The first week of August we, Ank and me, daughter Anneke, son Carsten en granddaughter Channah, went to France. We were guests of Samuel and Michèle Batota.
They live in Bar, which is part of the Correze, about 500 km south of Paris. Our navigator did a good job and brought us exactly to our destination. The Batota’s had rented a “gite” for us to stay at.
We spent a lot of time together: walking, talking, we even did games. We also visited towns in the neighbourhood.
All in all a very good time of fellowship and had time to relax.
For pictures click on the link below:
-----…----..--.-
I went with John Fenn to Lithuania, Friday August 12. Early in the morning we went to Schiphol to fly to Vilnius, the capitol. We arrived at 1 p.m. It’s not a big airfield, so it did not take long to find the two persons who came to pick us up: Valda, our contact, we know her for over a year now by email and skype and Deividas (David), who had his car with him. Deividas is the one that translated us during the HouseChurchConference. We went to the apartment of a sister in the Lord, Jadvyga. She lives in a ‘grey’ apartment building, built in the Soviet period. There we met our second contact: Tadas. He had prepared a wonderful meal en we enjoyed it together.
(in this picture Tadas, Valda and John)
Before going to a Youth meeting that night, we first visited the old centre of the town. On our way there it suddenly started to rain, a heavy rain and thunder. So we went to a parking garage, part of a luxury shopping mall. (A big contrast with other things we saw). After 10 minutes the heavy rain was over and we continued our way to the centre. Vilnius has a beautiful cultural centre with beautiful buildings, one of them the presidential palace. Also universities, cathedral, etc. and some of them were restored which has cost a lot of money. Then to the youth meeting. There were about 25 youth. They were very interested to hear about ‘heaven’ and ‘angels’ experiences of John. He talked almost 3,5 hours and answered many questions.
On Saturday off to the ‘camp’ where the conference was held. It was a former bungalow park, situated by a lake. In the middle of nowhere, but my cell phone worked! Tadas showed us the house where John and I were staying. It was very basic. A small room with a sink and (cold) water, another room with couches and a chair and for both of us a bedroom. Toilets were in the central building. Tadas suggested not to use toilet paper so it would not become clogged. There was another toilet in a tent nearby with a ‘hole in the ground’. You did not have to flush the toiletJ
Soon the first guests arrived. Fortunately a lot of them spoke English otherwise it would have been very hard to understand each other. Lithuanian is a very unique stand-alone-language.
Almost 50 persons were present at the first meeting (children included). The people were expectant to receive a lot this weekend. John shared about the basics of housechurch, what and what not to do etc.
During the meals and also in between I was able to talk to a lot of people and made many contacts. I have email or skype contact with some of them. They are also on facebook.
On Sunday, Ieva, a girl 18 years old, asked if she could be baptized. We decided to do that at the end of the afternoon. Then some one else wanted to be baptized too. When we came to the lake there were a total of 6 longing to be baptized, including 2 boys of 10/11 years old.
Time went really fast and we had to say good-bye to the people present to leave for Vilnius so we could take the plane at 6 pm the next day, Tuesday, to Amsterdam.
It was a wonderful time and a great experience. At the end of the conference people asked if we would like to come back next year. I am definitely planning to do that, together with Ank. They approved on that.
For pictures:
Link for Lithuania / 2011 august 12-16 / visit Vilnius etc and HouseChurch Conference included = 164 pictures Link for Lithuania / 2011 august 13-15 / HouseChurch Conference = 84 pictures Link for Lithuania / 2011 august 13-15 / HouseChurch Conference / pictures made by Alfonsas Rameika = 72 pictures
For a short impression of the worship:
and
AND
Did you know that Lithuania: - has 3 million inhabitants?
- 1,5 x larger than the Netherlands? - was the first country of the former SU which joined the EU?
We had a wonderfull time together. We went to Georgsmarienhütte (near 
During the day we had different people, some just came for the morning, some came for the whole or just the afternoon. At the end we were with about 18 people. We were glad to meet again with some we met last conference in NL, but also some who me met in april 2010. That was a good reunion. 
