Wednesday June 10th

Today at our morning prayer service, Pastor Holslag reminded us how Christ is ever present with us on this journey. We are truely inspired by her words to us each morning and how she gives us time for reflection.

The teaching group met with the Ukraine students and continued the lessons revolving around the Obama book. Each group of students is now reading aloud short passages from the book, and discussing pertinent issues such as racism, class, and prejudice. Small group work is also being done, where students brainstormed ideas related to stereotypes. This was followed by sharing their ideas in the larger group.

Early in the day, the painting group drove to St. Teresa's in the town of Kretinga, north of Klaipeda, where six Sisters of Charity oversee a shelter for the elderly. Sister Rika showed us a number of things that she would like done, some of which involved painting. Other small tasks were cutting up lumber and weeding the vegetable garden. The painting group accomplished all the painting tasks and started on the wood cutting in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, the teaching group traveled to Kretiga to join the painting group at St Teresa's. They brought along with them 19 prayer shawls, made and donated by volunteers from Connie's church. Connie presented the shawls to Sister Rika and she was very, very pleased. She gave everyone a St. Teresa medal. Because all the painting work was already done, thanks to the hard and steadfast work of the painting group, the teaching group worked on cutting wood and weeding the vegetable garden.

In the evening, Eric and Becky had us over to their home for dessert. It was a great time relaxing with our hosts and talking about the events of the day. Since the entire group had not seen the Baltic Sea yet (only Roger and Battokok had ventured there yesterday), we decided to go there before bed. Louise kindly drove us there. We were in awe of the beauty of the sea and the rose colored sky! We all collected shells and colored stones. We will remember this day with happiness in our hearts for all we saw and did!