Keepin' Up With The Tatums

Glenn just sent me tomorrow's report -- remember they're 10 hours ahead of us. He was having trouble with his church email address. Right now his home email is working ok, but he's still not able to send the photos that went along with his report. He said internet service is really slow there. If he gets it working I'll add them later.
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Monday, January 22, 2006

Greetings everyone back in the states from Diane, Chris, Carolyn, Carey, and Glenn. We are in Turkey and are all doing fine and things are going well. As you know we left San Francisco airport on Friday, January 19th at 2:00 pm local time and arrived about 20 hours later in Antalya, Turkey, by way of Frankfurt and Istanbul. Luggage and passengers arrived safely and all accounted for. We are staying at the Porto Bello Hotel, which is located in Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

This year Diane and her team are providing a children's program for the families who are attending this conference of missionary leaders for CCC in 30 countries around the Middle East, Central Asia, and North African nations, and I am leading worship for the adults. So far we have about 30 children attending the conference and they are all having a great time. Below are several missionary children taking time to play one of the board games we brought on the trip.

The daily schedule this year is a lot more bearable for the team, though there are more children. It consists of a vacation Bible school program in the mornings from 8 am to 1 pm. Then the team comes back at 6pm to 8pm to spend time playing and ministering to the children while their parents are in one of the meeting rooms for worship, training, prayer, and counseling.

As you can see this is a pretty good size conference room and is full to capacity with over 250 missionaries. This is where I spend most of my time, leading worship. On Sunday we were able to sit down and have lunch with 3 who serve in Kazakhstan on the Campus communication team.

Below are a couple of missionaries we met last year who are attending this years conference. One is from Egypt and the other from Kyrgyzstan.

What a joy to serve and worship with these brothers as we witness the greatness of God through Christ Jesus as he brings these nations together in His name. God Bless!