Catching Up Part 1

Wow, I can’t believe it has been over a month since I last posted a blog update. I didn’t mean to drop off half way through my Czech trip but there were some issues with the internet at the church where we stayed for the week of camp and then I go t out of the habit of posting for the remainder of the trip. So I apologize for the delay and for the lack of updates since I have been home the past three weeks. But there is much to catch up on so let’s get to it:

The camp was great! We met some really amazing people and had a good time with the church in Cesky Tesin. The camp was focused on children in the mornings, which was a little surprise for me since I wasn’t really planning to work with kids, but I did enjoy it very much. The afternoons were more focused on older kids and youth and we did some sports in the afternoons such as basketball, soccer, and floor ball or floor hockey, which is a game they apparently play a lot in Europe but we aren’t very familiar with in the states. Each night they did a program and then had a different band play each night. This was one of the best things about the camp, especially since I knew some folks in two of the bands from the third camp I did last summer. It was really great to see them again, and a great surprise also that I was able to see their bands play. Basically the girl who sang with us at that camp, Luci, as well as the drummer, Michal, and the guitarist, James, were in the bands that came to play for us this camp. Most of these bands were going to be playing at the Untied Worship festival as well so I could see them twice.

One of the more memorable things that we did during the week was playing this scavenger hunt type game all over the city. Basically Nathan and I were part of the police who were chasing the youth all over the city center. We were camped out on this one street that had a nice ice cream stand. And I distinctly recall getting some there last year after I spoke in the schools trying to recruit for the camps. It was just as good this time around. But it was very interesting trying to run down and catch kids in the middle of the city center with others looking at us very strangely as the kids are running away from us yelling things that we don’t understand. Once they were caught, we put a bag on their heads and took them to “jail” which was basically a sewer where they had to climb down this pipe and then exit it in a “Shawshank Redemption” kind of escape. It was a fun game.

The church where we stayed was really nice. It was fairly new and was really a nice facility. Nate and Chelsea stayed in a little guest flat and I stayed upstairs in the youth room. Luckily I think the bed bug issues were resolved and they didn’t follow me around anymore. Unfortunately though this top floor was quite warm and leaving the windows open just invited the other bugs in so I had some warm nights but I can’t really complain that much, although I was really close to buying a fan that I could use and then just donate when I left.

We found out that the land the church had acquired actually used to be where a synagogue once was. Jarek, the leader who was like our point person for the camp, took us on a tour of both the Czech and Polish part of the town and we visited an old Jewish cemetery where the Nazis took a group of people and shot them there and buried them on the grounds to “desecrate” the cemetery by burying non-Jews there. Just one of the many atrocities the Nazis did in this region, more on that in an ensuing post.

One of the greatest things we saw on the tour we did was an evangelical church on the Polish side of the town. This church was the location where the Moravian Brethren had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and it lead to one of the greatest missional movements in the history of the church where missionaries left this region and went out to 200 countries, included the U.S. For me, especially with the calling I feel to do missions, seeing this church and being there in person where this great moment in church history occurred was definitely one of the highlights of the trip this year for me. We were able to go inside and learn a little about how the reformers had to meet in the woods and in secret in order to avoid persecution. But learning about the reformation wars and the persecution between Catholics and Protestants is sad for me to hear. And we wonder why the church is so dead in places like Czech. The scars are still there, of course the Nazis and the Communists didn’t help too much either.

Here are some pictures of the church:

 

I did have another experience that really spoke to me at the church where we were staying for the camp. I’ll expand on it in my next post. So stay tuned…

Part 3 of an Adventure

We arrived in Cesky Tesin today to start phase 3 of our journey. It was sad to leave Vsetin but the good news is that we will be back there in a week for the Untied Worship Festival. Our time in Vsetin was great! We arrived on Saturday night and we stayed in the new home of my friend Jirka. It was a blessing for us to stay there because his family will be moving into this house and we were able to stay there before they even were able to move in much of their things. It is a really nice place and I am very happy for them!

Sunday morning we attend Majak Church, which was the home church for me in Vsetin last year and it was really cool because Jirka was actually preaching this week and the pastor helped to translate for us. After the service we went to the pastor’s home for some good burgers on the grill. Freddy, the pastor, and his wife, Lenka, have a nice place just below where I lived last year on the aptly named Holy Hill, where many families from the local churches live. We hung out afterward and Freddy was excited to find out that I attend the church where David Platt is the pastor. In fact, my friend Nathan has his copy of “Radical” with him on this trip. Freddy told me they just got 10 copies of this book for the church.

Sunday evening we returned to Majak for the evening service and then we were able to go and play basketball with my friend Mira and some of the guys in Vsetin who we played with last year. Getting to see Mira again was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, and I’m not just saying that because I know he will read this. :) We hung out after basketball and tried to find a place to eat open late on Sunday night, to no avail, but we were fortunate to be able to order pizza just before they closed.

Monday we met up with Mira and we rode out to a ski resort on the Slovakian boarder. I have some nice photos of the scenery but the best one I took all day I already posted in the last update, it’s the fruit dumplings. They are pretty much the best thing ever. After we came back from the resort we met up with some of the girls from Majak and went for ice cream and then to the field to play softball, which was fun as always. I had brought a special treat for the youth this year to show a little piece of America from the south: Moon Pies. I had a dozen little mini Moon Pies that I shared with the youth and they all seemed to like them very much, even without RC Cola. They actually do have RC here but I wasn’t able to buy any before the softball outing.

Tuesday morning was another great adventure with Mira. We went to an outdoor museum, which is kind of like a pioneer village as I would call it. We were able to see how life in Moravia was 100-200 years ago including a school-house, church, and windmill. We had some nice fruit pizza there as well as some sheep cheese that was very tasty. We returned to Mira’s home where his wife Donda had prepared a great lunch for us and we had some great homemade dessert as well. This was pretty much food-coma day because later that night we went with Jirka and his wife Mayka, as well as my friend Danecek, to PePe’s the Mexican restaurant in Vsetin, or Czex-Mex as I like to call it.

Wednesday was our last day in Vsetin this week and we met up with Brad Kaspar, who is the youth leader at Majak, and rode out to have a cook-out party at the home of one of the families from the church. It was a good time to eat sausages and I participated in another Tabasco challenge and tied for first place, but it was the green more mild sauce though so it wasn’t a big challenge. It was great to hang out with the youth there and later in the evening my friend Honza arrived and we left together to go and hang out with him and his new wife, Marta who I also know from last year. They are recently married and I am very happy for them both!

And this morning we loaded up and headed here to Cesky Tesin for the camp that will start tomorrow and run until next Wednesday. We arrived here at the church building this afternoon and it is a really nice place. Nate and Chelsea are staying in a little flat here and I am staying up in the youth room, which is unfortunately about 10 degrees warmer. It’s a good thing I’m a southerner and can handle the heat. We went into town to grab some pizza for dinner and I actually ran into two youth I had a camp with last year. One girl in the restaurant and one guy walked passed us on the street as we were leaving. It was good to see them; maybe some of the youth from last year will be coming by the camp this week. We also met up with two other friends from last year who will be helping out with the camp and found out that another one of the guys we know, who I helped lead worship with last year, will be playing some music on Sunday night. So I am excited to see him again too.

And now for some housekeeping…Well, I say housekeeping because it seems to fit. As we were about to leave today from Jirka’s house I noticed a small bug on my suitcase. I didn’t think much of it and tried to kill it without any real thought because it seemed to look as if it was a tick or some other nasty little varmint. And unfortunately I’m afraid I was right, it was a nasty varmint. Yep, I’m pretty sure it was a bedbug. And I didn’t think much of it until tonight when I looked in the mirror with my shirt off and noticed some red splotches, a telltale sign of bedbugs eating on you. So I am about 90% sure that I have had my first bedbug experience in my travels. I’ll update more on this later but I am pretty sure that is what this was. I guess those “mosquito” bites on my arms were due to something a little different.

So for those of you who will be talking with God this week, I would appreciate a few prayers for bedbug protection. Of course I would rather you first pray for the kids and youth at our camp and for us all as we work with the Czech team, most of whom we will meet in the morning. I’ll keep camp updates coming too since we do have wifi here at the church. Thanks for your partnership in this ministry work! You don’t know how much it means to us to know that you are interceding on our behalf while we are here. Talk to you soon!

Good Czech Food

So as some of you may know I have had some horror stories involving some of the camp food I have had here in Czech. Well, not all the food here is as bad as the infamous meat spread. Here are a couple examples of some awesome Czech food. The first is called Svíčková and it is beef and dumplings in a sauce with cream and cranberries: 

This next one is fruit dumplings. They are dumplings with cream, butter, and sugar on the top and are filled with fruit. These happen to be blueberry. We got these at a ski lodge right on the Czech and Slovak boarder and the mountains around were beautiful. Almost as beautiful as these:

We have had a good couple of days in Vsetin and I will write some more soon about our time here. Exciting news is coming so we'll see you soon! Same bat-time, same-bat place...

Czech 2011 Part 1

We made it to Prague with no problems; in fact the flight was only about 2/3 of the way full so I had an empty seat by me and was able to spread out, which was nice.  As far as sleep goes, well that’s another thing. As many of you know I can’t sleep much on flights and I usually play my ipod on softer/mellow songs and try to sleep. Then when I wake up I scroll back and see how many songs I don’t remember and clock my sleep this way. I made it 6 songs this time which I guess is about 30 minutes so not bad compared to most years when I don’t sleep at all. 

We made it to Prague with no issues and we were able to go to our hostel/hotel and leave our bags until the 3 pm check-in time. We were just in time to take the free walking tour of the city that left from the Mosaic House, which is where we were staying. And I would recommend this place to any travelers through Prague. It is close to a metro stop on the yellow line, has a nice restaurant, and has decent prices for food and rooms. I stayed here this year because I knew the Josiah Venture summer interns and missionaries, many of whom I know, would be staying here at the same time. What I did not know was that in the evenings there was show in the bar area that was in conjunction with the Prague Pride Festival. So basically it was a play with a bunch of drag queens. And for the brief time we were in the lobby during the show I could overhear one of the “queens” speaking and it sounded just like the fish character on American Dad, if you’ve ever seen that show you what I mean.

We went out for a nice dinner there in Prague and I had Svickova, which is a traditional Czech meal. I’ll include the picture of it for those of you who would like to know what it is. It was very good and is one of my more favorite Czech meals. We then walked around the town for a while and headed back to the Mosaic House where I ran into many of my friends from last year and it was really cool to see them all again. The next morning I was able to see some of the others before they left as well as running into a lady who is from the same church in Chicago where my friends Nathan and Chelsea attend which was really cool.

We departed there and went to join in a tour of a city near Prague called Kutna Hora and this town is famous for the bone ossuary which is the chapel in basement of a church that is decorated with the bones of about 40,000 people. If you want to know more and see pictures just check it out on Google. After seeing the bone church we went to another Cathedral in the town and it was very large and beautiful, I was only expecting the bone chapel and not this church as well so it was a nice surprise to get to see more of this town. After the second church we had a nice Czech lunch with our tour group that consisted of wild boar goulash and cinnamon raison dumplings with cranberry sauce. I didn’t think to get a picture of it but it was really good as well.

The next day we departed from Prague and headed out to Vsetin, the town where I lived last summer. My friend Jirka who was my host last year has recently bought and new home that he and his family have yet to move into, they just received the keys to it two days before we arrived. So this is where we are staying while we are here. I am really excited for him and his family and I am grateful that we are staying here. It is also great that he is lending us his car for the week so we can get around since the home is about a mile away from the city center.

We walked into town to get the all important zmrzlina (ice cream) on Saturday evening and ended up getting trapped there due to rain. So we stopped in a restaurant called the Three Sunflowers, where I have eaten a few times before, and had some fried cheese that was quite good. I also amused the waitresses with my limited use of Czech. We were having a good time there waiting for the rain to subside so we could walk back. On the way back I received a call from Jirka and he picked us up and took us back and then we went to pick up the car we were going to borrow.

Jirka just returned from a hiking trek that he did with the outdoor ministry he is involved with here in Czech and he shared some good news with me. Two of the youth on the trek with him decided to give their lives to Christ. What makes this even more exciting for me is that one of the guys was at our camp last year. He was one of the older guys named Tomas who is involved in the youth at Majak (Lighthouse) Church, which was my home church last year and was the church from the second camp I did. We have been praying for him for a while now and I must say that hearing that last night was some of the best news I could have heard this year. I am very excited about it!!!

We went to church at Majak this morning and Jirka was giving the message today. After church we went over to have lunch with the pastor and his wife. We grilled out burgers and it was really good. They also had an apple pie for us as well. I guess it looks like I won’t be losing any weight on the trip this year. This evening we will be going back to the evening service and will see some more of the youth as well as going to play basketball with some of the guys we played with last summer. It will be a great night. We have some more stuff lined up with the youth this week before we leave for Cesky Tesin on Thursday morning for the city camp we will be working there.

I will be posting again in a few days, hopefully before we leave for the camp, so stay tuned for future updates from the man of international mystery, a.k.a. MIMA for you folks from last year’s Chicago team who are reading this. Thanks for your prayers for safe travel and good health.

I will upload some pictures tomorrow. I have to transfer them from my phone and I will do that tonight.

Czech Trip

Today I leave for the Czech Republic for 20 days. I'll be posting updates here from the trip. This is my first ever real blog post so I'm still trying to figure things out but it doesn't seem too difficult. The next time I post here will be from Prague. Have a blessed day everyone!