Here is what I have been looking at all day.  Many staff from across Eastern Europe & Russia, asking God to bring more students to know Him and to be involved in the ministry.  They are being trained in Change Action Teams and how they can come up with creative solutions to some of the challenges that they face.  It has been a fun day.  We all look forward to seeing what God will do.

The next 3 days will be filled with prayer, training, discussions, brainstorming, relationship building, and lots of fun.  Right now they are doing a group exercise using puzzles.

  Valerie & I had the great privlege to attend our National Directors Conference this past week.  All of the leaders of the 19 countries across Eastern Europe & Russia come together twice a year to pray, be encouraged, and talk about strategy.  Every couple of years, their wives come with them and we go to a special place where they can have some time to rest and relax in addition to the meetings.

This time we went to the Pearl of Croatia, Dubrovnik.  It is a beautiful city right on the Adriatic sea.  The old town is almost 2000 years old and is magnificent.  It was a great time of focusing on the ministry and building relationships.  Being a National Director is a tough job and they really were encouraged by the time.

I’m truly privleged to be a part of this great group of people!!

Click here to see more pictures.

What do you get when you have two lawyers in a room in Hungary?  Two days of trying to stay awake in meetings and there’s nothing funny about that.  Don’t you wish you could join me? We are going to be wrestling with Hungarian Tax Law as it relates to our ministry.  

 I had the privilege this week of facilitating a meeting with our ministry in Bulgaria.  Last spring, Bulgaria held a nationwide campaign using the Story of Jesus for Children.  Across the nation over 300,000 people saw the film in a live showing and another 1.1 million saw the film on National Television.  Many of those that saw the film indicated that they made a decision to accept Christ.

It has been a great week of discussing what the Lord did.  We are trying to learn from our successes and mistakes so that we can improve the next time.   Overall, the Lord brought the gospel to many across the country.

 How blessed I am to be a part of this!!!

Yesterday, I took my first trip in almost 6 months (here is the plane that I flew on).  This is definately my longest stretch without a ministry trip since I moved to Budapest.  I’m in Sofia, Bulgaria to facilitate an evaluation of a major evangelistic campaign that we held across the country last year.  I haven’t seen much yet, but I’m looking forward to my time here.  I’ll try to keep you posted on how the week goes.

This is a phrase that we use a lot inside of CCC.  Conferences are something we are really good at and that we have found effective in moving forward on our mission.  Bringing people together to discuss challenges, work on problems, get some training is really important in ministry. 

This week it is hitting me close to home as I’m planning / running one conference and attending another.  Our National Directors conference is this week here in Budapest and I did all of the arrangements for it, but I’m not attending it.  I’m attending, along with Valerie, a Cross-Cultural Training here at our office in Budapest.  It is a requirement for us as we transition from Short Term status to Long Term status.  We are joined by 15-20 others from around Europe.  It is a 3 week conference.  I’m sure it will be good, but it is definately going to be long!!!!  Also, this week will be difficult as my body is in one conference and my mind is in another.

These are the last conferences for this calendar year so I’m looking forward to a slower pace next month.  Maybe I’ll blog some more then.

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I’m not sure if you can tell from the picture, but it is a shot of my Email Inbox. EMPTY!!!!! I’m not sure I’ve had an empty inbox since the day that I started using email. In fact, if you take the average number of emails in the inbox over the past year, it is probably around 600-700. Ouch!!!

One of the things that I’ve learned in my job transition is that I need to get a whole lot better at managing information. There is an incredible flow of details, information and todos that come across my desk on an average day and mostly I’ve just been buried.

I decided to read the book, Getting Things Done by David Allen. Jerry told me about it and my dad was reading it so it seemed like the time was right. I read the first few chapters on my trip to Singapore and so when I got back to the office, I decided to implement his suggestions. He said that it could take 2 full days to get everything organized. Here I sit at the end of Day 3 and I’m almost there. I’ve organized my paper files and as of right now, I’ve organized my email. I still have to go through a bunch of lists of todos that I’ve made. I’m getting close, though. Now, the challenge will be to maintain it. The book seems like it will help me a bunch.

I’ll let you know whether these 3 days were worth it. I’ve been battling the stress of the fact that I haven’t gotten many todos done during these 3 days. Time will tell.

Now, nobody send me another email again. EVER!!!!!!

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I haven’t been able to blog much while here in Singapore. We have been in meetings all day and at our hotel you have to buy Internet in 30 min blocks. It isn’t terribly cheap and so I usually only buy one. I use it to call home to Budapest on Skype. After that, there usually are a few emails to deal with and then my time is up. Today, I have some more time since there aren’t any meetings so I headed to a local mall and found free wifi at a McDonalds. It’s nice to not have the clock counting down on me. The picture was taken 5 minutes ago.

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We had a great week of meetings. We met at the East Asia Area of Affairs office. They have a beautiful office on the 24th floor. It was a perfect place to meet. We made a lot of progress on the new Global Measurement Application. We were trained on the system in the morning and in the afternoon we had time to work on our own system. I’m very encouraged at the progress we made. At a few points during the week, I wondered if the system would be ready for us to use in Eastern Europe. I still have my concerns, but we are moving forward and trusting God. I’ve already had the chance to show a few of our Hungarian staff how to use it. Hopefully, on Monday and Tuesday, I will be able to train some staff in Ukraine and Croatia. Also, I will have a few more meetings this week with a few of us that are working on finalizing the list of enhancements that we need to the system.

Here’s the whole group at the end of the time with a view of the Singapore skyline in the background:
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Eating is one of the best parts of being in Singapore. The guy that is leading this project lived here in Singapore for 6 years and in Asia for 23 so he knows the food. I call it the Mark Griffen Food Tour. It includes Malaysian, Chinese, Indian, and a few others. I’ve never been much for Asian food, but I love the places he takes us. Here are a couple of examples:

Jumbo Seafood. Their specialty is Chili Crab which is crab with special Singaporean chili sauce. They also have wonderful Pepper crab along with other seafood dishes. The restaurant is right on the coast and we ate in the open air overlooking the harbour. I was watching the news after we got home that night and that very day they held the Singapore Chili Crab cook-off. Who won? Jumbo Seafood of course. We had the best chili crab in Singapore.
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We also celebrated a great week of meetings at a Chinese Restaurant that is on the 60th floor of the tallest building in Singapore. Not only is the food great, the views were unbelievable. The price wasn’t bad either.
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In a few minutes, I’m off to lunch. I’m headed to California Pizza Kitchen. Coming from Budapest, having a little American Cuisine is a big treat!!!

I know it seems like all we do is eat, but it isn’t much fun to tell you all the details of our meeting. Keith has a great summary of the meetings if you want to know more.

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I made it to Singapore! The flight was uneventful and I was able to sleep 5-6 hours! That means I arrived fairly rested and I feel great as we start the meetings this morning. We are going to have about 10 people from all over the world. There are reps from the US, Europe, India and various parts of Asia. It is always fun to get to interact with our staff from around the world. I have the sense that God is going to do something big as we partner together.

Here’s the view from the conference room. It overlooks Singapore Harbor. It is amazing to watch them unload and load the ships. Definately a meeting distraction.
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Pray that I will maintain balance as I try to stay connected to my job in Budapest while engaging in the training time here. I have a feeling that I will sleep well each night.

I miss my family already. It is going to be a long 10 days from that standpoint.

Yesterday, Larry returned to the office after some vacation. We realized that it was one day short of 2 months since we had seen each other. That’s a pretty long time considering we are supposed to work “together.” I’ve been in regularly phone communication, but it was good to get back in the same building so that we could roll up our sleeves and get some work done.

The major task for the day was a video shoot. A team from the US is here to shoot a video that tells the story of how our ministry began in Poland. Larry & Debby were the first staff to live behind the Iron Curtain, when they moved to Poland in 1977. It was amazing for me as a relative rookie to Eastern Europe to hear the stories of what God did in those early days. There were stories of KGB interrogations, phone tapping and war breaking out when Martial Law was declared. It is so exciting to see all that God has done in the past 30 years to draw Eastern Europeans to Himself.

It was a fun day and a day that renewed my vision for reaching Eastern Europe for Christ. I still can’t believe that God has sent me here to do this. Totally overwhelming.