hledali jsme houby

don't know what that means? take a look at these pictures and take a guess!

my play partner in the backseat, Vanesa

what's that Vanesa's trying to reach?

HOUBY! (mushrooms :) )

Monika and I, so proud that we found more than ONE decent mushroom

10am and freezing

apparently crazy Czech people wake up at 6am on Saturdays to go mushroom hunting. by the time we got there at 9, they had all been picked through

Marek in the trees trying to get signal on his phone

there he is :)

Vaneska enjoying the sun. she doesn't yet understand the joys of mushroom hunting.

and she made a game of hopping over the mushroom.

then we came to this man-made lake, where there were people scuba diving!

we came to find that it was the National Czech competition of Harpooning fish! weird Czechs.

a view of the craze-os from higher up

in all likelihood, i didn't find these particular mushrooms. they're too perfect.

attempting to set up a group picture

Vanesa wanted nothing to do with it

got it!

we stopped at a restaurant on the way back and literally warmed our feet at the fire. i thought it was a bit trashy, but Monika just shrugged and said "we're in a village."

hledali jsme houby?
we looked for mushrooms :)

poland

at the beginning of the month i got to go to poland on a trip with the church. it wasn't my first trip there, but my trips prior had either been because i hiked over the border, or to go to a water park :)

the majority of the party from the church were much older. Anca (one girl from Bible study) and i clung together and enjoyed sightseeing around poland. for Anca, it was her first time to experience a different culture - different shops, different churches, different people, different languages; although polish and czech languages are similar, Poles and Czechs can't always understand each other.

so, here are a few shots from the trip :)

too much time sitting on the bus makes one do crazy things!

my favorite place on earth - Malenovice. arrived just in time to see the sunset! this is still in Czech and close to the Polish border. We spend one night here as a half-way point.

with my little friend, Abi. she spent the night in Malenovice

leaving Malenovice. yes, i was that person who took pictures from the bus window. 

we stopped at this church on the way

Taby, our new pastor, and Anca enjoying the nice sun

this was part of the church, and they have a school that meets here. there's a tree growing up in the middle of the staircase!

church roof

from the inside - the chandelier

double chin beauty

a view from the balcony

Taby where the preacher should be :)

the church had about 3 floors that we didn't expect. Anca took this of the ceiling on the top floor which doubled as a museum

Anci :)

we stayed at a missions "campground" in Poland. it was along a river... they even have a  man-made beach! this place is called Proem

Anca re-creating Narnia :)

a fishtank in Proem

a day trip to Warsaw and a stop at the Holocaust museum

cutest cafe ever. unfortunately situated in the Holocaust museum

an old bike with sidecar. i want this

also at the museum

next stop...another museum.

from the bathroom

crazy interior!

each piece of glass around the exterior had letters...

whirlwind tour or Warsaw's old town

teaching Anci how to be a tourist

from the top

we got a bird's eye view of Warsaw

and we got to enjoy ice cream

Proem has miniature ponies walking around the place. this one was literally outside our door in the morning.

scaring Anci by jumping on the bridge

and of course a barbecue

from the main building of Proem

lots of singing that night.

Maui & Eva, who started Proem ministries, with Petr & Dana. they're long, long-time friends!

a very cold morning goodbye!

favorite shots of chincoteague

Israel

this particular blog entry is kinda difficult for me to write. i'm putting myself out there with this one, and i'm scared to do it. not just because it involves many tears (let's face it, this emotional girl has tears with almost every story), but because it involves the supernatural, and my really personal struggle with God. and seriously, i'm just letting all y'all into my head and my heart. that really freaks me out. but i feel like if i'm gonna tell a part of the story, i need to tell the whole story. we'll see how long this turns out to be :)

so before i procrastinate with this any longer - which i would do; i definitely have the gift of procrastination - here goes.

i don't think God's spoken to me directly too often. take this as you will - a revelation, a direct communication - i don't know what to call it. but there have been four times that i believe God's revealed something to me. the thing is, i still don't know if i heard God or if i heard myself. i don't think i was telling myself these things; i firmly believe that God did. and yet i'm still at the brink of deciding if it's God or me because none of these four things have actually happened, though they all still have the ability to occur. onward we go as i tell you about two of them and all my questioning and struggling that's gone along with it.

these two revelations happened in the past couple months as i'd been praying about moving back to czech. it was a struggle for me to decide what to do, but after i did, i was sure that God told me that 1) i'll be in czech for a long time, and 2) i'd be well provided for financially, even to the point where i can save money.

if this really is God telling me this stuff, that's like jaw-dropping right there. that is quite the clear and direct revelation! but i haven't shared this stuff with too many people at all because it's kinda weird and unbelievable. it's hard for even me to believe necessarily. and yet, i have believed it. because i've stepped out and started raising support again, believing that when i returned to Czech i wouldn't necessarily be fully supported, but that over time i would be fully provided for. i believed it whole-heartedly up until about 2 weeks ago. at that point of unbelief, i had opened a microsoft excel report in my email that showed how little support i'd received.

i thought God had told me i'd be in Czech and that I'd be well-supported!

...and then there was worry and anger and questioning that was that all the more difficult because i had thought God had told me i'd be just fine and dandy this coming year. i'd had no doubt in my mind up until that point that raising support would not be an issue AT ALL.  which left me with some interpretations. either

-I had spoken and listened to myself, and God hadn't been a part of what i believed had been a revelation from him,

or

-i had misunderstood him,

or

-he was doing an Abraham and Isaac type thing, where i would show a heart of sacrifice at which point he would intervene and provide for me,

or

-God will still provide, and i'm just bloody impatient.

i'm still not sure which it is.

believe me, i had anger issues with God that came out in my typical passive-aggressive form. it starts with a stuck-up attitude and ends in shouting. and i admit that i very selfishly don't like the idea of being "humiliated" and having to return home early because of a lack of funds.

let's continue with the kicker: i leave on thursday for czech. one week before my scheduled departure, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. my response? God, I trust you. a four-letter word.

and after i found out, i had entirely too much alone time. i spent my whole 2-hour trip to Baltimore (and the time before that) in on again-off again tears. I COULDN'T EVEN FINISH MY CHICK FIL-A, i was so upset. the thing is, my mom has an auto-immune disease that means that any kind of treatment for the cancer is going to be harder on her body than it would be for you or me. i couldn't stomach the thought of seeing her weakened over Skype and not being able to help her. (we now know that mom's cancer hasn't spread, and is in a very early stage. she'll be fine, it's just making decisions about the next steps)

i thought during my little road trip about the possibility of delaying my return to Czech so that I could stay and help her and raise more support, and i TOLD God that i needed an answer about what the heck to do. i'm quite demanding.

when i finally got over the red puffy eyes, i brought up my thoughts with my mom. her response was along the lines of, "what the heck would you do here? you're going to czech where you should be, 'nuff said." and that was God's answer for me too.

i rejoice in going to Czech. i have a desire to be there. i'm thankful God's taking me there again. i'm devastatingly sad to leave my family.

and i'm leaving out something very important... while i was complaining to God about what i don't understand, he provided me with a few housing options, where i'll either have a new roommate in my current apartment, or i'll live in a different apartment out of town for free.

i don't know much. i don't know if God revealed those things to me or not, but i do know that in 48 hours i'll be crying and alone as i sit in a gate at newark airport, and that i'll be boarding the plane for exactly where i want to go and where God wants me to go. if i run out of money, or if mom has a really bad spell of chemo, i'll head on back to manheim, absolutely devastated to say goodbye to my czech family. and then God will provide for me again.

i'm not the only sinner who's struggled with God. in fact, God named his chosen nation Israel which means "struggles with God." for some reason, this God of grace continues to pull me towards him, even after my shouting spells and anger issues and struggling.

the best thing

3 short stories.

setting: english camp, the night that the gospel has been shared. the students are walking around a "labyrinth," going to different stations which make them think and answer questions.
i'm sitting in a room which the students can choose to enter or to ignore. if they choose to come in, it's because they're acknowledging some sort of guilt/shame in their lives. if they enter the room, they're holding a plastic cut-out of a man who is dirty, and they hand the piece to me. i symbolically wash the sin/dirt away, comparing it to how Christ has washed away our sin.

character 1: independent young woman, introspective, full of questions, knows the gospel but believes God doesn't love her

character 2: a girl who loves science and believes the big bang, but has come to youth group and Bible study for a year

character 3: a young man who's helped leading the youth group, attended Bible studies, but still has lots of questions about God


i'd been praying for a few girls throughout the year, and for some new faces i'd met at English camp. all these faces i loved and desperately wanted them to accept Christ. that special night, the gospel night, i was praying and hoping that each of those five girls that i was specifically praying for would enter the room. characters 1 and 2 belonged in my specific group.

character 1 was the first to walk through the labyrinth, and as i saw her reading the verses outside of the room where i was sitting, i prayed so much that she'd enter the room. i sadly watched her walk past the room without even looking in; what disappointment that my prayer hadn't been answered.

another girl on my prayer list walked up to the room, and then i watched her walk past. tears welled up in my eyes as i realized that these two girls who i loved were not going to acknowledge Christ that evening.

character 2 was next in line. i prayed and told myself that she HAD to come into that room. and she did. i washed her little plastic human, and we cried and held onto each other. both of us knew that she was taking a step.

then came character 3. he walked past the room. sigh of disappointment. but wait - he had come back and was looking in our room! he couldn't decide. i saw him walk past the room again, and then turn around, and then again one last time. someone from the youth group sat down and was talking with him. half an hour later, he entered the room and made the full decision. my eyes welled up with different tears, tears of joy, knowing that the BEST THING had just happened to character 3. he was a brother now.

then a different friend came and got me, and told me that character 1 really needed to see me downstairs. i found her, and she admitted to me that though she hadn't entered that room, she had chosen Christ. there were those tears again, and i hugged her and told her that this was the BEST THING. she was a sister now. and i took her back to that room, and i sat with her as she washed her own plastic human, showing how she had acknowledged that God had washed away her own sin and guilt.

and then i found character 2. i sat down and talked with her, and we talked about things that i didn't know were going on with her. and she told me that she was ready to take a big step this year, and that she wanted to find God this year. she's not a sister yet, but i rejoiced with her in her decision.

what a beautiful night.