Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The band has arrived! Making more contacts :)

As you can probably imagine, we are all very, very busy with handing out coffee & sandwiches, promoting our events and concerts, and supporting our Estonian friends from Risttee as they set up and lead the events. This evening, we are hosting a "railroad race" where teams of two get on these little pump cars (my term) and race for time down a set of abandoned railroad tracks (think Bugs Bunny cartoons or the movie "Oh brother where art thou?" which I haven't seen and now probably ought to). Bryan, Rich, Peep, and I got to "test drive" the railroad cars yesterday as we were setting up the course and I will honestly tell you that it was a lot of fun.

Catie and I are assuming "team leader duties" for the team today, which is a little extra pressure. So please pray for me for wisdom and energy because I didn't get much sleep last night. Part of our "leader duties" for the day is to lead the team meeting and devotion. Partly because of the fatigue we are all feeling, I felt led to do the devotion from Judges 6, which is the story of Gideon's calling to deliver Israel... a calling that he felt completely overwhelmed by and not prepared for... as many of us are feeling on our uber busy schedules and *ahem* sleep. It's cool that God does not call the qualified but he qualifies the called. I think I heard that from somewhere... but not sure where.

Connections are continuing to be made and are deepening. Marco, who I talked about in my last blog (sans pictures) has come by the coffee & sandwich stand every day this week so far - same with Li - and in fact we bounced different trivia game ideas off of them as we were brainstorming different questions off of them yesterday afternoon. Marco also showed up to the Kristin Stanfill & gang concert at the Big Ben pub last night and brought a friend :) - he had a great time and is starting to warm up to Courtney and I. Another guy that I had a chance to get into several long conversations with is a Russian guy named Ivan who is a third-year student at the University... I'm not sure where he is spirtually, but really like talking to him because he's a musician (introduced him to Timo last night), is a deep thinker, and isn't really afraid to speak his mind. We're going to hang out on Friday and I want to try to use this as an opportunity to further connect him with those students that are plugged in at Risttee - he was also at Big Ben last night - ... he's also met Courtney from our team too who has really been great about pursuing relationships with the Estonian students we meet.

The pub concert last night was really great. PRAY FOR THE BAND because they are (or were last night) wiped out from all of their travels... and mentioned that some of them have been up for 30 hours straight. I rode back to the hotel with Matt Melton last night and he told me that they were all pretty much gone physically. No matter... they played really great - and played their "usual stuff" and not the secular cover music that we anticipated. I think some students may have left because the worship music songlist wasn't expected (a table of students I met over bfast left and stuck me with a 201 krons check... about 20 bucks... did I mention though that I "found" an unexpected 20 dollar support check in my encouragement bag yesterday?)... but many stayed and I heard one comment secondhand from a student that said the the band #&"¤#¤% rocked. What can you say? They're good.

Ok... off to sending a few e-mails and catching up with friends.... and off to the train tracks at 4:05 (give or take). I'm looking forward to tonight's concert at Big Ben and to a lesser extent the RR race.

Coffee o Kakau? :) Ciao!

Chris <><

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