Day 5

Up early again-and down to the hotel restaurant for potted meat, cheese, tomato, and cucumber for breakfast. You’ll notice we had lots of tomato and cucumber.

Then off to the Block again. This time we spread out around the area and tried to focus on cleaning up around the other Blocks near by. I started cleaning up around the Block across the street and encountered about 3,000 cigarette butts. So I had my work cut out for me. And two little old ladies were watching me and talking near by. A little girl named Biedra helped me sweep up all the trash and made sure to treat me with a little candy for the holiday.

the two ladies who spent the morning watching me clean

After finishing in that area we-me, Brandi, and Anita-headed to the back of the building to pick up as much trash as we could.

trash we found between the two buildings

David came by and said that he had a feeling we were about to be offered coffee. If you know me you know I don’t like coffee, at all. But I sucked it up and when we were called did my part by drinking 2 cups, eating a moon pie, and having my first of many servings of Baklava. Yumm. . . the lady was so sweet. Her name translates into “Rose” in English, so that’s what I’ll call her. She was precious. David had several opportunities as we were sitting there to share the gospel. People were really open to hearing that we were there because we love Jesus.

Amy, Brandi, and I with "Rose"

Then lunch time again-same thing as the day before. David had an opportunity to tell us about the ups and downs of the past few years in reaching the community for Christ.

Then for something a little more fun than cleaning up trash. Amy, Brandi, Sharolyn, and I headed over to Heike’s house to put together bags to hand out in the community with candy and scriptures in them. We had a blast. It was so fun to just have girl time.

Then we headed back to the Block to meet up with everyone and head back to the hotel for dinner. And the Lord blessed us-our luggage had arrived and we got to wear clean clothes for dinner. For dinner we went to a restaurant up on a mountain overlooking the city. It was nice to get a good view of everything going on and be able to pray over it. Then we had more chopska salad.

a view from the dam

Brandi and I after enjoying a little Iran (a drink made from yogurt and water)

another view from the dam

Back to the hotel for devotion and bed.