We went to Georgia the country after Israel, we arrived on January 6 and will be leaving for Armenia this coming Wednesday (the 7th).
We saw our first snow here which was fun and magical. I hadn’t seen this much snow since studying abroad in France in 2010 and hadn’t played in it since I was a kid living in Canada.
There were some sweet moments this month:
– our first night in town we got to eat Thai food. Yum!
– our Airbnb host treated us to a shot of homemade “chacha” as well as some dried fruit thing as our house warming
– we got to celebrate Christmas twice! Georgians celebrate Christmas on January 7th. Midnight on the 6th we saw fireworks out of our window and the next day on our way to church we stumbled upon the Christmas parade (we were living in Tbilisi (their capitol) which has about 1M people (about 1/3 of Georgia’s total population)
– we played in our first snow while visiting the Jvari monastery
– we went to a town about 3 hours away, Bakuriani and went skiing for the first time! In our retro, onesies, ski suits that we bought secondhand for 20 Lari (about $8USD)
– went to the sulphur baths twice – Tbilisi means warm and was named after its natural sulfur hot baths. A little stinky and very hot but incredibly relaxing and worth it for the way your skin feels the next day
– went on a snow hike with some friends we met at the international church. A snow hike! Crazy. We did 9 miles from Vake park in Tbilisi to Udzo monastery. We started in rain, mud and sludge and transitioned to snow flurries and then inches of snow and powdery snow everywhere and cherry on the top, we were able to ring the bell on top
– had some sweet Hofbrau on draft on our last day.
– tasted amazing Georgian food
– seeing Romeo & Juliet at the Opera House with a live orchestra and getting 4th row seats
We had the freedom of no host last month and were able to experience God’s goodness and share his love.
One morning we came together as a team and prayed to see what God had in store for us.
Elaine had a picture of me in a coffee shop, laughing and having fun. After we shared together, we went out and went to a coffee shop and Sam and I just happened to be sitting next to another American who we struck up conversation with. We found out he was teaching English as part of the peace corps in a small town an hour away and was Tbilisi for the afternoon. He is not a believer but we were able to share why we were in Georgia and share cool stories of God moving in our last couple months. He listened and talked to us for hours. And then through him, he connected us with a couple who was living in another village. They are full time missionaries and were hosting a team of full time mission school students and we met up with them and got to spend the night there and went to a lovely house church and I met a German girl who had a violin and after service I got to worship with her on the piano and me on the violin. So life giving. Through a lady in the congregation, we were able to put on two women’s conferences and teach public health and build relationships with the ladies who attended. This town was mostly Muslim, coming from an Azerbaijan heavy population. I’m so glad we were able to connect and have so much good come from a God encounter in a coffee shop.
Another cool story was when Elaine and I went to find a shop to get her guitar repaired. We went to a couple shops without luck. And we sat down after the first one at a coffee shop to decide if it was worth it because this repair type had a highish price tag ($100 maybe) and in my head I thought how cool would it be if it was free but I didn’t say that aloud (but i think God still heard).
And at the second music shop we visited, one of the guys knew a “guitar master” so he walked us over to him and this guitar master’s shop was in this apartment building, hole in the wall and he didn’t speak any English but nodded to say he would fix it. And that he would fix it for free!!!! Wow!!! We dropped the guitar off and when we picked it up a few days later, he had it fixed and Elaine got to play a worship song in the shop to test it out and the guitar master wouldn’t accept any money for it. God is good!
We also went to coffee shops as part of our ministry and one day I went to sit to write a blog on Jordan and then I felt like it was so hard to just start a conversation and I was there for hours but finally mustered up the courage to talk to this girl. She was so receptive and came up to sit next to me and I shared why I was in Georgia and she said she was a believer too! I mustered up courage to ask if she needed prayer and it was awkward because she didn’t understand at first and then she pointed to her head. I asked if it hurt and she said no, that she felt sad, gloomy, depressed. I prayed for her and gave her a big hug and then she had to go (she was also visiting from another place 5 hours away) and she left and came back before leaving to say thank you so much.
Another day, I went to the same lovely coffee shop. I felt prompted to go but it was hard because there was this camera crew doing a photo shoot and I was in the loft area and all their artwork was scattered everywhere and no one else could sit there. I felt unsure, like why did I feel like I needed to be there? Was it because I just liked coffee? (The coffee there was amazing). So I wrote my Israel blog and then the crew had finished working and other people came to sit and I heard some English speakers. So I went up to these two girls and they were English teachers from America. One of the girls had to leave early, but I stayed a while longer and talked to the girl Gabby and explained why I was here. She nodded and listened but I sensed she wasn’t a believer. So I went for it and asked if she knew Jesus and she said she had gone to church as a kid but hadn’t gone in the last two years. I told her I felt like I was there to tell her Jesus loved her and shared the story of how we met that guy in a coffee shop that first time and the cool things that came from that. And also how I felt like I needed to be in this coffee shop and was unsure why because of the camera crew but knew now that it was to share Jesus’s love for her. She was receptive and then I had to leave to cook dinner but so much good comes of us listening to our prompting and sharing God’s love for us!
