IKEA Madness

The last few months have been a blur, but we are finally settling in a bit and for this we are thankful. God provided us with an amazing home here in Slovenia. We actually live in a village named Lancovo. From our home we have a gorgeous view of Radovljica and the surrounding hills. Often in the evening we can hear the river Sava which is a five minute walk away.

One unexpected task for us was setting up our home. I had been focused on details involved with our shipping container, but I never really considered the actual unpacking and setting up part of this move. It turned in to quite a project and involved multiple trips to IKEA. In Europe you do not find closets or storage areas which means wardrobes and cabinets are a necessary purchase. The cheapest place for this is the IKEA in Klagenfurt, Austria (an hour drive from here).

We have a van, but still it took multiple trips to IKEA to get all the furniture we needed. Now this may sound like a fun shopping spree for some, but I can assure you it was anything but. I have never really shopped around IKEA, not to mention one in Austria where all language posted is GERMAN. So here I am trying to figure out how the IKEA process works in German. Of course trying to find all the needed parts was near impossible. This literally took me all day on multiple trips. Seriously, I spent the whole day at IKEA. Now as if finding it wasn't hard enough I had to figure out how to load it in a van, by myself. It was like a puzzle, only the pieces were somewhere between 50 to 200 pounds.

As happy as I was to drive away from IKEA, it was only then I realized I had the joy of putting this all together and let me just say I am amazed at the crazy engineering it took to design IKEA furniture. So much is going on in just a little box.

The last part of the IKEA madness was the massive amount of cardboard and packing material I was left with. This was added to the already crazy amount we had from the move. It took me three weeks of driving around disposing in public dumpsters. I'm sure the workers were totally confused at how their bins were immediately filled to capacity after they dumped it all.

Thankful the experience is over, thankful we have a place to put clothes, and thankful for the apple strudel in the IKEA cafe (the one reason to return!).

First 3 Weeks of SLO Life

I will do my best to summarize the first three weeks we have had in Slovenia. Travel here went smoothly, jet lag took longer with kids!

We stayed in Ljubljana for 2 weeks with the Patty family and this was a great time of fellowship and introduction into the ministry and life in Slovenia as Americans. The Patty kids even conducted a mock Slovene school to help the girls see what life in a Slovenian class will look like.

In the first couple of weeks we were able to attend two church services in Ljubljana and one in Radovljica. The welcome we received was overwhelming and we have been able to engage in relationships very quickly. We have already been to several bbq's and partaken of a wonderful Slovenian sausage called Cevapcici - seriously amazing and seriously served at EVERY bbq we have been to!

Ashley and I were able to take a drive to an English Camp and this offered breathtaking views of the Julian Alps.

Much of the time in these first few weeks has been spent trying to establish life here. This means learning the processes and systems in place and basically bringing an interpreter everywhere! We have purchased a vehicle after making daily trips to an ATM due to no bank account here :) We now have tax id numbers and will hopefully be able to get a bank account set up in the weeks ahead. This number was needed to purchase cell phones, get vehicle insurance and registration, etc.

Last week we moved to Radovljica and moved into our home! We are camping out here since our container hasn't arrived, but we are so glad to be here! We still have much to do, but little by little things are getting checked off the list. Once the container gets here and we can clear customs then we will turn our attention towards language learning.

That is a very long update, but seems short to us considering all we are doing right now.

Maybe the next blog I will share about shopping experiences, basically we are shopping by pictures and this doesn't always work out for us!

Here are a few photos:

God's Provisions

As we have rejoiced in being fully supported and released to buy plane tickets to Slovenia we have taken some opportunities to reminesce about this last year and the amazing provision of the Lord. I thought I would share some fun stats and blessings of the year!

Over 100% of support needed for ongoing monthly and one-time expenses was provided by the Lord. This is amazing considering the ongoing economic situation in the world.

Over 100 financial partners are invested in our ministry directly, which means they are invested in Slovenia and more specifically Radovljica.

6 church bodies are now involved in what God is doing in Slovenia.

Over 200 people are praying for the country and people of Slovenia, as well as lifting up our family!

In the last year almost 2000 people heard about Slovenia and ongoing gospel opportunities there!

Some fun facts from the year for our family: We were in 14 different states at some point in time, we slept in 40 different beds, some of us traveled over 10,000 road miles and 20,000 air miles.

God provided for us in amazing ways and through amazing people, and it was an amazing year growing deeper in relationship with people we love.

Thank you all for the year and we are thanking God for the way He has miraculously provided. We look forward to watching Him work in the days ahead as we have many details still to be worked out!