Macedonia: Day Four

Jackie makes the BEST iced coffees!!

One of the kittens that Josh rescued. It lives with another family but came back for an overnight visit while it's owners were out of town

volleyball in the park with the youth

Danny and Tale's brother who was wearing the watch we brought him from his brother

fellowship at Izgrev

After arriving home so late last night, we slept a little later today and walked to Kyle and Jackie’s for a pancake breakfast around 10 a.m. After a leisurely breakfast, we gathered volleyball materials and went to the park to play volleyball with some of the youth in the community. Jeff and Amy joined us there with their kids. It started as a small group at first, but grew as players began to straggle in. Jackie and I watched the volleyball game and visited with Amy and other adults that stayed to watch. After the volleyball game, we came back to the apartment to shower and rest a bit. Kyle and Jackie joined us at 5 to go downstairs and have coffee with Olgitsa, the woman who owns the apartment we are staying in. She had met us yesterday and doesn’t speak English so we couldn’t talk with her. She called Jackie and asked if they would bring us for coffee. As I think I’ve said before, the Macedonians are very hospitable and a home visit always means something to drink, as in juice or water or soda, and also coffee or tea. The Prilep way is to serve the coffee or tea on a tray as opposed to handing it to someone. Jackie tells me that the woman of the house always sits near the kitchen so that they can move easily back and forth. Also, the TV is always on during a home visit and sometimes they will ask you what channel you would like to watch. There are always snacks as well and these vary. Most of the visits we have made will have a sweet snack or two and a savory snack. We had a lovely visit with Olgitsa and also with her niece who shared with us a “hand treatment” from a company that she is representing. We found it to be similar to Avon except that the products are “all natural”. We visited for about two hours and then left to go to Izgrev for a fellowship. It was planned that people who had attended the parenting seminar here in Prilep might want to come back and discuss questions they might have had. We had a nice group come and had some great conversation. Kyle had forgotten that it is a holiday today and also a “name day” celebration which would have kept people away. A lot of the Macedonian names are names of Macedonian saints. Each of the saints have a day in the year that people celebrate that saint. If you are named after that saint then you celebrate your "name day" on that day. Kyle said that many times the "name day" celebration is a bigger deal than a birthday. It was getting late when we left and Kyle and Jackie still needed to attend a name day celebration for someone they knew so they dropped us off back at the apartment. We had a light supper and Danny is studying for the sermon he will deliver tomorrow. We will have church on the mountain with a picnic. Until tomorrow…