This is our O.M van. since we don't have a vehicle yet I (Tim)
used it to go pick up some wood. The wood was wet when I
bought it and I'm not sure how old (or new depending on

how you think) it was. The place I bought it was about 5 minutes

outside our city in a lot just sitting outside with no covering.
They have a box there that is 1 square meter and you just throw
the wood in until it fills up. I costs about $40 to buy that much
and it will probably last us around a month.

I chopped the wood right next to where we park the van which is a
3 minute walk from our flat. I didn't have a big piece of flat wood
to put the pieces on when I chopped them so I used whatever
was around, like this cylinder block. (I broke 2 of them in the process.)

This is the chopped wood up on our front balcony. After I bought
the wood and loaded it in the van, I drove it back, brought it out
again to chop, put it all back in the van again, drove it to the outside
of our flat, then had to bring it up 3 flights of stairs. It was tiring
and took about 4-5 hours for everything, but it is definitely worth
the heat inside we now enjoy. Did it make me feel like a man doing
REAL men's work? Oh yeah, you bet! :)

This is our raging fire inside. It doesn't quite heat up the whole
flat but half our flat gets really warm!

These are our friends Mattias and Sue, a couple from Chile
who spent almost a year serving here in Lushnje, Albania.
They just left to go on the O.M ships. We only knew them for 4
months but became good friends with them and we will miss them
a lot. Our kid's really loved them too and they were excellent with
them and really loved on them while they were here. Aside from
ministry, we spent many nights hanging out and talking, playing
games, and sometimes watching movies. They also babysat for
us a couple times so Jamie and I could get out for a few hours.
When they left, we gave them our 2 player Blokus game because
they loved to play Blokus. They will be missed and we hope
and pray the Lord reveals His will perfect will in their lives.

Here's Kya and Jamie singing together their favorite worship song,
Hosanna. Kya's really learning a lot of the words and is starting
to sing to a lot of songs we listen to. Currently, Switchfoot is
her thing - especially "Nothing is Sound" which is also one of our favorite songs.
yeah-ya

Gezuar Krishtlindjen!

Merry Christmas! Or should I say Happy New Year?
New Year's is THE holiday here. Because the Communist dictator
Enver Hoxha declared Albania an atheistic state during the time
he ruled here for forty some years, Christmas is only
celebrated by Christians. So, it's just another day around
here pretty much. It's weird because people have Christmas
decorations around everywhere, but it's all for New Year's.
These guys are carrying turkeys. No, we didn't have a turkey for
Christmas because the only turkeys here are like this - alive!
We did have a yummy lasagna and Korean chicken, though.
No complaints here!

Christmas lights decorate the streets for upcoming New Year's.
Sorry about the blurry picture. I was in a car when I took this
and the roads here are not smooth.

Party! On Christmas day, we have an evangelistic service.
It was full which is really good. Then, that night, the church
has a party and the people invite their friends from outside the
church. Each house group from church had something to present,
like a song, a drama, etc. Then, we ate and danced. It was really fun!
Here's some Albanian music and this is traditional Albanian dance.

It's actually harder than it looks.
Not like I (Jamie) know how to dance anyways. : )

We were so blessed by our family and a couple friends with
packages for Christmas! Here's Kya just after opening Pooh
from her grandma and grandpa.

A fun book from her aunt and uncle. Yippee!

It's getting colder inside our flat. Thankfully, we just got a
wood burning stove put in! Can't wait to fire it up!

Drilling a hole to put the pipe through for the smoke. Afterwards,
they filled up the excess area around the pipe with rocks.
Not exactly pretty, but Tim will look for something else
to patch it with.

Open wide! I think Kadence has her mouth open a quarter
of each day as she is an eating machine. She eats often,
and she eats a lot. She equals her Daddy in consumption of food
many times during meals.

These next series of pictures are at the O.M. center where
our team in Lushnje hosted our annual O.M. team
Christmas party. Two other teams came and we enjoyed a great
night of food, fellowship, games, a white elephant gift game,
and singing Christmas carols. Jamie, myself, and Jess
(a single from Australia on our team) where in charge of putting
the whole thing together. It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun.

Ok, I (Tim) just put these first two pics of Kadence and Kya because
they are so darn cute! I love them so much and Jamie and I
are so blessed to have happy, content daughters that play well
with each other and are just fun to be around.
(The fun part they got from their Dad! haha..)
Although, part of that fun includes bumps and bonks.
Here Kadence has a busted front lip from playing.

Many times throughout the day and night there will be kids setting
off loud firecrackers all over the city and frequently right outside our flat.
They woke Kya up this night so she came out and fell asleep on the
couch. Kids are so flexible. They can fall asleep almost anywhere
and at anytime....and in any position. So for you thirty-plus people
reading this (like myself), don't try this at home.

What was I saying about kid's falling asleep?
This is what happens when you miss your nap.

Kya is getting into music more and more, which of course
we couldn't be more happy as parents about that. Her latest
OBSESSION is with a band called Fireflight. They are a harder
rock band with a female vocalist. (If you haven't heard them
before, then get into them if you enjoy that style of music.
They are about equivalent to what Skillet sounds like only
with a girl singing) Anyways, Kya really likes this song.
The chorus says "You gave me your promise" and you can
hear her singing it with the music. She asks for it morning,
noon, and night. So what Kya wants, Kya gets....just kidding.
But we do play it quite often, sometimes even at 7:30 in the
morning we'll blast it and dance rock out together!

Being thankful

How was your Thanksgiving? Probably spent with family,
food, friends, football... This was our first one away from family.
We spent it in a village just outside of Lushnje. This was also
our first official ministry. We've posted pictures of the church
there just so we can all as Americans be thankful for the
luxuries and blessings we have. This is their church.
Their building is a house. This picture above is of the bathroom,
but it doesn't work, so they have no bathroom.

This is the first room you walk into.

Back wall of the sanctuary. The whole room fits maybe 20
people or so. We really made the rows tight and praise God,
it was a full house! There were even people standing outside
in the hallway, so there wasn't enough room for us (our team).

kitchen

Tim played worship with our leader for the service and
Jamie led worship for the girl's meeting in Albanian
for the first time! Before and after, we just try to converse
with the people - some believers, some nonbelievers, some who've
been away from the church. Since this outreach, the church has
been doing very well. We have prayed for the fruit
of this to continue on.

Sickness just will not leave our family alone! Our whole family
got a really bad bug, but we're better now. Although, now Kadence
has a bad ear infection and popped ear drum. We
discovered it yesterday. We called the doctor right away
and he came over (that's what we do here, it's different than calling
and going in an office like in the States). Then, he said she needed
to see a specialist, so we went there with him. It was at a
clinic right here in Lushnje... interesting. It's just different.
Smoking is allowed everywhere, so even in a clinic of sick people
you smell smoke. Then right in front of the room where Kadence was
seen was a circle about 6 feet around where the wall and ceiling
was just coming apart and you could see mold. After she was
seen there, the specialist said we had to go to the hospital.
So, we went there. Before this I had decided I wouldn't get sick
enough for the hospital after going to a lab to get a test for
an infection. When I (Jamie) went there, I walked upstairs to a desk.
Normally, in America, there's a receptionist and she takes your
name and you wait for a while and go in the back and so on.
Well, the doctor was behind the desk and he was drawing blood
from a woman. The room was small, maybe 20x20ft and the
"waiting area" was 5 feet in front of the entertaining blood drawing
episode. Then as my doctor walked in, the doctor who was already
there finished drawing the blood and stood up to shake my doctor's
hand with the syringe full of blood in the other hand.
Then, he waved it around while he talked and put it down on the
desk. This bit is for anyone with any medical training.
A little something called "universal precautions" is unknown here.
So, I had my concerns about going to the hospital, but didn't worry
about it. It turned out fine and Kadence is on medicine now.

Christmas time! Tim had bought a tree at a missionary's garage sale. Yay!

We had given away and sold all of our holiday decorations,
in America, so we made some paper snowflakes.
Way cheaper than any decorations we've seen here yet!

Brrrrrrr!

Is it cold inside or are we shivering?!
We've had our first taste of winter here. This is the temperature
INSIDE of our flat! We wear scarves, gloves, jackets, whatever
we can around the house and to sleep at night. When waking up
this morning and even still now at 10:45 a.m., we can see our breath in here.
Hey, at least it's warmed up to 52 degrees!

This is the view from our window. If you can, look to see
a set of mountains that are dark in the front, then behind it is another
bigger set covered with snow! We see these mountains on clear days,
but not with snow until now.

The reason it is so cold inside is because there is no central A/C
or heating. Tim just bought this space heater. It can produce heat from gas
or electric - it's our make believe fireplace.

Well, now Kadence is sick. Kya at least understood when we
could only give her a spoonful of water at a time (because she
would throw it right up), but she would ask for it constantly.
Kadence constantly is fussing now for more water all of the time,
but she also throws it up a lot. Poor baby can't understand.

Yesterday our windows were all fogging up.
They did because it was still kinda warm inside. They don't anymore!

Tim's parents sent us a goody package. Woohoo!!! Like Christmas
before Christmas. A couple things we got were some
graham crackers and marshmallows (we don't have them here in
Albania) to make s'mores. We just melt the marshmallows
over our gas stove. Mmmmm.

Faithful blog checkers, sorry it has been a while since our last update.
We've had a really slow connection when we've had internet
and then Kya's been very sick. This is her getting checked
by a doctor on our team at our house. She has been
throwing up everything - even a spoonful of water
- for the past almost 48 hours. : (

To make it up to you, we've put a few videos on.
This is before she got sick. She likes to jump around the house
counting in Albanian "Nje, dy, tre, kater, pese, gjashte, shtate,
tete, nente, dhjete". Kadence is starting to try to count now,
but it actually sounds more like Albanian!
We think it's because Kya is always doing this.

Here's a team picnic. So so nice to get out of the city
and sit in grass under trees. This is maybe a 5 minute
drive from our place.

Some livestock came to join us. Too bad you can't hear
the donkey hee-hawing across the lake.

The sun is rising over the mountain just east of our flat.

This is a verb chart. This is how many ways we have to learn one single
verb! And guess what... we just found out today that we have to add
another column we haven't learned yet. Please, pray for us!
Sometimes it is difficult and tiring trying to study and fit so much
in our heads when our study times are very limited with the girls.

I miss green grass and playgrounds.

We thought this was interesting. It's a real, dead wolf hanging on a
building! We asked someone why it was there and they said probably
to show off that they killed a wolf. Hmmm....

We had a birthday party for our Australian missionary friend, Jess.
There obviously isn't a Party City here, so we had to get creative
with the decorations.

Uhoh. We ran out of water during the party. We found out
all of Lushnje ran out and didn't receive water that morning.
It sure was fun washing all those dishes without running water. : )
We didn't have water the next night either, then we went a couple
days without water. Man, are we grateful for running water!!
I would definitely say the worst effect from this is
the inability to flush the toilet.

Skype time with Micah and the Tumas fam. It's unbelievable -
this technology these days. We still feel far away
from our family and friends in the States, but it so
amazing to see their faces once in a while.