Birthday Party in Silute.

We had the opportunity to travel to Silute last weekend. We had a great time. We attended an 80^th birthday party for a lady on Saturday. When we arrived there was a long table set up for twenty people to sit at and was covered with food. We sat down at the table and then a hot plate full of food was brought to each of us. We didn’t even touch the food on the table! We ate our food, sang some traditional folk songs and then a couple of hours later we were told to snack on the food on the table. We played a couple of games and enjoyed time together. We then sang happy birthday as the cake was being brought out. We ate the cake and drank coffee and tea. Just as we were finishing our cake another cake was brought out. This cake was called the 100 leaves cake. Everyone then was given two marble stones and was asked to say two things, wishes for the birthday lady. A glass goblet was passed around and we dropped our stones in it after had spoken to the lady. The party lasted 6 hours! Lithuanians love their parties and their food. The preacher’s wife from Silute was running the party and said as she was bringing out the second birthday cake that I would send word how much Lithuanians eat. It was really nice to be surrounded with such a large family. Everyone spoke with everyone and enjoyed each other.

On Sunday we worshipped with the congregation in Silute. There were 27 people all together! We had a great time! Milton preached from Ezekiel 37 on the valley of dry bones and how Lithuania is like the valley. We ate lunch with a larger group. It was nice to have other people my age to talk with. Tomas is the preacher’s son in Silute and has decided to help me learn Lithuanian by speaking very little English to me. Well he dropped some ice and put it on my plate…so I decided in my wisdom to chunk it into the grass. Well what I didn’t see was that there was a man walking by who thought I was throwing the ice at him. Tomas then encouraged me by saying that now the man would beat me up! Luckily he did not beat me up but did give me the evil eye. We drove back to Vilnius and had service with the group there. It was a fun weekend.