What a way to pack...

Alright. I know it's the 3rd and I said I would write on this yesterday, but just hear me out. June 2nd, around midday, I received an interesting text message. The lovely lady was returning home to claim her apartment! She decided to cut her trip short due to sickness, so inevitably I had to find myself somewhere else to stay. The family that I was to stay with next, had not arrived back from vacation, so I was in a bit of a pickle. So the Ruokomaki Rescuers caught wind of this, offering a vacant apartment for the rest of my stay. Isn't our God incredible! So after I got settled into my new place it was WAY past bedtime and thought my readers might understand. None the less, I am sorry for my fib, and this is my new address:

Stewart Kouba
c/o Ruokomaki
Kaksoiskiventie 49 F54
02760 Espoo

This weekend I was invited up to Tampere, a city about 120 km north of Helsinki. This place was beautiful. Supposedly, It is one of the top places to live in Finland, which I now completley agree. I went up there for the yearly Finnish Baptist Union Convention. There are about 1,000 Baptists (on paper) in Finland, and around 300 of them showed up at this convention. Shaun (the pastor of EICF) was the evening speaker for both Friday and Saturday night. His sermons were by far the best part of the night because those two hours were the only understandable hours of the convention (they were great as well). Over 10 people were saved at the convention, which no words can describe adequately!

Also, I visited the OM Finland and Wycliff Bible Translators offices. Both were housed in the same building a mosque occupied just a few floors below. Quite the godly hub if you ask me. And I can't forget to thank Katja's mom, Selia, for being our Tampere inn for both nights of the conference. On Sunday morning, I grabbed a train back to Helsinki just before 3:00pm to lead worhip in the afternoon service. A crazy weekend indeed, but it was truly awesome to see God move!

This picture makes me so happy! This gentleman didn't speak a lick of English and I know very few words in Finnish, so we just laughed and did all we knew how to do, hug. That one was for you Grandmother Kouba! This conference was filled with beautiful people I wished I could communicate with, but I am diligently trying to learn the language and hope that my last entry will be completely in Finnish...we will see.





This man is cooking something called "Makkara," the Finish vegetable. I really don't know why they call it the Finnish vegetable because it smells, tastes, and looks like sausage, but I ain't gonna argue with them. This food is a signature piece of Finland, so if you come, grab yourself a Makkara to enjoy.

Update! Hanna just informed me that Finnish wives insist their husbands eat vegetables. So in honoring their wives and their stomachs, the men started calling makkara a vegetable!









This is the face of a man a little stressed. Monday night was the first fellowship night of the summer, in which I headed up. The title was "Badminton and BBQ" and you can guess what we did. This picture was taken about two hours before the big event, trying to round up the last items needed to make it a hit. I now know how it feels to plan for something and wonder if anyone will show. By the Lord's hand and lack of things to do on a Monday night, it turned out to be a success. And yes, that is a list I hold in my hand:)