The First Week

The view from Malenovice

So, I've been in Czech a week now!  It's been a really great week.  On Friday and Saturday the co-leaders and the Hughes and Chestnuts headed up to the Malenovice cabins where we had a bit of a retreat.  It was great to worship together, pray for one another and run through some leadership stuff together.

On Sunday we were at the local church in Cesky Tesin.  The service was in three languages (Czech, Polish and a local dialect that's a mixture of the two) and it was all translated into English for us!  During the service the English camp team was invited up and interviewed.  They then asked the co-leaders to come to the front and they prayed for us.  It was beautiful to be prayed for and supported by this church.  The sermon was on going with God and trusting in Him rather than on what we can see, which was an amazing message.

After an amazing lunch on Sunday I think everyone had a nap time. In the evening we went to the house of a missionary family to eat and spend some time with them.

On Monday we were back at Malenovice for the KAM "Big Meeting".  Again, it was wonderfully translated by someone for us.  We were each given a notebook to record the miracles of God, because we should "expect nothing less than miracles this summer".  During the day, and eating with staff, it was great to see KAM's care and support for their missionaries and us.

Monday night was a very early night and getting ten hour's sleep was pretty wonderful.  Today has been pretty lazy - a leisurely breakfast, hanging out at a coffee shop all afternoon, going into Poland to get dinner (and the largest pizzas I've ever seen) and praying for one another.

Tomorrow will be an early start as we'll get up at 6am to head into Poland, back to Krakow to meet our interns.  And we'll start the Amazing Race!  It ends on Friday and is filled with crazy challenges through who-knows-how-many countries and hopefully by the end of it team HawaIreland (my team's name - a combination of Josh's Hawaii and my Ireland) will be a team and we'll see how each other copes with challenges, knowledge that will come in useful as the summer continues!

This week has been really great.  It's been good to get to know the other co-leaders.  And it's been really refreshing to have this time to rest and read.  It is also pretty much the last alone time before the summer ends so I've been trying to enjoy it.  And I feel really refreshed.  I also feel so cared for and supported by the other co-leaders, JV and KAM and all you guys back home/around the world.

I'm excited to jump into this summer.  I'm excited about what miracles God has in store.  He is a good God, with good plans and they are more than we could ask or imagine.