanted to share our joy with you…

God amazes me with each new day, with the miracle of LIFE (Eva means life in Hebrew). I am overwhelmed with the joy of being able to parent this precious one that God created. I feel honored and wish to cherish these thoughts in my heart forever. Thank you Lord, that you as a Father give me a glimpse of how you feel about me!

A Touch of Japan in Our Home

Our last week has been quite amazing, a great adventure. Our friend Ken, who is from Japan (who we met in Abilene where Andrej played volleyball with him) came to visit us. He is currently studying in Oxford, and Slovenia seemed just a corner away to him, so he wanted to come to bless us, pray for our ministry and support us in any way he can. Truly, we were blessed by his stay, and very uplifted by his faith in our Lord Jesus. He left today, leaving us with these amazing words of encouragement: “I support your love, from wherever I am, for this country. And the love you two hold together is an unfailing love, constantly refilled by God. It is brightly shining and people can’t deny the existence of Jesus living in you two.” Ken, thank you. These words will be our fuel as we enter our ministry.

These past few days we wanted to show Ken our lives, our hearts, our ministry! We wanted him to see Slovenia, and to meet people we are connected with, to experience Slovenia through our eyes. So we traveled a lot, fellowshipped with people a lot, ate a lot, and had fun “a lot”. Here are some pictures of our adventure…

Meet Ken Lake (In Istria traveling with Andrej)

Meet the family at Bled

Bled again

In Maribor praying for the city and the youth of the town in front of Nina's highschool

Eating strange food (not strange for Andrej though)

Ken cooked one night and prepared Japanese Curry

At our house Bible study group

YES - Andrej is Done with School

While in the States, Andrej passed his last exam at Abilene Christian University, and therefore finished his Masters of Arts in Christian Ministry program. We are so proud of him, but are also aware that we couldn’t have done this without the help of many people. Some of these people are our parents and as a gesture to show our gratitude we took them out to eat here in Brezice. We all had a great and relaxed time.


We really want to thank all of you out there that have supported us through all this, believed in us, encouraged us, stood by us - you are a blessing in our life!!! THANK YOU!!! Now it's my turn to finish this particular race... stay with me in prayers.

Back Home and on the Move Again

There is never a dull day in Slovenia. Ever since Andrej’s return from the States 10 days ago - we have been on the move:

The very next day we were fast to go visit little Erik, born just a few weeks ago.

On Sunday we went to Zagreb to be with our church family (here is a picture of all of the moms with babies in our church).

On Monday, Andrej started working for a week, to substitute for Sergej while he was on “maternity” leave with his family (no picture of that - how strange, isn’t it?)

On Saturday we celebrated Andrej’s mom’s 60th birthday. Here are Andrej’s parents with their four children with partners, and grandchildren.

On Sunday we helped my brother with his move. They just bought an apartment and needed some of Andrej’s ‘handy man’ skills.

Today, we are resting and enjoying the fact that the season of Andrej’s schooling is behind us! We couldn’t be more excited about that, and we are filled with great expectation to find out God’s masterpiece plan for our next season.