The week after EBS Camp and the week before the Sr. High MK Camp, I came down with shingles. This left me unable to be at the first MK Camp. However, Bonnie went to serve as a cook and a photographer. Ellie Beth also helped the cooking team out throughout the week. Camp was great. As you can see from the pictures, here was a lot of laughter and fun throughout the week. However, the flu bug hit camp again. About ten people ended up with the flu, but after a lot of prayer from many faithful prayer warriors the bug stopped spreading and camp remained healthy for the remainder of the summer. What was wonderfulin the midst of having a fourth of the camp sick, is how it turned the hearts of the campers to spiritual matters. Several campers commented how having the flu bug at camp caused them to slow down and listen more closely to the Lord. It turned the camp from being a great time of laughter, to one of laughter and ministry. Thank you, Jesus. Many campers told us that they had been convicted of living in a way that did not honor God and that they needed to change their ways. As our theme was, "One Step Closer", this was a joy to hear. Please pray for these campers, to walk more closely with the Lord as the return to school and family.

Then we had the Jr. High MK Camp. This is the first year, since we've been here, that we had a camp dog – our dog, Frodo. Many of the campers loved sitting with Frodo and giving him lots of attention. Of course, he had no problem with that arrangement either. Our theme was also, "One Step Closer", but with this camp we needed to change things to reflect the younger ages of the campers. We spent more time playing and using our activities as examples of Christian living. For example, Bonnie heard one of our rock climbing instructors sharing with the campers an analogy from knot tying. As she tied the knot used to attach the camper to the rope, she said that the the rope was like you and Christ. You start out separate, but as you come together and follow him through the twists and turns, you become connected and joined. While she shared this, she tied the knot and then the camper trusted that knot as they climbed up the rock wall. What a wonderful analogy for the Christian life. Please pray for this camp, that through the next year these campers would follow Jesus Christ, step by step, and grow into faithfulness and maturity in him.

We finally have internet access!  It came earlier this week and we are now able to update this site a little more frequently and also send out updates to our faithful prayer partners.  We are pretty excited about this.  Rather than try to recap the last several weeks, I think I'll just fill you in on our day today since it was a typical day for us.

Botanical Gardens on our Cell Phone camera

The service was all in Croatian.  We are getting better at Croatian, but it is still very difficult to follow anything other than greetings and simple phrases.  Praise songs are great though, because we can pick up lots of phrases that are repeated over and over until we learn them.  One I caught this morning was "Ti si moj kralj!" which means, "you are my king".  It is an exciting moment when you can lean over to your family and say, "Hey that means you are my king."  However, it is a little frustrating when they all say, "Yeah, we know".  I'm getting used to that as well.

When it came time to take communion, we encountered another of those extra decisions we have to make a lot.  One cup was passed around to everyone and it was wine.  Do we give it to the girls or not?  Bonnie and had a quick discussion and made a call (I'll leave the decision up to you if you ever have to make it) just as the cup came by.  Unexpected things keep popping up in places we don't expect them.

As the sermon started I was thinking that my time here so far feels like surfing.  I have never actually surfed, but I often feel like I am on a little board on top of a huge wave that is constantly moving forward.  There are times of beauty when you relax and look around, and times of intense activity as you struggle with your board, knowing that the wave won't stop to let you get back on.  Even the falling in is not bad, but riding the board is a heck of a lot more fun than struggling to get back on to the board.

After church we relaxed a bit, and then I drove Bonnie to an empty parking lot so she could practice driving the stick shift and then Bonnie drove home for the first time in Croatia.  This was her first time to drive in Croatia.  The traffic here is more intense than in the States so it took her a little while longer to choose to drive.

Thats the day and it was actually very typical for us.  I am looking forward to the time when things like going to church are more of a routine process for us.  However, I am also thankful that we are here and acclimating to this new culture so well.  It is truly a blessing in the way God has orchestrated so many events around us to make this a smooth transition.  He is good.

Progress Meter is a Joomla module I created to allow a user to display a very simple vertical bar indicating a percentage of progress toward a goal.  It is very configurable and used on this site as our Support Meter.

It is released as open source and is available here or off the Joomla extension site.  If you use it on your site please post a comment on the Joomla extension site so I can the warm fuzzies of knowing it's used somewhere. 

Once you install Progress Meter, you can set the following

For support for this module, you will need to register for the site and then go to the Forums. 

Updated 02/21/2007

The following bugs were fixed:

• Fix width descriptor to say width, not height.
• Trap divide by zero error.
• Fix percentile bar to not extend past module height.
• Fix percent figure being written outside box on low percentages.  It now writes above the percent line until it fits below the percent line.
  

I also added one feature:

• Added macro codes (#GOAL# and #C_GOAL#) to Module Text so user can display goal and current progress without changing the numbers in the text every time a new number is entered into the Current Goal Level.  Enter the goal and progress numbers as you want them displayed, use the macros in the module text, and they will display as you entered them.  Don't worry about entering $ signs into the Progress Goal or Current Goal Level fields.  The module strips those characters out to get just the numbers before doing any math.