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November 14-16: Can A Church Be Exemplary in Germany??

Posted in Other, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on November 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been computer-less for the last three days, so I know I’m a little behind, but you are going to forgive me when you read about the great church, I want to tell you about today.

On Sunday the 14th, while all of America was asleep, Sherrylee and I worshipped with the church of Christ in Chemnitz, Germany–a vibrant, thriving, encouraging family of God that I can’t wait to tell you about.

But the story begins in 1990 with our first visit to the same city. We traveled with Daryl and Gail Nash into what just a few months before had been Karl-Marx-Stadt. As we drove into the city, the big communist sign had butcher paper across it with the name CHEMNITZ in magic marker.

Daryl and Gail and their daughter Morgan moved to Chemnitz in1991 and began a wonderful experiment in tentmaking missions. We opened a private language school in Chemnitz named ABC English Language School which Daryl and Gail operated for almost a decade.  The idea was to provide them financial support AND to grow so that the school could hire more Christian teachers to come and support them as well, creating a self-funded mission team.

At its zenith, the school supported about eight people and opened a second branch in Zwickau, Germany. Of course, Gail and Daryl began worshipping in Chemnitz with one other person who had been baptized by Reiner Kallus in Oelsnitz–a small group of Christians who had migrated from the Lutheran church almost immediately after the collapse of the wall through Reiner’s efforts.

Mostly because of the potential and because of the Nashes in Chemnitz, it wasn’t long until Larry and Pam Sullivan decided to move to Chemnitz and focus their full-time efforts with the newly-formed church. Then just a few years later, Jack and JoAnn McKinney, former missionaries in Switzerland and retired from Harding University, moved to Chemnitz for about five years to help the new congregation mature.

Somewhere in all of this Clyde and Gwen Antwine, former missionaries in Germany and then teaching missions at Oklahoma Christian, befriended the Sullivans and began coming each year to help them and encourage them. Clyde became the head of the Helpers In Missions internship program at Memorial Road Church of Christ, so he began sending interns to Chemnitz regularly.

And, of course, Let’s Start Talking had been sending teams each year from the beginning. The LST teams worked mostly with students at the ABC English school who wanted the extra experience in English.

Now almost twenty years later, the church is 50-60 people, mostly Germans (which is sometimes unusual), lots of young people, young families with young children, and with German leadership–in other words, a very healthy, growing, and encouraging congregation. 

The Nashes left twelve years ago, ABC English closed, and the Sullivans have done such a good job that they are preparing to move to Leipzig in the next year to help with a new church plant there.  Karen Neel, who came as an ABC English teacher originally, is teaching at a private school and continues to provide an evangelistic spirit to the church, the Antwines continue to send HIM workers as the church requests, and LST is still a regular part of the church’s plan for reaching new people.

I couldn’t help but asking myself why Chemnitz has continued to grow and has become such a strong church while so many other efforts in Europe are either stagnant or have failed completely, and I keep coming back to one major difference. Of course the only real answer is that God has acted mightily here, but from a purely practical side, I think that the difference has been the fact that Chemnitz has been a large team effort–not just a team effort, but a large team effort, which is so rare in Europe.

I’ve written about this once earlier this year in the series on Great Churches, so you might look back and see a more exhaustive look at the idea, but I think Chemnitz is another example of what could be done in Europe with lots of people over a longer period of time with sustained efforts–and much prayer!

We left Chemnitz on Sunday and visited with Karen Abercrombie, who with her husband Mark and the Sullivans, are starting the new work in Leipzig. I hope many of you will find ways to join them in this work and that God will bless this new work.  Perhaps He looks down and says, “Well, they do care after all. Lots of my people care about Leipzig!”‘

We left Leipzig and drove toward Mainz where we visited with Alex and Cass Huffman and their baby girl Noah.  You won’t believe the story they have . . . .

PS. Don’t forget that I’m posting pictures as we go on my Facebook page. Sorry, I can’t get them off my phone to add to the blog directly.

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November 10 : Hotel Mistakes

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

 Yesterday, Sherrylee and I had a good meeting with Yuriy Aniper, who is another of the young preachers working in Eastern Europe today.  He inherited the work when Rick Pinchuk, a long-time worker, died.  Yuriy has prepared himself well, having completed a degree at Kiev Theological Seminary and has good support from the States, so we pray that his work will be fruitful and he will be faithful for all of his life.

By the way, have I ever told you how hard it is to choose hotels in foreign countries over the internet.  I’ve always booked our own travel because I’ve done it so much, I think I can do it better than everyone else.  After all, you have to consider several important factors in choosing a hotel over the internet:

  • location – You don’t want to be on the opposite side of a city from the people you are wanting to see if it takes a couple of hours to cross by tram. You also don’t want to be too isolated when your friends are not around.  And, finally, you want to be relatively convenient to getting to the airport, preferably not a 50 dollar cab ride away.
  • cleanliness and comfort – All turkish hotels have hard beds because that is what they think is standard. All London hotel rooms are tiny, crowded, and have marginal bath/showers. You have to allow a wide range of acceptability here, but still you have to look for something that works for you. We have found that the date the hotel was built and/or when the rooms were updated are probably the only way to really tell anything about the hotel on the internet.
  • restaurant, internet access, and airport shuttle are all important to us, but not 100% essential
  • cost – Cost is the hardest.  I always try to balance the above factors with what I think is reasonable.

When I make a hotel mistake, it is always because I thought cost was more important than what I was giving up–and it never was.  That is exactly what happened with the hotel I had booked in Kiev.  It was a two-star hotel, which didn’t look too far from the center of town, but the only reason it won in the finals was because of price.  We took a taxi from the airport–it is always a bad sign when the taxi drivers don’t have a clue where the hotel is.  As he started slowing down, I started peering out the taxi window into the darkness–the eastern European darkness that is just a little scary. The only businesses anywhere near were the little tin sheds selling cigarettes, magazines, and whatever. 

As we got ready to stop, Sherry said, I don’t think we can stay here.  That is all it took for us to just keep on driving.  Hotel mistakes are expensive mistakes. Our only choice in the middle of the night was to ask the taxi driver to take us to a big name hotel, so we ended up at the Radisson–a very nice, but pretty expensive hotel.  So, anyway, my only advice to you about choosing hotels is that you may save money in the long run by not being quite so stingy when you are searching.

And, yes, I did look on Tripadvisor.com and I will be writing my own review as soon as we get back.  So my final words of advice on this subject are

  • Never believe the pictures on the internet. Just remember that they are all glamor shots.
  • Make sure you read reviews on neutral sites–and make sure those reviews are recent. (I almost chose one hotel in Kiev until I got to the fourth review that said something like, “Oh yea, if it makes any difference to you, the hotel is above a pretty loud strip club.” )
  • If your gut says “maybe not,” listen to it.

We are in the best hotel ever in Budapest, so I’m batting 3 for 4 so far.  I’ll keep you posted though.

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November 10 – Kiev: A Glimpse of the Harvest

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In 1991, LST sent a large group of students from Lipscomb University to Kiev, Ukraine.  One of those students was Chris Lovinggood, who later returned as a full-time worker. One of his accomplishments was to create what is called the Ukrainian Education Center (UEC), a center for reading, for study, for small groups to gather, in short, a place for Christians to build relationships with the community.  This building is where the Let’s Start Talking teams meet their Readers as well. 

Today, Sherrylee and I had the privilege of meeting Vitaly Samodin,  the director of the UEC.  He is also one of the leaders in the Nevky church, with whom LST has a fairly long history of serving.  We spent the morning talking about our partnership and how we might serve the church here better.

About 11am, we were joined by Kostya K–, the minister for the church of Christ in Bila Tserkva, just outside of Kiev.  Kostya’s story is classic!

Kostya was an LST reader about 1994 in Kiev. David Skidmore was the American Christian who read with him. David says that they sat under a statue of Lenin as they read.  But Kostya was not that interested. So David went home.  Fifteen years later,  David is walking by the missions bulletin board in a Memphis church and sees a picture of Kostya and couldn’t believe his eyes.  He read the caption under the picture and was convinced it was the same Kostya that he had read with under the statue of Lenin, but now Kostya was the preacher for the church in Bila Tserkva!  David had not even known that he was a Christian.  Heaven is going to be full of people discovering each other and never dreaming that one had influenced the other towards eternity. 

We visited with Kostya for a while, then he took us to the UEC since we had never been there.  As a true serendipity, Tim Archer, a man we had worked with in Kiev in the early 90s was also visiting the UEC, so we got to have lunch with Tim and Kostya.  See what I mean about our being so blessed to constantly meet people of great faith.

Churches of Christ in Kiev seem to be doing well. There is sustained work, there are many young leaders, there is vision beyond just conducting church services, and there is a strong sense of serving the community.  It has been an encouraging day.

The weather in eastern Europe is unseasonably warm. Sherrylee and I can’t decide whether it is a blessing or a curse. Very cold weather as we expected would have been bone-chilling, no doubt, but the extra warm weather has made it very, very warm in all the buildings because they had already turned on the heat.  It is apparently unreasonable to cool anything in November.  Oh well. Stretch those rubber bands.

Tomorrow we have a morning meeting with Yuriy Aniper and then we fly to Budapest.  Thanks for going along with us.

Look for pictures of the people we meet on my Facebook page.

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November 9 – Bucharest: Bullet Holes In the Walls

Posted in Christian Missions, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on November 10, 2010| 3 Comments »

The first time I was in Bucharest, Romania, was Spring of 1990, just months after the revolution. The streets were empty, the stores were empty, the people were friendly–but empty, and there were bullet holes in the walls of many of the downtown buildings.  One of my strongest memories is of how the main road from the airport to  the city had to be navigated through huge potholes.

Well, the potholes are gone, the streets are full of cars, the stores are full of stuff, the bullet holes are gone except for the museum pieces, the people are still friendly–but as in much of Eastern Europe, the emptiness of 1990 has only been filled with materialism, not God.

One of the earliest LST workers in Romania was Bubba Cook–he goes by Albert in Romania, but I noticed that most of his friends still call him Bubba, so I will too.  He did short-term work for four years in several cities in Romania, and after completing his Masters at Harding Graduate School in Memphis, he was invited back to Bucharest to work full-time.  He married one of the young women in the church Lavinia and now ten years later, they have two beautiful children Bogdan and Lara. (See their picture on my Facebook page–I can’t figure out how to get to these pictures from public computers!)

But their road has not been easy. The main church in Bucharest is typical of many “post-war” churches in Europe.  Feeding on the brokenness and emptiness of the Communist era, the immediate impact of the love of Christians and the gospel story touched many post-revolution lives, so at one point in the first ten years, the congregation numbered over 300 members here in Bucharest. As people recovered economically, however, they began filling their lives with things other than God, so the numbers are down to under 50 in this same church. 

It is an old story in Europe. Frankfurt had at least three congregations that built buildings to hold 1000 people after WWII; all the buildings emptied and now have been sold, and the body of members continues to shrink with each year–and it is one of the better churches!  The same story unfolded in Japan after WWII, so this is not a country-specific spiritual disease, but one that threatens every congregation in its own story.  You can probably think of some great American churches of the past that are struggling to keep their doors open now.

As this kind of slow death begins to occur in a church, the macro-struggles of the church to survive only reflect the micro-struggles of individual Christians in the church–and often on the mission field, the missionaries or the national evangelists receive the brunt of the frustrations the church feels as it declines.

Without getting into the details of their story–because it is their story–Bubba and Lavinia shared with us many of their frustrations and their struggles. We talked and we prayed for them and know that God will continue to lead them, but they are still dodging the potholes in the roads in Romania.  Bubba is actually enrolled in doctoral studies at a seminary here in Bucharest and doing very well. I think God has great plans for him and Lavinia.  Our advice to him was simple:  “Don’t quit!”

We visited with two of the Romanian leaders of the church of Christ in Bucharest–wonderful young men, full of the love of God, and as we talked about LST in Bucharest and how we might help, they began raising the same kinds of survival questions that Bubba and Lavinia had raised. We talked about how churches plateau in Europe at about 50, then they reach a point where it takes all their manpower to sustain the church, so they quit reaching out to new people. First, they just level out, then they start to shrink. When they start to shrink, they get scared of shrinking, so they throw all their energy into trying to rescue each other, which brings them closer to each other–but makes an even more closed group for any new people to try to enter–so eventually they settle into a comfortable number–and they stay comfortable until they die.  To survive, not just to grow,  a church must continue to reach out to new people!  That is true everywhere!

We left Bucharest yesterday hopeful! All of the people we talked with were eager to reach new people, to once again offer the Great News of Jesus to the Romanian people in a way that they can really see Jesus, not just as a flat-faced icon, but as the One who loves them and died for them, the One who can really fill the emptiness in their lives.  Pray for the work in Romania.

Today, we are in Kiev, Ukraine.  I can’t wait to see what God has in mind for us today!  I’ll try to tell you tomorrow.

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November 8 – Two Different Stories

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , on November 9, 2010| 2 Comments »

On these kinds of trips, Sherrylee and I get to talk to lots of different people. That’s a funny sentence actually. First, there are only different people, and secondly, the differentness of the people is most of the reason why we make the trip, so why should it be unusual. Well, as the French say, vive la difference!

As we are talking to these different people, one of our favorite ways to get to know them first is to ask them to tell us the story of how they became Christians.  On our last night in Turkey, during a visit with A and K, they introduced us to M and T, two Russian Christians that are their co-workers in Antalya.  As they told us their stories, I was reminded again that God’s ways are not our ways, or as the old hymn says, “God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”  Read the short version of their stories and delight with me in the different and unexpected ways God finds people who want to find Him.

M’s parents were atheists, so he had no religious thread to his life. He was, however, brought up with a sense of morality and a tender-heartedness towards people–not traits highly regarded among his peers. When he entered the Russian army as a very young man, he says he was beat every day. If it was not other soldiers taking advantage of him, it was instructors or officers trying to toughen him up. For the most part, they just humiliated him.

Of course, he left the army as soon as it was possible, but then he decided he needed to be tougher, so he started drinking more, carousing, confronting people and picking fights whenever he could in an effort to be a tough guy.  But M, as much as he tried and as depraved as he could act,  was not a tough guy at heart, so when his conscience would catch up with him, he said he would just lie on his bed, cross his arms over his chest, and wish to die–right then and there. He had lost his soul!

One day after lying all day on the couch and wishing to die, he got up to go outside and get something and a complete stranger came up to him and began talking to him and being friendly–pretty unusual for M who really only had friends who humiliated him. Out of the blue, this stranger invited M to church with him.  That’s all it took.  M went and found God and was found by the love of God, and now he is spending his life serving God!

T, his wife, has a very different story.  Her parents followed the party line under Communism, not believing in God and not teaching her about religion, but her grandmother was different. Everyday, her grandmother would go into the sitting room in their house and shut the door for a while. When T was about seven, she followed her grandmother into the room and discovered that her grandmother was reading the Bible and praying to God during these secret times.

From that moment on, T believed in God–in her own way. God became her secret friend, she says. She would talk to God but not in a religious way, rather in a child-like way, not really knowing anything about him. But He knew her, so the story just gets better.

As was pretty common in Georgia, when T was about 15 or 16 years old, her mother took her to a fortune-teller to have her future told.  As T tells it, the fortune-teller looked at her hand and used her cards, but then did not want to tell them what she saw. Mother insisted that the fortune-teller tell them even if it was bad, but eventually all the fortune-teller would say was that she could only see until T was 21 years old and then everything went black.

T was baptized when she was 21!  The seeds that her faithful grandmother had planted grew into a beautiful Christian young woman who was among the leaders in her church group. The devil had lost claim to her soul–no wonder the fortune teller’s powers could see no further. Tamoona belonged to God now!

T was at the church that M first visited–another providential act. They married and have promised to give their lives in God’s service–and we got to have supper with them in Antalya, Turkey. 

Tomorrow, I will tell you about our visit in Bucharest and about our friends and hosts Albert and Lavinia Cook.  The story just gets better!

PS. I have not figured out how to get pictures from my phone into this blog yet using public computers in Eastern Europe, but if you want to see pictures of the people I’m talking about, you can find them on my Facebook page–eventually.

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November 6 and 7 – Turkey

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , on November 8, 2010| 2 Comments »

We arrived in Antalya, Turkey, at 3am, took a taxi to our small pension in the old part of town called Kaleici, then went to sleep.  About 5am–I’m not quite sure–I was slightly awakened by the call to prayer that is heard five times each day in Muslim countries. 

I’m not sure myself how they determine when to pray, but I do know there is a slight contest between the different minarets to be the first to call each morning.  I suppose in some parts of town you might only hear one call, but where we are staying, there are at least five different people competing over their very loud speakers to be the first, or the best, or something. Anyway, it is always an interesting cavalcade of sounds–especially at 5am after an all-night flight–as each chanter begins his liturgy.

About noon, A… and K… and their nine-month old son I… met us for lunch. We first met A and K before they were married in 2002. They were part of the first Let’s Start Talking team in Turkey. A couple of years later, they participated in the first LST internship in Turkey, and now they are full-time M….. in Antalya and great young heroes of faith.

A and K met each other first in Moscow, Russia, where both of their parents were missionaries–not working together, but putting their children in the same school. This background, of course, gives them great experience and perspective for tackling this very challenging work in Turkey.  A’s dad Tim was actually one of the last full-time workers in Turkey from churches of Christ before all were expelled in the 1970s.  Sherrylee and I are grateful to Tim for opening the door to LST in Turkey, but even more for instilling in A a desire to reach out to the wonderful Turkish people.

A and K have been in Antalya for two years now. They are already involved in leading a small Russian-speaking church–you never know how God will use you–as well as working in a college outreach effort near Akdenz University (which uses English classes, but is not LST). In addition, they have several young Christians they are mentoring.

Sherrylee and I took them to their favorite restaurant for lunch where we had a kind of mincemeat-stuffed hushpuppy with some yoghurt dip/soup and a delicious quesadilla-style entrée made with their wonderful pita bread that is native to Turkey. A and K did all the ordering, so I’m afraid I didn’t learn the names of their favorite foods to share with you. I’ll try to do better in the future.

The pita bread though and a small bottle of red wine that we ordered gave us the opportunity to break bread and remember the Lord until he comes again–something Sherrylee has started reminding me to do often at our many “fellowship meals” with people. We Christians have ritualized the Lord’s Supper so much that at first it was a bit awkward to just casually pray, eat and drink–but I suspect it is much more first-century than what we typically do on Sundays.

We talked a lot with A and K about their work, especially brainstorming how to more effectively use the LST workers that come every year. Turkey, though legally a secular country, is enough in reality a country of muslim culture and just enough of the religion to force Christians to be careful.  Turkey has the same problem with Muslim fundamentalists that the U.S. has with Christian fundamentalists. If you can imagine the challenges for Muslim missionaries in the U.S., then you will understand the challenges of Christian M…..in Turkey.

(The M……s in Turkey never even say that word because in the vernacular it conjures up the Crusades and extreme Christian oppression among the Muslims.  We will have to explore together soon the use of words like that in foreign countries.)

Saturday evening we had dinner with the A & K and their Russian co-workers M and T with whom we had such an interesting conversation that I want to write separately about that tomorrow–if that’s OK with you!

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November 5 or 6 — I’m Not Quıte Sure!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , on November 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Jetlag  —  The disorientation your body feels when the plane you are flying crosses multiple time zones, leaving your appetite and your sleeping pattern at home!  Generally speaking, jetlag just feels like you stayed up all night and have to work the next day–so it is survivable!  I’ve read that it takes one day to recover from jetlag for every hour adjustment that you need to make. 

So, for instance, Sherrylee and I left Thursday afternoon and flew about nine hours to Frankfurt, Germany.  Our bodies thought it was midnight when we landed, but the clocks all said 6am–so what should we do?

In the years we were taking groups to Europe every summer, we only had one answer:  you wake, eat, and sleep by the local clock from the minute you arrive.  We would land in Frankfurt at 6am, rent a car,  drive four hours to Hannover, spend the afternoon getting the team settled with their hosts, then we might even have the big information meeting that evening when we would meet the people we would be reading the Gospel of Luke with all summer.  In other words, no time for jetlag!

Now that we are traveling more independently, I have discovered a few alternative remedies for jetlag:

  • Caffeine and coffee will keep you awake at the right times–that’s easy–but what will help you sleep when it is dark? You could read old blogs that you have printed out and taken with you–but I use Melatonin myself. One gram for every hour that you need to recover–up to six.  Melatonin does not put you to sleep; it just helps reset your body clock a little faster.
  • Stay outdoors as much as possible!  Sunlight helps reset your body clock as well.
  • Plan for jetlag and compensate for it.  That’s what we always do now, if our schedule will allow it.  Yesterday in Germany, we went straight to a hotel, got a dayroom, and slept for six hours.  Then we got up and flew on to Turkey.  It made all the difference yesterday because our Turkey flight was delayed two hours and we did not arrive in Antalya until 3am–but because we had slept, it only felt like 9pm body time.  We slept then until 10 this morning and now I feel like we are almost turned around!!

Sometimes you just have to ignore jetlag–especially on short trips where you don’t have time to get turned around.  But that is just part of the adventure!!

This Turkish keyboard is driving me crazy! They use a dıfferent letter i and they put it in the same place as the i on an American keyboard.  If some letters look lıke symbols ınstead of letters, that is the reason.

Our hosts A & K  are here to visit, but I will tell you about them later.

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Traveling Thoughts: DFW to FRA

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

Today Sherrylee and I are leaving for three weeks of extensive travel through Europe for Let’s Start Talking. From the beginning of this missions ministry thirty years ago, we have felt that it was important to know well the sites that we are sending LST teams.  It’s important also for them to know LST well.  If we don’t know them well, we might send a team to a site that was ill-suited to them.  If the mission site doesn’t know us well, their expectations of what would happen when an LST team came could be totally misaligned.  Either of these errors can lead to very poor mission projects!

For the next three weeks, we are making very short stops in Turkey, Romania,  Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. At the end of our trip, we will attend the Euro-American Retreat in Rothenburg, Germany.

I will not be taking my own computer, so my hope is to be able to get on the internet as we travel in order to keep you up to date.  This could mean that the blog schedule for the next few weeks is a little erratic, so I hope you will understand.

It’s going to be a great trip with many good conversations with great missionaries. I hope to introduce you not only to the cities and countries, but to the great heroes of faith that we get to visit on these kinds of trips.  You’ll enjoy it, I promise.

So, Auf Wiedersehen–well, not really.

The Germans actually not only use this phrase which means literally “until we see each other again”, but also Auf Wiederhoeren, which they use formally on the telephone to say “until we hear each other again.” I guess I’ll say Auf Wiederlesen–until we read each other again–or something like that!

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Traveling Tips #4 – Purchasing Travel on the Web

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’m going to spend most of today booking international travel on the web.  I have the basic itinerary set—though not confirmed because you never know for sure until you have finished booking the travel.  I’ve done some preliminary checking on trains versus air for some portions of our trip.  I know when I need to rent the car and where we will return it.

So today is the day to commit! And since our trip is less than a month away, I’m quite aware that I may run into availability issues and I may not get the absolutely lowest price—but I might!  It’s a treasure hunt! Or a scavenger hunt!  It’s a challenge!

There are no magic websites! If what you are looking for is the magic web travel agency that will give you exactly what you want with the lowest fares and throw in business class upgrades, well, you won’t find it here—and please send it to me when you do. I’ve never found such a site.  But I can give you a few tips about using the web to book your travel that could be very helpful to you.

  1. Use more than one website to search—until you either find exactly what you want or you find out that everybody is offering you something less. I will probably start with Expedia (www.expedia.com) . I know that it is one of the oldest travel sites and one you have used many times, but I keep coming back to it as very reliable and just a good place to start for comparisons.  Other sites like this are Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com) .
  2. There are some websites that let you search multiple sites at once. Kayak (www.kayak.com) is one of the more popular. I also like www.airfarewatch.com, www.shermanstravel.com ,  and www.yapta.com .
  3. I always check the website of the airline that appears to offer the lowest price. Sometimes you will find lower prices. Sometimes you will find other flights that are better. Sometimes you will find only higher prices! If you find only higher prices, it may mean that you may not get the lower price from another website.  Read on!
  4. Your tickets are not really booked until they are confirmed. Yes, you gave them your credit card number and everything else—and it feels like it is for sure, but it is not! Virtually all the websites first sell you the ticket, then confirm it with the airlines. Occasionally, they come back and say, sorry, the price has changed. Do you still want the ticket?  That’s very irritating because you have already booked more travel based on that itinerary, so you are often stuck with a higher price.
  5. If you have flexibility, don’t hesitate to use Priceline to get cheaper tickets. I have bought international and domestic tickets on Priceline, but you have to be very flexible. You can choose the date, but you can’t choose the airline or the time of day that you fly. I have never had a bad experience with Priceline.  Rental cars and airport hotels are what I book most often on Priceline.
  6. Rental cars and hotels are often cheaper to book at the last minute. This is another reason to book your air travel first. Again, I go to Priceline—sometimes even on the day I’m traveling. If I book a hotel, then I usually go to www.hotwire.com or look at Priceline’s own site to check on which hotels are located where. If there are only one or two 3-star hotels in a certain part of town, then I can be pretty sure which hotel I’m bidding for in the “Name Your Own Price” section of Priceline.  We have stayed in many top hotels for $40/night when booked this way. And I rarely pay over $25/day for a full-size rental car.
  7. Check out the customer reviews on hotels when it makes a difference to you! Sometimes you just need a place to sleep near the airport, so price is the main thing. Other times, when you are taking a couple of days off from traveling, you want a good bed, cleanliness, and good service.  I almost always look at www.tripadvisor.com and see what other people think of the hotel. This site has saved me several times from booking a hotel that looked great on the internet, but that real people had had terrible experiences with.
  8. Try using foreign travel websites. I’m not sure how the big U.S. websites choose which airlines to search, but I do know that if I am having trouble getting either the flight I want or the schedule, then I always go to a foreign website.   For years, I used www.opondo.de – a German website because we speak and read German.  A couple of years ago, I typed in “German discount airfares” and found a wonderful German travel agency ( www.sky-tours.com ) that gave me many more flight options and much better prices  that year.  These sites may include the discount airlines that won’t pay to be included in the American website searches.  By the way, when planning driving in Europe, I always use www.viamichelin.com navigation site rather than mapquest or google maps. I find it more accurate and more helpful with restaurants and hotels.
  9. If you are planning a tour, don’t forget the travel guide sites for hints on best airlines, best ways to get around, etc. We have personally found the Rick Steves European guides to be excellent (www.ricksteves.com) . Other helpful sites are www.lonelyplanet.com , www.fodors.com and www.michelin.com .
  10. There is no end to the information you can gather and the options you have for purchasing your travel needs, so do the basic research, get an idea of what you want to pay, and when you find it, BOOK IT! If you hold out, trying to find something a few dollars cheaper, I can almost guarantee you that the good price you found will disappear before you get back to it. It’s somebody’s law—but it always happens to me!
  11. Keep good records of what you buy. I print out hard copies of all reservations and line them up in order of use in a file that I carry with me on the trip—not very tech savvy, but helpful when you need it in some foreign airport.

Well, I’m off to the office to start my treasure hunt!  I’ll let you know if I learn anything new today! I’d like to hear your favorite websites for travel as well!

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Traveling Tips #3 – What To Do About Travel Warnings?

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 9, 2010| 1 Comment »

The recent State Department travel warnings for Americans going to Europe raise good questions for those of us who are planning imminent trips to Europe—or really to anywhere in the world where these BIG warnings about terrorist threats occur.

In our own personal travel and in planning the travel for Let’s Start Talking teams, we have dealt with these kinds of warnings, threats, and sometimes actual occurrences of public violence in many different countries. We had workers in Russia when tanks rolled down the streets of Moscow in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1989 when civil war broke out, and in Thailand during at least two major episodes of violent uprisings.

Sherrylee and I flew in and out of the Vienna airport where terrorists threw hand grenades and opened fire in 1985. The same year on June 19, another bomb exploded in a trash container in the Frankfurt Airport, the very one we were flying in and out of that year with our three kids and our LST workers.

Let me repeat though very clearly: at no time have we or any of our LST teams ever been in imminent personal danger that we were aware of. So the question is, how do we try to keep ourselves safe in a world where terrorists hijack planes, shoot up tourist hotels, and blow themselves and others up in public market places?  First, get your thinking straight!

  • If we are afraid and stay home, the terrorists have won. If we are afraid and stay home, the Devil has won (just that battle, not the war!)
  • Staying home is not safe either. Sherrylee and I were in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. One hundred sixty-eight people were at home—and died in a terrorist attack. We can’t be afraid!

Then there are also very specific things you can do when traveling—but you can do these things without being afraid. For instance,

  • I am always aware when traveling that I am safer AFTER going through security than before. So we don’t dawdle any longer than necessary in the pre-security area.
  • We listen to the news when we travel—the international news—and try to anticipate hot spots politically.
  • If we find ourselves or a team unexpectedly caught in a threatened area, we listen to what the local people are saying about how to respond. Sometimes, running to the nearest airport and trying to flee the country is the most dangerous thing that you can do.
  • Avoid large political gatherings. Actually large crowds of any kind are bigger targets.
  • Keep your eyes open for anything unusual.  This means being aware of what is usual in a foreign place, so it just means looking around a little more purposefully.
  • Register your trip with the U.S. Embassy. You can do this online at https://travelregistration.state.gov/ibrs/ui/.  The State Department has a special travel site at travel.state.gov with lots of good information and tips.
  • Give your loved ones your itinerary and overseas contact information before you leave.

That’s probably enough.  Some people’s risk tolerance is much greater than others, so people make different choices about where to go and when.  Occasionally we have had to rein in some college student that thought he was invincible and was doing things that even made the local people nervous!

The best advice I can give you is to walk close to God and to live in a way that if Jesus comes today, you will be delighted.  To live without fear of the Second Coming makes the uncertainty of traveling through this world much less frightening.

 

 

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