Ok. Here is the story. My first week of Christmas break was spent on a mission trip to Belgrade, Serbia. We spent our time in the Roma (Gypsy) areas of town, helping out with multiple services for children and youth and one adult church service. It was a good week, but very hard. It's super crazy because you always here the stories of poverty and see it on the news and whatnot, but I all of a sudden found myself standing right in the middle of it with no way to really satisfy any of their physical needs. Yes, I could sing my songs and tell them all about Jesus, which we did on a daily basis, but it just seemed like I was doing so little to really help their situations, and that was hard for me to handle. Overall, it was a good experience though, and very worthwhile.
Anyway. The first picture is in one of the Roma neighborhoods where we got to sing and hand out Operation Christmas Child boxes. I'm sure many of you have assembled them. I have before and honestly never thought I would be able to witness the receiving end of the situation. It was really cool how happy the kids were.
It was SOOO cold ALL THE TIME. Soooo...we found ourselves doing strange things like, well, sitting on heaters and whatnot. And when I say SOOO cold, I'm talkin about -5 Celcius. It wasn't just Lorraine being a wimp.
We got to do about a half-day of sight seeing and went to this old palace that used to be the home of the Serbian royal family. It was REALLY cool. There were all kinds of underground passages and dungeons and look-out spots and crazy walls and stuff. Plus, we went there right as it was getting dark and so everything was lit up and beautiful. This specific picture shows a bit of history as well as a bit of humor. These are the heads of past Serbian kings...and current Serbian (well, not reeeeally Serbian) tourists :-)
More of the palace...kind of gives you a taste of what we were seeing. The grounds seriously seemed like they were never going to end.
A current ministry in Belgrade (Brot des Lebens, or Bread of Life) serves the Roma people as well as refugees from other countries. They are friends of Bodenseehof, so we were able to use their office as a central meeting place as well as a cafeteria. This is what the typical meal looked like.
In Montpellier there is a really nice downtown area and it was all decorated for Christmas and the New Year. The super-lit-up building behind us is their famous opera house.
Sorry this one is sideways, but it is the Arc de Triumphe (Arch of Triumph) and is just a major landmark in the city.
This is how our gingerbread houses turned out...schade (German for "bummer"). We worked on them for almost three hours, used two different types of frosting, and used every possible method of construction, but to no avail. It was a lost cause. But it did keep us entertained for ages and was really fun all the same.
All over the south of France there are old Roman pieces of architecture and structures left over from the Roman Empire. This particular thing (aquaducts) was constructed in the year 900AD or something ridiculous and was HUUUUUGE.
Again, suuuuuper HUGE. I have more pictures to give a better idea of the scale and the surrounding area, but alas, have no more time tonight.
