Mattituck Pictures

New York PIZZA!!!

Chloe's B-day Party

Great Grandma (Evelyn the Great) and Poppy,
or Grandma and Poppy and also Mom and Dad

It was also Lucy's B-day party

Jen and Kristen

The grand kids!!

Grandma and the B-day girls

The family table

Poppy and Lucy

Sarah and Olivia!

Here are some pictures of our family's time together in Mattituck.

BACK HOME

It's been a while since my last post and at this point I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this or not.
Pam and I made it back home to Maryland on August 6th. After being picked up and driven home by one of my wonderful choir members Diana Bobo, we unpacked a little and tried to stay up passed 9:00 PM. That didn't happen. We went to bed around 8:30. We got up the next morning and packed the car and drove to NY, Mattituck Long Island to be exact. We were there for just about 2 weeks. Our one daughter Jennifer and family (Brian and Lucy and Olivia) came down from Albany to spend time with us, and our other daughter Kristen and family (Jerry and Sarah and Chloe) live in Riverhead which is only about 20 minutes away from where we were staying. So we got to see and play with all our grand kids - a lot - a very good thing. Even my parents came out from Ronkonkoma several days.
We both got back to work yesterday for the first time since we left for Europe on June 18th. it was a very long day for both of us!!
But this is not a blog about my grand kids although I have to say I can talk about them forever it seems, I had to mention what I have been doing for these past two weeks. (However, tomorrow, I will be posting a few pictures of our time together since they are all so wonderful!!)
I will continue to blog and try to have the site used as a place for worship resource materials to be found and used. And if I can find the time maybe some articles about worship also.
I would also like for this site to be used for those who might have questions or comments about worship. Creating dialog is a great way to learn and grow.
John

Faculty Meeting

This Friday and Saturday we had our bi-annual faculty meeting at the Haus. Most of the permanent faculty were here for it. So i thought I would take some pictures of who was here.

From the right to the left, Cathy Kissling who is our registrar. Mike Crull, European VP and also teaches Discipleship. Then Laszlo Gerzsenyi from Hungry who is the National Director and teaches Biblical Studies, New Testament classes mostly.

The next picture shows Oti Bunaciu who is the National Director for Romania and teaches in the field of Church History. Next to him is Tony Twist the president of TCMI and who teaches the Theology and Practice of Pray class. Patrick Nullens who teaches for Evangelische Theologische Faculteit Leuven (Belgium) and us. He teaches in the field of Systematic Theology.

In the next picture is Patrick again and then Roger Kemp our Academic Dean, who teaches New Testament, Missions and some church history. Roger is from Sidney Australia.

Then Paul Kissling our Old Testament Professor and teaches several other classes also.

Then Pam Sarno the Librarian here at TCMI. Then you can see my computer.

This next picture is most of us gathered around watching a video from Sermon Spice, which was a website they haven't seen before.

And then finally a picture of Pam and me taken out by the goldfish pond.

Tomorrow we leave for home for some down time and time to play with the grandkids!!!!

John

More Pictures

This is one of my last days in the office here with TCMI. Tomorrow we start a couple of days of faculty meetings and then the STW and professors from the states arrive. There is another session starting this Monday. It looks like there will be a full crowd here also. In the 90's so that's a pretty full house for a 2 week session.
I found some more photo's that I thought you might like to see.

The first one I call Skinny Dippin' in the Baltic Sea.




I found the place where Charlie Brown gets his Christmas trees.



This was my class at the beginning of the week in Tallinn.


Here is what the class looked like after the the rest of Tallinn found out that I was teaching. It was so large we had to rent an outdoors theater.

A double take and then thought, "Nope, not for me!"

John

Sunday

Well, I made it back to Austria without problems. On the train every time we crossed the Austrian - Hungarian boarder we had both sets of boarder guards check our passports. I did notice that this time that both sets of guards got off at the same stop, but that both groups kept to themselves. I was a little surprised at this. I would have thought that most of the guards that traveled this line would probably have known each other to some degree. But as we left the station they were going into the waiting building but each in their own groups. No one even tried to talk with someone in the other group.

Anyway, I'm back in Austria sleeping in my own bed again. Well at least my own bed here at the Haus.

I'm a little drained... teaching 4 weeks in 4 different countries in a 5 week period. Sometimes it seems like it's been 6 months ago that I was in Tallinn, but it was only 5 weeks ago that I was there.

Here are a couple of pictures of Sunday's service. Rob is back from being in the states for several weeks. Actually he and his wife Mary were at Mountain Christian just the Sunday before. Rob's mother lives in Bel Air and there are several people that both Rob and Mary know that go to MCC, so when Rob goes back to visit his mother and if he is there over the weekend, he comes to MCC. Rob is on the left playing the acoustic guitar. The second one is of him preaching.

Rob and Mary will be coming out tomorrow (Wednesday) to visit and have lunch with Pam and I. That should be very enjoyable.

John

HUNGARY PICTURES

Here are some pictures of my time in Hungary.

The first is of the building where I taught for the week. It's the Baptist Theological Seminary there in Budapest. The next two are the students and the students and Laszlo my interpreter.

Here are a couple of shots of the students working together planning a worship service for a class assignment. Just so you know that's Betty on the left and Mariam on the right with the Bible and computer.

The fist picture is of Kodaly's house. Then Hero's square and the last one... well I had to take this shot for Gary T. It's pretty self explanatory.

This is the Chinese Embassy building and then just a building downtown. If you look closely at the last shot way in the background in the middle you can see some mountains, that's actually Buda of Budapest. Buda was one city on one side of the Danube and Pest (which means plains) was on the other side. together they make Budapest.

Sorry that the pictures were so slow in getting posted. But I was finally able to upload them today. I hope you can now go back and when you read a story bout a student you can place a face with it.

John

UKRAINE PICTURES

Here are some pictures from when I was in Ukraine. The first 5 pictures are of students and the classroom where I taught.
The next picture is a picture of me holding the plate that the students gave me after the class had ended. It's a plate with the emblem of Kherson on it with the Ukrainian flag. It's very, very nice.

The next picture is of Zhenia, Vera and their daughter Anya who helped translate for us. After dinner we went for some sight seeing of Kherson. Here is a picture of a WW II monument of a memorial of Russian soldiers who died at this spot over looking a river. I guess it was a terrible battle and lots of Russians lost their lives at this spot.

The next pictures are of the church. The first one is the inside and then one of the outside entrance way. The building was an elementary school that the church purchased. It was built with an open court yard in the middle. The church closed the court yard in and made the sanctuary that you see. Also because this used to be an elementary school, it is in the middle of several apartment buildings. Here is a picture of one of the ones close by.

The last shot is of the cross over the entrance way into the church.

John