Category: 365

A journal of every single day of the first year we lived in Czech Republic (2014-2015)

First Haircuts

Believe it or not, I was genuinely concerned about getting a haircut in Czech. I think it’s because for the past 6.5 years I could literally walk downstairs at Paul Mitchell where I worked and April would cut my hair. Nobody wants a bad haircut. If you get a bad haircut, you’re stuck. For at least 4 weeks, maybe 6 you have a “thing” sticking out of your hair some place or one side is just not right now or… who knows?! But today, my fears were washed away in a nice salon sink on the 2nd floor of the building with the ATM at the bottom. Actually, they were washed away twice and she used some nice L’oreal soap!

Titus and I both got great haircuts today! Zuska is awesome and even though she can’t speak any English and I can’t speak any Czech she understands me gesturing with my hands. For Titus, I showed her a photo Bethany gave me of some kid on Pinterest and she took very literal, to point that she busted out the hair dryer and was flipping Titus’ hair up in the front exactly like the photo. It was great. My favorite part was when I was getting my hair cut Titus had to go potty. So Zuska saw him doing the potty dance and took him to the bathroom, helped him with his pants, and he came back out with his shirt tucked in (which we never really do). Again, it was great. Zuska even brought Titus some books to read while daddy was getting a trim. It was fun day. Titus and I walked back to our apartment from the salon and showed mommy. She was happy, I was happy…it was great.

Tags fun, haircuts, Titus

365 Czech Republic

Trains, Tolls, and Trusting Jesus in the Noise

Post author By Shay
Post date July 17, 2014
1 Comment on Trains, Tolls, and Trusting Jesus in the Noise

There a lot sounds where we live. Next door is a Catholic church with bells that ring literally every 15 minutes. On the hour, a quarter passed, a the half hour, a quarter till, and then on the hour again. They ring when there’s a call for mass and I’m pretty someone just rings them out sometimes for the fun of it. They ring all night with no breaks.

On our container day these very loud horns rang out from the fire station across the street from us. Come to find out those horns were actually going off because of four fallen Czech soldiers in Afghanistan, however, those same horns will go off every first Wednesday of the month as an emergency test. Something to look forward to, I guess. Forgive my sarcasm.

Trains pass often and they are only about 200 feet from our place, just next to the fire station across the street. In fact, we can smell the diesel as they pass. Sometimes they pass every 2 minutes, like right now as I’m writing. Most of them are passenger trains and are short, but loud. Sometimes longer trains pass. Often we’ll just shut the windows, but if you have them open Avery will say, “too loud!” Even Titus came into our room the other night and said, “I hear the train.”

For those of you who know the story of our condo in the States, you know that noise is something we have dealt with. I remember during sleepless nights just wondering if it would ever end. But I also remember a few conversations with Bethany where we specifically said, “The Lord may just be preparing us for Czech.” Everything we went through with the HOA for years–taking them to court, winning the case, the HOA appealing, and finally losing the case–it was something God was doing with us, or for us. He was preparing us for noise. The trains, the tolls of the bells, and the sounds we hear are just something we have to live with and God has prepared us for it.

You might think I’m complaining about noise, and that’s not it. I’m saying that I believe God was strategically doing things in our lives before we came here to prepare us for this. We love our new place. No doubt we’re adjusting to everything, but we’re making it our home. It’s coming together and Bethany is doing a great job getting curtains, decorating and making it home…our home. It’s fun watching it come together! And it’s fun to see God’s hand at work in our lives years ago to get us ready for this new life. Praise Him for His faithfulness to us and for always providing everything we need and taking care of us. As the hymn says, “Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus…” He is worthy to be trusted with our lives, even the noise in our lives.

Now for some photos (captions below each).

Here’s a shot of my desk in our new place. I’ve got this corner just about square away and it’ll be my little office at the house. That frame in the window says, “Never stop learning” and I can’t wait until I can hang it some place prominent as a daily reminder.

Here’s us at the bank today trying to open a Czech bank account. Looks like it’s going to happen after we fill out some paperwork and get some things cleared. It’ll be nice to easily pay our bills (and rent!) online.

More Czech lessons today! We’re working on simple stuff but even that can be challenging. I better finish this post so I can get to studying!

I guess Titus is tired of building IKEA furniture?

Tags bells, noise, trains, trust

365 Czech Republic

“What people are bad robot”

Post author By Shay
Post date July 16, 2014
1 Comment on “What people are bad robot”

“What people are bad robot.” That’s a translation we came up with tonight while studying Czech. It’s also about as clear as we are on this new language.

Tomorrow we’ll have our second formal Czech lesson and Jitka (our teacher) got us our new books and gave us a little homework. Czech is not easy. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Just the basic greetings and salutations can be enough to make my head spin right now. There is a lot of formality to the greetings when you’re talking to someone you don’t know and if you use the informal and not the formal you can offend, so that’s a little tricky. I guess we’ll just have to take it step by step. See what I did there?

Even though there are no words, the IKEA instructions can sometimes be like learning a new language. I began building our wardrobe today and I’m just not in the groove of building IKEA furniture…yet. I messed up one hole and hammered something I wasn’t supposed to so I was little frustrated. In the end, I think I’ve got it right but I’m only half done. There’s another section to build and then I have to put the doors on. Hopefully I’ll have time this weekend to finish it off.

I’ve begun working a bit here in the Josiah Venture office and at home. My team (Creative Communications) has some big projects coming up and I’ve been helping with the discussions and starting to take a more active role. It’s been good to start slow here and get back to normalcy before diving head first, but I’m excited to get some projects going while we’re moving in and learning language.

Bethany made cookies tonight, but as she was about to put them in the oven I heard, “Oh no…” from the kitchen. Then I said, “What’s wrong?” Bethany replied sadly, “My cookie sheets don’t fit in the oven.” Welcome to Europe. Our tiny little oven/stove just doesn’t cut it with these big cookie sheets. Thankfully the oven has a few other sheets included with it so Bethany cleaned them and we used those. We got some great cookies, but I’m guessing we’ll probably have to get some cookie sheets that actually fit. Here’s a fun fact about Czech: you can’t really buy chocolate chips. Bethany brought a huge Costco size bag of them here, but if you want to make chocolate chip cookies without importing, you need to cut the chocolate chips up yourself! Oh the humanity!

I feel bad for Titus sometimes. These photos (above) kind of symbolize a little bit how his life is right now: upside down. Yesterday he said, “Dad, I want to go to In-N-Out.” Sorry, pal. Then tonight he said, “We go swimming there?” in reference to our friend’s house in California. Can’t do that either, buddy. I know this probably isn’t as hard on him as I think it is, but I also know that he understands our life is much different than it was before. We’re trying real hard to explain things to him like taking off your shoes when you enter someone’s house (cultural thing in Czech), and it’s going pretty well. It’s just weird for me to be experiencing the change with him and not having the experience ahead of him. I guess it’s like language learning–we’ll just have to take it one step at a time.

Tags kids, language

365 Czech Republic

Your World. Delivered.

I think it was a few years back, but AT&T had a little tagline they were using in their marketing. It just said, “AT&T…Your world. Delivered.” For some reason it just stuck with me and it summarizes well what we did today.

We spent the morning outside with the kids. The weather has been warm, but very nice. We’e been trying to find a good balance with making sure the kids are getting good, focused time with us and then unpacking and setting up our house. It’s going slow, but we’re making progress every day. The above photo is of the little yard we have access to at our apartment. Every time we open the garage Avery grabs all of the chairs so she can “sit in the shade,” as she says.

Our teammates and new friends John and Erin just had their first baby, a little boy named Shade. But they are good planners and asked us months ago if we could spare a little room in our container to bring them an American baby crib. Once we knew how our space was looking we told them yes so they had it delivered to our house in California and we put it on the container. Today we had the privilege of delivering it over to John and Erin here in Czech. It took me a bit to figure out how to arrange the seats in our new car to get it to fit, but we got it in and I’m excited that their little family will be able to enjoy it now. If you look in the photo above you’ll see the top box has a number “3” and little hearts around it. It was box number 3 of our 200+ items and I think since Bethany loves babies it got the added hearts.

Sometimes when you drive you get stuck behind a tractor and a bike rider.

The last thing on the agenda today was to take a big trip to IKEA for a bunch of much needed furniture and lights. It’s been hard to know exactly what things we really need and how much space we have to accommodate those things. Tonight we got a lot of great things including our wardrobe, new lights for the kitchen, low wattage light bulbs to save money, and a carpet for one of our living rooms (yes, it’s like we have more than one…hard to explain). We had a few more items on our list, but we just couldn’t fit it all in our car.

We’re planning another trip back to IKEA which is about 35 minutes away from where we live, but we’re thankful to have the funds we need to setup our home and space here. Things are starting to coming together. Slowly, but surely we’ll have a home that feels like home and when that day comes we’ll definitely post photos! Until then, here’s a few from our time at IKEA today.

The sky as we drove tonight was just amazing. Czech is a beautiful country, and we love the clouds that roll through our part of the country. Bethany told the kids, “Look, it looks like heaven!” and Avery repeated loudly, “DADDY! It looks like heaven!” Yes. Yes, it does, Avery.

Tags car, driving, IKEA

365 Czech Republic

Oops

Post author By Shay
Post date July 14, 2014
1 Comment on Oops

I began to write this blog and immediately the power went out in our apartment. We had been warned that often the power will do that if we are running too many electronics at once. We had the washer, dryer, and dishwasher going (which we’re used to running at night) so I think that’s what triggered it. After calling a friend, having our landlord talk to her on the phone, and flip a few breakers we got power again. Oops–we’ll try not to do that again

Actually, that wasn’t the first oops of the day. We got a call this morning around noon from another friend asking if we’d paid our rent. Oops. It’s supposed to be paid on the 10th, but we just got so busy with unpacking and things that I just forgot. Everything is still chaos in our house and it just slipped my mind. I felt like an idiot. I was able to get the cash together, go to the bank, figure out how to deposit money into some else’s account and then pay our rent. Again, oops. I’ll try not to do that again.

The weather was great today. A little hot, but not bad. In the afternoon we had a bit of a downpour, but it was mostly sunny until this evening when we had some thunderstorm type weather. Below is a photo of the sky around the church outside of our place. It was getting dark fast and we the thunder was roaring.

We mostly worked on the house again today. I installed more lights in the kids room and hallway and we tried to continue to clear boxes out and clean up. Bethany cooked a crockpot meal for dinner so we used our power transformer for the first time and it worked pretty well on our American CrockPot. Our language help, Jitka, brought over our new books so that’s exciting. We already have some homework that we need to get to work on. We’ve got a lot to do to get the house in order so we started a list of things we need from IKEA. One of the main things we need are those wardrobe closet things. There are basically no closets here so we have to create our own for our clothes. We’re hoping to go tomorrow, but we’ll see how it goes.

Every day we’re learning. Life here is similar, but very different all at the same time. Bethany commented tonight that our laundry doesn’t smell like us. It’s clothes. It’s just laundry. But you just get used to the way your detergent smells when you fold laundry at night after the kids go to bed? She joked about it, but I think in Bethany’s heart it was a weird realization that even the simplest things like that can be comforting among all the new. We’re learning to grow with it and adjust because honestly, what else can you do? I guess one way to respond is like Avery…just relax (photos below).

These trashcans are an example of something new. Questions we had: Which one is ours? And is that ALL the room I get for a whole week!? Wait, they pick it up once a week… right?

But even in all the new and oops we can still smile.

Tags new, oops, power

365 Czech Republic

Home Improvement

It was a beautiful sunny Sunday here in Czech. We had the privilege of attending church for the 3rd time since we’ve been here and we even and English translation through in-ear headsets. The pastor was preached through the last part of Ephesians 4 and the first paragraph of Ephesians 5. We were able to participate in communion for the first time and we accidentally drank wine instead of juice because we thought the little cups were juice. I’m still not sure what happened, but we were able to laugh it off.

After church and after lunch we began to work on getting our apartment a little more functional. One of the different things we learned when we arrived was that people take their light fixtures with them when they move. So we only have a few lights in the house, and even those are a bulb on a cord with no fixture (shown above). So we shopped for new light fixtures and our friend and fellow teammate Casey came by to help me install them and show us where we can buy them. And off to Poland we went!

It’s sometimes easy to forget we live in a border town and it’s just as easy, if not easier to drive in to Poland (which is just down the road) and shop there for things. Prices are good and Casey showed us the wonderful store “Castorama.” It’s a great home improvement store, much like Lowes or Home Depot in the States and they had everything we needed. We actually went there twice today because there’s always something else you need when you’re working on your house. Casey installed two of our new lights and showed me how to safely install the others. It’s a little scary working with this 220V power over here, but there’s always a safe way to make it happen!

The other big project was getting our washer and dryer all hooked up and working. Thankfully Casey was a huge help there too and it really wasn’t too hard. We stacked the machines to save space in our little hallway area and we went to Castorama a second time to get a hose clamp so the water wouldn’t leak coming from the wall to the washing machine. Bethany and I had to search the manual to figure out what each setting is because it’s all written in Czech, but with a little help from Google translate and an English section in the manual we were ready to roll. The best part is that as I write the machines are running, not leaking, and we’ve got clean clothes coming our way!

Casey was such a huge help today and we’re thankful for his help! Casey and his family serve here in Czech on the “S-Team” and Casey is part of overseeing all English camp ministry in all 14 of the countries we serve in. I know he does even more than that, but you can read his family’s bio on the JV Web site. They live here in Český Těšín so tonight we all enjoyed a dinner together at a local restaurant that they love. Our kids really enjoyed the time with their two boys and it was a blessing to get to know them better. It’s such a blessing to have another family in the same stage of life as us that’s already walked the path we’re on right now. The Yorman’s were a gift from the Lord to us today and we look forward to more time with them in the coming days.

Tags house, lights

365 Czech Republic

Our First Night Sleeping At Home

Post author By Shay
Post date July 12, 2014
1 Comment on Our First Night Sleeping At Home

You would think after almost three weeks in Czech Republic that we would be sleeping in our own home already, but we’ve actually been jumping around a bit. Tonight is the first night we will actually sleep in our own place. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to do that. We’ve basically been nomads for the past few months, going from place to place and sleeping wherever we can find a bed. But as I type the kids are asleep in their new beds and Bethany is reading on ours. Oh, and if you’re wondering about that photo above…it’s the view from our kitchen.

Today was another unpacking day, but we also did a lot of cleaning up. As we unpack we create a lot of cardboard and plastic wrap piles so we’re trying to keep the piles to a minimum. I also worked on our garage a bit today as it was a little disheveled from container day, and now we can park the car in there and have plenty of room to get the kids in and out. We have a really good size garage and I’m super thankful for the space out there. Space is not something you get a lot of in Europe!

Something that has been a bit of a bummer has been the realization that we didn’t do enough homework regarding our electronics. We knew the power situation was different and I knew to check the appliances and electronics to see which ones would work over here and which ones don’t, but we’re find there are still many things that just won’t convert to the different power over here. We need to do more research regarding our transformers, but right now it’s not looking too good for things like our iron, fans, audio speakers, and even our electric hot water kettle. Such is life…you learn as you go.

This is a photo of Avery shoving grapes in her mouth. Don’t be confused by that beautiful living room and Titus in the background. This is our friend’s house, not our apartment. They were kind enough to let us stay there the past few days as we get unpacked and get settled.

This photo is from our new apartment. Bethany decided to make Jello today as we were unpacking some of our pantry items. I don’t know if the kids have ever seen Jello before, but they were excited about it. You may notice Titus’ right eye has a dark spot beneath it. He was jumping on his new bed yesterday and hit the side rail. He woke up with a little black eye today…poor guy. No more monkeys jumping on the bed!

I don’t know why I took this photo of the grass today, but right when I shot it I was reminded of some verses we had to memorize in high school:

The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
(Isaiah 40:7-8)

Tomorrow we will attend our church here in Czech for the third time since we arrived. My prayer is that God’s Word will be proclaimed! The grass will wither, but God’s Word will stand forever and that’s a wonderful promise.

Tags first, home, sleep

365 Czech Republic

Unpacking Our Lives

Today we unpacked. That’s it. End transmission. OK…there was a little more to it.

The day started off with some nice dolphin toast… wait, never mind that! Move along…

We unpacled a lot today. I can’t say I have photos of it all because we were moving along in a hurry, but I do have some. Today I built 2 desks, a bookshelf, and a small kitchen cart thing (all things we had from IKEA already). The kids loved getting their toys back. Above is a photo of Avery putting a bib on one of her “babies” all by herself. She said, “Daddy, baby’s hungry.”

Our Bible study in California did something awesome and put together these monthly envelopes that we get to open. We were pumped to get the box we had of all the envelopes. In our haste to open them we accidentally opened the last one which was meant for June 2015. As soon as we started reading the card that went with the envelope we said, “Oh no, this is for a year from now!” Then it hit me that they had actually told us that when we got the envelopes but our brains are fried and we felt bad. However, it was actually a blessing in disguise because the June envelope had tons of kids stuff and they were great for our kids to have today while Bethany and I unpacked. So either way it’s a God thing and we’re thankful to our friends for putting the energy in to all the fun things we got to open today.

Here’s a few shots of stuff just waiting to be unpacked.

I am so amazed how well our stuff traveled. We unpacked a ton of fragile items (glasses, cups, vases, etc.) and not a single thing is broken or cracked. It’s a testament to our friend Cathy who helped us pack and of course it’s God’s amazing grace.

While I was writing this post tonight I got to talk with my dad for the first time since we’ve been here. It was hard trying to figure out how to call them without paying a ridiculous amount of money, but thankfully there’s apps out there on the iPhone that allow us to talk over the Internet for free. We talked for 45 minutes and it was just nice to get his take on some things like our washer and dryer not fitting and what to do about the power conversion stuff. It was good to hear his voice.

It’s time for bed. I’ve enjoyed writing daily and rethinking our days and just remembering how God has worked in all of this. God is so kind to allow us to be here and now to have time to unpack all of things He’s provided for us. It doesn’t get old saying this: it’s a joy to serve the King.

Tags boxes, stuff, unpacking

365 Christianity Czech Republic Videos

Special Delivery

It’s here! It didn’t fall into the Atlantic and amazingly everything was just the way we packed it when it left the United States. Our container arrived today!

As our friend Rachael said, “Getting your container is like Christmas, only better because you already know you like the stuff.” She’s right. It was like Christmas and it’s really fun to see all that stuff you painstakingly loaded into the container 48 days ago. What’s hard to believe is just how far our stuff had to travel from Long Beach down through the Panama Canal and up to the German port. Then it was trucked over to Czech where just this morning we signed the customs documents and they brought our container to our new apartment.

We were overwhelmed by the support of the local church here and our friends and teammates from Josiah Venture. I’m especially grateful to Mel Ellenwood who helped us translate for an hour and a half at the customs office and even Connie Patty who took the photos you will see below. So without further delay, here’s the story in photos (captions below each photo).

Connie actually caught this picture of the container about 20 minutes before it arrived. This is just down the road from our place. He couldn’t fit under the little train bridge so ended up having to drive the container around some tiny streets just to get it to our place.

Bethany was taking care of making sure we had food and refreshments so she was only actually there for the truck’s arrival and departure. There was a sale on boxed milk at the grocery store and the lines were crazy. Bethany said people had multiple carts full of this special milk and so she missed the unloading. Welcome to Czech, I guess!

Here’s what the container looked like right when it was opened. It’s almost identical to what it looked like almost 50 days and thousands of miles before so I was already amazed.

Our container had 3 sections which we separated by walls that our friend Justin built when we loaded it. The first section went pretty quick because it wasn’t packed as tightly. This photo is all of us unloading the first wall.

Titus’ tricycle was in the first section and he was so excited to ride it around our little driveway.

Here’s Rachael and Mel carrying boxes in.

This is Amy muscling a box to the apartment. Everything was color coordinated which hopefully made it easier for people to know where stuff went!

The whole unloading took about an hour, and I was on the truck the entire time. It was incredibly fast and we couldn’t have done it without all the help. This photo is of me helping unload the final box.

Here’s me signing over the final container paperwork.

Pizza for everyone! The local pizza shop couldn’t believe we were ordering 10 pizzas.

Also, if you’re wondering, George Clooney apparently makes all the pizzas here in Czech. When he’s not making movies, he’s making thin crust goodness!

Back in the apartment we had people building the kids new IKEA beds. Such a blessing.

And finally a little shot of all of us after we were done unloading.

What a great day! The only thing we don’t have photos of is inside our new place and that’s mainly because we didn’t really spend a ton of time unpacking today. The kids were tired and so were we so we made it a shorter day and we’ll head back tomorrow for some serious unpacking of boxes.

Finally, this evening we had the joy of having Zach and Kara Zegan over for dessert. They only live about 20 minutes away and we haven’t had time to really catch up with them yet. It was really fun have them and their little dog Hobbes over and just catch up and say hi. It’s really special to serve the Lord alongside your friends. They have been serving at camp all last week and will leave tomorrow for another 11 days of camp. This week is a special week for Josiah Venture as the 1000th camp begins on Saturday. You can see this short video below which gives a piece of the story. Even while we have big, life changing days in our lives with the arrival of our container, God is doing things in the lives of young people in this part of the world. What a joy to serve the King. To Him be the glory!

Our 1000th Camp from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.

Tags container, unloading

365 Czech Republic

Say It Right, Broken Flight, And A Little Too Tight

Post author By Shay
Post date July 9, 2014
1 Comment on Say It Right, Broken Flight, And A Little Too Tight

Today was a bit of a rest day. We had a full day yesterday traveling from Bratislava and we spent the evening cleaning and packing as we made a small move from the place we’ve been staying to another missionaries house just down the road. Our container is scheduled to arrive tomorrow! We believe we have at least a dozen people coming over to help us move our stuff in, so that’s a huge answer to prayer. I’m sure it will be like Christmas getting all of our stuff and moving things in.

We didn’t have a super full day (which was a nice break), but we did have our first Czech lesson in Czech! We’ve done lessons in the States, but today Jitka got us going on some vocabulary and common greetings. Above is a photo of some commons places we were learning. We were saying things like “I am at work” (far left) and “she is at home” (or “doma”). Czech is definitely not an easy language and some words are quite difficult for our English trained tongues, but I thought we both did pretty well today and we’re looking forward to continuing this language learning journey.

This little bird (above) flew right into a closed second-story window at the house we’re staying in. I heard the thump, saw feathers flying, but never saw a bird. Assuming it had just flown away I didn’t think much of it until about ten minutes later when I went outside and found him sitting on the ground like this. He sat there for a bit and let me get very close. Eventually he flew away, but I thought it was worth sharing.

The last thing on our agenda today was to receive the appliances we purchased the other day. They called and said they would be arriving between 5-7pm at our new apartment so I decided to go over alone because there’s just nothing in our new place for the kids. The delivery guys showed up just a little after 5 and even though I couldn’t speak much to them I tried out some new Czech I just learned. I said, “Tady” meaning “here” for the washer and dryer. To be honest I thought was saying “there” but it still worked! Well, sort of…the washer and dryer didn’t fit.

Apparently not all doors are made the same. The door for the wash room just wasn’t wide enough for our machines. There was probably about a half-inch of overhang and they just weren’t going to make it through the door. It’s actually going to work out just fine because the previous missionaries had the exact same problem and the hoses and hook ups have already been moved to other side of the wall. Now they will sit on the other side of the kitchen in a small hallway type area and it’ll be fine (shown below). We’re just thankful to have them! They also brought in our fridge which we didn’t have any issues fitting. It’s really fun to see our little home coming together.

Tags bird, dryer, language, lessons, washer