Dear Amigos,
Sorry, it has taken me so long to get another update out but we have very limited internet access. You know it is hard to find wireless internet access here in these straw huts we are staying in out here in the mountains. Actually that was a joke. The house we are currently in just doesn’t have internet access. To get internet access we go to the Yum-Yum donuts whenever we can find time and a ride to downtown Yerevan. We have been staying in Yerevan the past week at a house of a missionary couple who is currently out of town. It is a newer house but everything seems to keep breaking here. There has been a busted water pipe, no heat, and I have had one hot shower in the past 5 days. I am actually beginning to like the cold showers. Also, Chad and I had a hole form in our air mattress. I wonder if there is a weight limit on those things. Anyways, back to the work we are doing here. When we last talked the group was in the middle of the Community Health Evangelism training which we will be using in another week. I will explain that more during the week we are doing it because I think I will be able to explain it better after we get started and get to use it. So the day after my last blog we finished up CHE training and then we went to the Armenia/Turkey border to check out Mt. Ararat. I got some cool pictures from there but I can’t put any on the internet while here. I have to say it was quite experience to see the place where it is thought that Noah’s Ark landed. After we left there, we came back to Yerevan and had dinner with a family that lives downtown. The couple is from Sri Lanka and they have two daughters. Prassanna, the husband, works for World Vision. This is a huge non-profit organization I am sure many of you have heard of.
Sorry, it has taken me so long to get another update out but we have very limited internet access. You know it is hard to find wireless internet access here in these straw huts we are staying in out here in the mountains. Actually that was a joke. The house we are currently in just doesn’t have internet access. To get internet access we go to the Yum-Yum donuts whenever we can find time and a ride to downtown Yerevan. We have been staying in Yerevan the past week at a house of a missionary couple who is currently out of town. It is a newer house but everything seems to keep breaking here. There has been a busted water pipe, no heat, and I have had one hot shower in the past 5 days. I am actually beginning to like the cold showers. Also, Chad and I had a hole form in our air mattress. I wonder if there is a weight limit on those things. Anyways, back to the work we are doing here. When we last talked the group was in the middle of the Community Health Evangelism training which we will be using in another week. I will explain that more during the week we are doing it because I think I will be able to explain it better after we get started and get to use it. So the day after my last blog we finished up CHE training and then we went to the Armenia/Turkey border to check out Mt. Ararat. I got some cool pictures from there but I can’t put any on the internet while here. I have to say it was quite experience to see the place where it is thought that Noah’s Ark landed. After we left there, we came back to Yerevan and had dinner with a family that lives downtown. The couple is from Sri Lanka and they have two daughters. Prassanna, the husband, works for World Vision. This is a huge non-profit organization I am sure many of you have heard of.
We had some Sri Lankan food and sat around and chatted. Prassanna got up and gave a bit of his life story and how God has worked in it. Growing up in Sri Lanka his mom was Buddhist and his father an alcoholic. He came into a relationship with God after the age of 16 when a distant relative began talking with him and telling him about Christ. Now, in Sri Lanka there is freedom of religion. But there are Buddhist sects who highly oppose Christians and have free reign to do so. In fact, the pastor of the church Prassanna went to in his hometown was just murdered by some Buddhist monks. He has worked for World vision in places like Mongolia for 4 years, another country I can’t remember for 2 ½ years, and is now in Armenia. The family was great and was so honored to have us over. The next day we were off to Vanadzor to begin work on the homes for Habitat for Humanity. This is a small town in Mountains of Armenia. We had to commute an hour and a half every morning to get there. It was quite a scenic drive. The mountains and countryside here are quite a site. The homes that we were working on are for families who were displaced by an earthquake that took place over 20 years ago. It was sometime in 1988 when a huge earthquake hit the region and left families displaced and children parentless. There are still people displaced and affected by this today. These homes are put together in a pretty unique way. It is put together by Styrofoam bricks that you fill with concrete and rebar. It is a new technology and it is cheap. It only cost $22,000 to complete one of the duplex homes. Thursday through Saturday we did drywall work and painting because the Styrofoam bricks had not arrived yet to start on some more of the homes. 
The weather has been starting to get a little chilly outside. The crew we are working with there is different than anything we have worked with in Moldova. Usually, we worked with churches to help build but this time it is with a crew of workers from the town. A lot of them seem pretty rough around the edges and don’t come from very much. For Halloween we just went over to the Puccini’s home for some good food. They are the missionaries we are working with here. They have a little 3 year old son named Oliver. He was a pirate for Halloween. Nick and Olivia have been over here for 5 ½ years and are great. They have learned a very difficult language and have done some great work here. Saturday we went out to get something to eat in town at night when we got done working all day. Sunday, we got up and went to church in a small town another hour or so away. We did a few songs and Zac gave a message at the service. For lunch we went to the Pastor’s house and had a smorgasbord of food. We sang some more songs and left to relax for the rest of the day. On the way back we went took a chair lift at a ski resort to check out a cool view. That pretty much wraps up that week.
Chris
Hebrews 12:12-13
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