Krista’s parents arrived yesterday and are staying here for Christmas and New Years. It exciting as we haven’t seen them since they left Charlotte to move to Kenya. That was almost 2 years ago. Grandma is having fun giving Alex airplane rides (she lays on her back and lifts him up by her legs) just like they did when Alex was younger. Only now he’s much bigger so be praying she doesn’t hurt herself.

Today, we took them into Basel to check out the Weilnachtmarket (Christmas Market) and hit some of the tourist spots. You can check out my camera fun in the Photo Album.

Have a Merry Christmas!!

This last week we were in Switzerland going through a “First Termers Conference”. Basically, it was a bunch of us who are in our first few years of going to the mission field and we get together to help us understand the adjustments we are making and get any other help that we might need for making this transition.

Anyway, above is the photo slide show I made for our last night as a group. When I showed it, it had music but because of copyright laws, I can’t use the music that I had used.

I also promised that I would upload all of my photos (about 359 of them) to my website so that they could get them. A lot of them are not very good but ya know, if you take enough of pictures you are bound to get lucky every once in a while. Anyway, you can check out my photos here in the Photo Album.

If you are wanting to download them to show around, you may find its easier going directly to my Flickr Account. Remember, you have to be logged into Flickr to be able to download my photos but to get a login is free.

To all of those at the conference, it was great being with ya’ll and can’t wait to see you another time.

Sorry I have not blogged for a while. The day that I last blogged was the day that my parents came for a two week visit. It was wonderful having them here. It also gave us an excuse to take some time off and do some of the sightseeing that one can do around here in the Black Forest and Switzerland.

It was really great catching up with them here and listening to them repeatedly say how much Alex has grown and matured. It was ironic that they came about 8 months after we left the US and in about 8 months time we are planning on returning to the States for a visit. So they came right in the middle.

You can see some of the Photo Albums from our trips using these links (these are just some of mine - between all of us, we had over 4 GBs of pictures):

• Triberg & Badenweiler
• Heidelberg
• Interlaken
• Augustica Rustica & Haut Koenigsbourg

Oh, in some of the pictures you will see John. John is an eDOT member who is currently raising his support to be a part of our team that is located in Kiev, Ukraine. Also, you will see Krista’s Dad, Howard. He was able to have a two day layover with us on his way from Kenya to the USA.

Today was a fun day. Alex has two weeks off from school and next week I startworking full time at eDOT so we are trying to get some time in together. So Krista and Alex met me in Basel after my German class was done. Alex got to meet a lot of my friends from class. I think he was a little overwhelmed as they know about him. He’s usually the subject of my German speaking attempts in class.

So we parked the car near the Basel walking street area, caught a doll museum (Krista thought it was something else but it was still fun), grabbed a bite to eat at “Cindy’s Diner” which was trying to be a New York diner with all the chrome but it just didn’t seem right, and walked around the Rathaus (kinda like City Hall only the city was started in the Middle Ages) and the Munster (a really big and old church). It was a bit overcast and there was some drizzle every once in a while but otherwise, we had a really good time. Be sure to check out our photos in the Photo Album.

PS - I know some of the pictures are redundant from our class field trip into Basel, but I had a new camera and was just taking pictures of everything.

Last Friday we went on an adventure with some of our German Language classmates (Titiana from Russia and Yoyok from Indonesia) to a place called Maraistein. This is a Catholic church built where they say a boy fell off a cliff only to be saved by Mary who placed him safely in a cave under the cliff. There is a beautiful church above and they have even made the cave into a sanctuary. Its very impressive.

Check out the photos in the Photo Album Area