Dear friend, I hope this message will find you well.

Well, I’m tired of writing that my update will be short and so this one will be again because each week we had (and probably will have) some events at Lebanon Lutheran during whole week – which is not bad, it is great that this church really lives! – but I realize that I have no time to take a break and just do nothing or go somewhere by my own and relax. When I read the posts of others trainees I start to doubt: is it only me that is doing something at Church during whole stay here in the US? It seems to me (only me, when I read these blogs!), that everyone else is relaxing, partying … Maybe the problem is just in me.

I will start with information, that I’ve been moved to already fourth family while I am here in Whitehall. During the last days at the DeMumbrum’s, Virginia and I was talking about to make some Serbian food for the last supper in their house. So, we decided to make something easy. In Seminary, when I don’t know what to make for breakfast, lunch or supper and when I have some cheese left I make gibanica (“c” as  “tz” in tzatziki) because in Serbia, people don’t care when they will eat it. (Is gibanica a first course, main course or a side dish? Should you eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner? In Serbia, the answer to all of these dilemmas is “yes”). Some of my Slovakian friends (and professors too!) at the Seminary really like it! It is traditional, yummy, delicious, oh-my-God-this-tastes-good Serbian cheese pie. When you google-it you can find many ways of how to make it. I was looking for recipe on some American websites because of ingredients – so we found one (click here and make it to!), but there are some stuffs that you don’t need to include, so I make it on way that I do. – Try it, feel free to experiment. But this wasn’t the most hardest part. I made it when I was home alone, so I was learning how to bake it on American cooker – will be 380°F enough or I will put on 420°F(?!). However, the American way of Serbian pie was GOOD – you can ask the DeMumbrum’s and the Wheeler’s who was invited to dinner!

Last week we started a swimming lesson at Lebanon Lutheran. These lessons take place at Curt and Cheri Crouch’s pool in North Muskegon (I’ve already mentioned about this church members before). We had about 20 children – aged between 3 and 12 – which we put in three groups (later in two). These swimming lessons were instructed by Muskegon YMCA. Some of these kids I already know from Day Camp, but many of them were “new-faces”. Because we have about 20 kids and we knew that they cannot be all in the pool at the same time, pastor Doug and I were working on a “week schedule” for them. My job was to choose Bible stories for each day which will be close to the topics that pastor chose. This was the first part of “Bible lesson” – I was the Bible story-teller. We chose Dr. M. Luther’s Small Catechism for this Swim lessons. We didn’t want just to tell this stories to fill the time, our goal was to explain them (Bible stories) together with the articles of Creed. Since I was preparing a Sunday sermon (and readings that we have is for the year B) the first story was about Bread from Heaven – the bread that God has made such as he made me and all creatures … this was a good story for start! After Swim lesson on Friday, pastor Doug and I went to the funeral to White Lake Chapel – it was my first “American-funeral”.

On sunny Saturday (8/11) I was out from Whitehall after almost a month. With the Wheeler’s family, we went to the northern part of Michigan; to be exact to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It is a United States National Lakeshore located along the northwest coast of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan in Leelanau and Benzie counties near Empire, MI. I am not an expert I have those informations from Wikipedia … and you know what, here is fun fact: I find out where we’ve been only when we came home – because I don’t had internet when we were there … so I knew just that we are at Sleeping Bear Dunes. It was very pleasant there! I think that this was the best trip I’ve gone to so far. – Chicago, IL was also nice!

Today (Monday, 8/13) we had last day of the Swim lessons. In a couple of minutes pastor will come to pick me up and we are going to a nursing home and late afternoon we have Finance Committee at the Church.

This week we’ll have a last day of the Playground (it began [daily] on July 9th!), Food Pantry, Bible Study, we have Backpack event and we will be hosting a Cambodian wedding and maybe something more here at Lebanon Lutheran – I’m already trying to be as a communist: always ready!

Have a wonderful week!