Shay Thomason – Page 27 – everything beautiful in it's time

It’s All in a Day’s Work

One of the great pleasures of being part of Josiah Venture is serving with a team that not only loves Jesus a whole, but are a pleasure to work with and are great at what they do. Two of those teammates, John and Daniel, are who I spent the day with today. I spend a lot of days with these guys, but today was just different. Instead of meeting at the Josiah Venture office, we decided to hang out at another house where Daniel is house sitting (Mel and Amy’s house) and we had a lot of fun just being together and being creative. We had a fire going in the house, fresh coffee, and Daniel brought in some fresh croissants for us to munch on.

Our plan today was to really work through some final design work for next year’s camps. The camp design is something that will be seen and used by literally thousands of people, especially young people on flyers, t-shirts, and banners. Camps are such a big part of what Josiah Venture does and every year many young people hear the gospel for the first time and begin to follow Christ. Local churches in 14 countries will use the material that we create to go and invite students to camp where they learn music, English, sports, and always hear the Good News. It’s a joy for our team to create materials that will bless our staff and be used as a tool to eventually bring young people to a place where they hear the gospel.

Back on the home front Titus attended his second day of preschool. It was fun dropping him off again and feeling more comfortable. Like Wednesday, we had no issues and Titus didn’t cry or get upset when we left. However, Bethany was just a few minutes late picking him up today and he was pretty sad. He told me, “Mommy didn’t come so I cried and cried.” I just laughed. She wasn’t THAT late, pal. He also told me the class went for a walk, but outside of that I don’t know what else happened. I’m glad he’s doing good and hopefully starting to adjust. We’ll continue to have him go three days a week for now and reevaluate it at some point.

I did the grocery shopping tonight by myself. Shopping is still a hilarious experience because there’s so much I don’t know. I end up calling Bethany on the phone five or six times asking, “Wait, what does half and half look like? What kind of package does it come in?” “I have no idea where to find cottage cheese.” “How do I know if the grapes are seedless?” Tonight was an ever bigger challenge because when I got to the check out counter the water I was buying broke open on the conveyer belt. The lady said something to me in Czech that I didn’t understand but wasn’t about to continue checking out my groceries so I ran those bottles back and grabbed another set of water and we continued. Then when we were all done there was some issue with the computer and my bank card so the line began to back up and people were not looking at my very happy. In the end we did get it to work, but it took a good five minutes of a lot of card swiping and re-swiping, a lot of Czech I didn’t understand, and multiple employees. My only concern is that I was now charged for the same amount twenty times over. Only time will tell, but until then…goodnight.

Tags Daniel, John, team, Titus

365 Czech Republic

Email, Pizza, Date

I got an email from our landlord the other day. The subject was “Wash exterior window sills” and the email read,

Hello Mrs. Bethany on Thursday morning ie. Oct. 16. 2014 at home?
You will need to wash again sills and you have a lot of work with children, so I ordered the lady who would at 9.30 pm. Washed it in the apartment.
Greetings to all .Thank you.
Musilová

What a great email. Not only is she very nice in how she words everything, but she paid for a lady to come and wash the window sills for us. I’ve shared before about the window sills, but they are big and there are a lot of them. With everyone not feeling great it’s been hard to get them cleaned. We were so thankful for the kindness of our landlady to do that for us. The only tricky part was the 9:30pm part. I assumed it was AM, and I was actually right, but she came today around 11. No biggie. We were home and she did an awesome job.

For lunch today we decided to get pizza to-go from a local place here in town. To give Bethany a little break, I took the kids with me. It’s a walkable distance, but with Titus and Avery it pretty much doubles the length of time I’m going to be gone. It was raining lightly when we left so I brought umbrellas which quickly turned in to “bumper umbrellas” as the kids kept running in to each other and laughing. The pizza guy speaks great English so I ordered and I told him we would be back in a few minutes and off we went to the bookstore.

I needed to look for some new Czech language books as we are pursuing a new teacher and she goes through different material. I was able to find the books after going through the store two times over. The only problem was they only had 1 set of the books in stock (there are 3 books in the series). When I got the checkout it proved very difficult to communicate that I needed another set. After a few minutes of trying to speak and trying to use my phone to translate I kind of got the gist: I think they needed to order more and would arrive in the future, maybe next week? Another lady in the store overheard me and the clerk trying to communicate and walked up and said, “Do you need help?” in perfect English. Score! I told her I think I know what’s going on but she was able to tell me that they are ordering the books and they will come tomorrow. Ah! “Tomorrow…” — that’s the word I confused as “next week.” Now they know why I need the books.

Tonight we got a babysitter and had a date night. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten away together just Bethany and I, so it was a blessing. We had originally planned to go to dinner with friends but I felt like we just needed some time to ourselves tonight. A girl from our church watch our kids and she was great. Bethany and I went to the mall in Ostrava and had–wait for it–Burger King for dinner. Don’t judge us. It actually sounded really good, is cheap, and just the small taste of America, fast food or otherwise, is a blessing. After dinner we just walked around and relaxed and ended up leaving earlier than we expected. It was a fun night together and I’m thankful for the focused time with my wife.

That’s all for today. Onward.

Tags books, date night, language, pizza, windows

365 Czech Republic

Titus’ First Day of Preschool

Post author By Shay
Post date October 15, 2014
2 Comments on Titus’ First Day of Preschool

My son went to preschool for the first time today. Even though missions work had been on our minds before Titus was born, I honestly wasn’t thinking that one day he would start school in Czech. But that was the Lord’s plan and that’s what happened today. I brought my camera along today and will do my best to tell the story with photos and captions.

The morning started early, before the sun was up, so we could get everyone ready to walk down the street to where the school is. Our friend Misa met us at our house at 7:15am and was our help in translating everything this morning, and a huge help she was! Titus was really excited as we started to leave and he and Avery started running down our street.

When we got inside we had to figure out in which cubby to put Titus’ stuff. His classroom is upstairs and he actually had two cubbies, one upstairs and one downstairs. The one downstairs is for his outside shoes and his one upstairs is for his change of clothes, backpack, and coat. One thing we’re still not clear on is the change of clothes. As the kids were coming to their cubbies their parents would immediately change their clothes. Titus’ teacher said the same thing to us and suggested he change his shirt for playing outside. We haven’t had time to ask someone about this, but it seemed kind of strange to change his clothes right away.

Inside there’s a big, little bathroom. It’s big because of the number of stalls and sinks, but everything is little in size. Above is a photo of Avery checking it all out. She loved it…maybe a little too much, but more on that in a bit.

When we got into the classroom, Titus ran right to some toys he thought he would like. I got the above photo of him just enjoying himself. I know it feels a little lonely him sitting all by himself, but we were some of the first people there which kind of helped get us settled and find our way around. Even as kids showed up, Titus was discovering all the new things to play with. Here’s another one of him with a European style race car.

I’m sure he has seen me ironing before, so I laughed when he found the iron by the girls and started to play with them. Shortly after I got this photo he said to me, “Dad, do you want to iron too?” I just laughed at him.

Avery was getting in on the action too. Here’s a few shots of her playing:

While the kids were playing and I was taking photos, the teacher, Bethany, and Misa worked through all the details. Here they are (below) looking over some paperwork, actually, a lot of paperwork. It’s amazing how much longer the process takes when you’re having to translate everything. The one funny thing that still confuses me is we have to go to the post office to pay for Titus’ lunches. You pay by the month, but I’m not sure why we go to the post office? While in the classroom I had to pay for a trip they are taking to the cinema (at least, I think that’s where they were going) but I just paid cash right there. It’s just funny to me.

The whole trip took about 45 minutes from the time we left our house until finally leaving the preschool. Amazingly, we didn’t cry. I think it was just crazy enough with figuring things out and Titus had such a good attitude that it made it all a smooth process. We got so many notes from people praying for us and I think God answered those prayers with a great morning. I know I said “we” didn’t cry, but Avery had the hardest time of all of us. She was sad that we couldn’t stay with Titus and I think she was enjoying herself. Here she is on the stairs when she sat down in tears not wanting to leave.

Titus went today from 8-12pm and Bethany picked him up. He ate lunch (chicken soup and toast according to Titus) and played outside a lot. He told us tonight that, “I bonked my head on the wall and I was crying for you.” Bethany asked him if they comforted him and he said, “No, they just waited, waited, waited.” We laughed! When Bethany picked him up she tried to ask the teacher how he did by pointing to him, smiling, and giving the thumbs up. The teacher answered back in her best English saying, “You don’t have to worry, he did fine.” I wonder if she read our blog last night?

At the end of the day, we are excited about what God has for Titus and for our family in this new phase of life. Only the Lord knows what the future holds, but we’ll take his Word and the broken English from Titus’ teacher: “You don’t have to worry.”

Tags first, first things first, preschool, school, Titus

365 Czech Republic

Worrying, I Mean, Thinking About Tomorrow

Post author By Shay
Post date October 14, 2014
2 Comments on Worrying, I Mean, Thinking About Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Lord willing, will be Titus’ first day of preschool. To be perfectly honest, I’ve been thinking about it all day. There’s a mix of emotions that come with this step and it’s something I’ve been trying to take the to the Lord. I say “step” because that’s how it feels, like a step of faith. We’re dropping our kid off tomorrow at a school that only speaks Czech, to a group people we don’t know much about, and expect Titus to do his best without us there. That requires faith. Faith in many different things, but mostly in the God we serve. Many have done this before us, and thankfully we’ve had a local church environment to sort of prepare him, but that doesn’t mean this dad (aka: me) has prepared himself. That’s probably why my heart was drawn to Matthew 6:25-35 tonight. It reads,

[25] “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? [26] Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? [27] And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? [28] And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, [29] yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [30] But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? [31] Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ [32] For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. [33] But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

[34] “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

There’s a lot to worry about. How will Titus do? How will the teachers treat him? How the other kids treat him? What happens when they don’t understand what he says to them? What happens when he doesn’t understand what they say to him? Do I trust these people with my kid? What if he disobeys? How long will it take for him to get a grasp of the language? What if he struggles with the language? What if he hates it? What if he struggles?

See what I mean? There’s a lot to worry about. But Jesus says, “…do not be anxious about your life.” You can’t take that to mean much else except that you shouldn’t worry about anything in your life. Oh sure, He qualifies it with a few things like food and clothing, but we know He’s talking anything in your life in it’s fullest sense…like your kid’s first day of school. And Jesus explains why. I’ll paraphrase and apply to my situation, but He’s essentially saying, “God is control. He takes care of everything else, so He’ll take care of your son at preschool. Listen, I know what you need and I know what Titus needs. I will take care of it all, you just seek after Me.” That’s a lot easier than worrying, especially since the Creator of the universe has got it all under control. I’ll just seek after Him.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be great, and I hope it is. Maybe it won’t go so well, but I hope not. Either way, I can trust the Lord knows and is in control of it all. I can look to Him when I don’t know what to do or what to think. He has a vision for our lives and specifically for Titus’ life and He will be faithful. I realize it’s just preschool…but I love my son. I want the best for him like every other dad and sometimes that can can push me in to anxiousness. Praise God that I don’t have to stay anxious, but can seek after Him and trust He will take care of it all.

Tags anxiety, fear, preschool, Titus

365 Czech Republic

Titus Didn’t Start School But Made Himself a Sandwich

Post author By Shay
Post date October 13, 2014
1 Comment on Titus Didn’t Start School But Made Himself a Sandwich

Today was supposed to be the day Titus was going to start preschool. I had hesitated to write about it because I really didn’t want to get my hopes up about it and I had a feeling something would go awry. As suspected we got a phone call a few days ago telling us that the preschool would be taking a field trip today and we would need to have a Czech/English speaker come with Titus. We discussed it, made a few phone calls to see anyone could do that for us, and finally decided we would just wait until Wednesday (10/15) to start him. With everyone not feeling well it just made sense to wait and see if Titus’ cough goes away and hope we can take him on Wednesday. Honestly, I’m trying hard not to be anxious about it because I know this will be a big change for our family. But I also know it’s part of life, and definitely a great tool that God will use to get us in to the community and getting Titus learning the language. I guess we’ll see how it goes on Wednesday.

Above is a photo Bethany sent me today of Titus making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He’s probably seen his mommy make them a thousand times and lately he’s been helping her and today he said, “I can do it myself, mommy.” Bethany said he needed a little help, but that he did a really good job on his own. Watching him grow is such a blessing, but it’s also hard (as I’m sure many parents know). You just want them to stay small. I know it’s the Lord’s plan and growth is part of life, but that doesn’t mean he has to make his own sandwich!

Here’s another photo (below) that Titus said he wanted to send to me. When I showed it to him later on my phone, he said, “That’s the cross.” Thanks for reminding me of the cross, son.

Our friend Tadek came over this evening and brought us our new winter tires for our car. They weren’t cheap, but its’ a Czech law to have those kinds of tires on your car by November 1. Tadek, who originally help us buy our car, is such a great resource and help to us–I don’t know what I would’ve done without him. So now I’ve got a stack of tires in the car that I’ll have put on in a few weeks. Before he came over I played with the kids outside and got this photo of Avery. This kid is seriously gonna break some hearts…unintentionally, of course.

Tonight Bethany had a ladies hangout at our friend’s house. Normally they would do a Bible study, but the leader is gone right now so they decided just to hang and watch a movie. I’m glad she got to get out of the house and enjoy some fellowship. I had a good time with the kids just finishing up dinner and cleaning the house. They both went to bed very easy tonight so I assume we tuckered them out today. Avery cried just a little bit for mommy so I laid her in our bed and she went right to sleep. And speaking of sleep…it’s about that time for me too.

Tags kids, preschool, sandwich, tires

365 Czech Republic

Sunday Grab Bag

On my fifth birthday my mom brought my kindergarten class “grab bags.” They were brown paper bags filled with stuff from a little convenience story, maybe even a dollar store. I remember it being pretty fun to reach in and not know what was in there. Today was a bit like this. It was pretty normal Sunday, but it came with a few surprises.

This morning we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the church here Český Těšín and Dave Patty was asked to preach. Bethany didn’t feel great this morning and the kids still had coughs so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go or need to stay home and help. I ended up going, but I was a little late and got there while they were singing. Even though we don’t live far, I drove, but that proved to be a poor decision because with so many visitors it took me a while to find a place to park. The same was true when I got inside…no place to sit. It was absolutely packed inside! A nice man spoke to me in Czech, offering me a seat in the front row, but I really didn’t want to be a distraction on such a big day so I just stayed in the foyer area and listened through the speakers. Dave preached in Czech so just like last night, I didn’t really know what was going on and since I wasn’t sitting next to anyone I couldn’t really get the gist so I basically just tried to see if I recognize any of the words. I trust Dave preached a great message and that the body was edified.

After church…we went to the zoo? This is why I say it was a grab bag. We had originally planned on going to the zoo yesterday, but everyone just wasn’t feeling good so we canceled that plan. Bethany asked me today if we could go because she felt like we’re going to run out of good weather like we’ve been having and that made sense to me so we went for it. We have annual passes, so it doesn’t cost us anything and the weather was so nice it really turned out to be a great time outside. Our kids love the zoo here and I’ve mentioned before, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there’s like fifteen parks in it! There was still one thing scheduled tonight so around 3:30pm we left the zoo and headed home.

We’ve been trying for a few weeks now to schedule some time to take photos of our new friends Romi and Pichal, with their new baby Ondra. Today seemed like a great time for that and with the sun shining it’s great light for family photos. I had a great time photographing them. They are such an easy-going family which makes it nice to take photos of them and just enjoy the time together. Here’s a few shots:

It’s fun to open up a grab bag once in a while.

Tags church, friends, photos, zoo

365 Czech Republic

Just Down the Street From the Gestapo

Post author By Shay
Post date October 11, 2014
1 Comment on Just Down the Street From the Gestapo

On our way to Poland yesterday, we stopped at a McDonald’s to grab lunch. The kids were asleep in the car, and attempting English in the drive thru is pretty much out of the question, so I went inside to order. The nice Polish woman who helped me spoke great English which was a blessing and as I went to pay I realized I didn’t have my debit card in my wallet. This was very strange because it’s pretty much my lifeline here, but I had to pay so I just used a different card. After getting back into the car I searched around and couldn’t find it. The last place I remember seeing it was the night before when I went to the grocery store for Bethany. Either I had left it there or put in my pants pocket that night. I guess this would have to wait until we get back from Poland.

Today I checked all my pants pockets and couldn’t find it so I went to Tesco where I remembered having it last. Since I can’t speak Czech, I used my phone (Google translate) to communicate with the ladies that I thought I had left my bank card there. Amazingly, and thankfully, they had it! I was told to go to “informace” (customer service) and showed them my passport and got it back! Praise God I didn’t lose it because getting a new sent here from the States would’ve been tough. And in the end I thought the whole experience was yet another language learning opportunity.

I took the kids out late this afternoon for a little walk to the park while Bethany started dinner. We live in a pretty historical area, so much so that they have little plaques along the square near our place explaining the different building and their significance. I’ve read a few of them, but today I found a new one over by the park that I hadn’t seen of the building in the above photo. Apparently it was built in the latter part of the 19th century and was an administration building then a secondary school. But in 1939 the Nazis occupied this area and (are you sitting down?) it became the headquarters for the Gestapo! A block from my apartment is where the Gestapo had their base of operations. Crazy! Wait… you don’t believe me? Here’s the plaque (written in Czech, Polish, and English):

Tonight I attend a youth conference at our church where the main speaker was none other than Dave Patty, the president of Josiah Venture. He speaks very good Czech and I watched in awe as he preached from Romans 12:1-2 to a few hundred Czech teenagers. I did my best to listen for words that I knew, but genuinely had no clue what was going on. Had it not been for the person next to who spoke a little English, I wouldn’t even have known we were in Romans. From what I could tell though, Dave had the attention of the students and I’m sure they were blessed. I know I was encouraged, especially from the singing tonight when they did a familiar Phil Wickham song in English! Here’s a short clip of everyone singing “This is amazing grace:”

Loading

This is a room full of young people gathered for a Christian youth conference here in Czech. Such a joy to see this.

View on Instagram

Hearing that song sung by so many young people almost had me in tears. The spiritual climate in Czech is so dry that to see all of these people praising Jesus in a small town in Czech is kind of mind blowing. This is fresh to me because just tonight a friend forwarded me a link on Twitter about just how atheistic the Czech Republic is. It’s yet another reminder of why we’re here but how God continues to move among the youth.

RT: @mattyglesias: Awful lot of atheism in the Czech Republic: http://t.co/QhNccdx26h pic.twitter.com/Fbwp4TFiJ7 (via @jonathanholmes)

— Shay Thomason (@shaycam) October 11, 2014

Tags building, conference, Gestapo, gospel, missions, youth

365 Czech Republic

Hanging With the Millers In Poland

Post author By Shay
Post date October 10, 2014
3 Comments on Hanging With the Millers In Poland

The Miller family is a blast. Bethany and I first met Korban and Tanya at Josiah Venture orientation in October 2012 where we spent a week together in Wheaton, IL. There’s a fun connection with them because their senior pastor in Indiana was roommates in college with Scott Ardavanis, our pastor at PBC for many years. They asked if we could drive out to Poland and take some family photos and we were excited about the opportunity. We saw them briefly back on the fourth of July but today we got to spend the afternoon and dinner together which was just a great time to catch up.

Our afternoon started with the photos in the downtown area of where they live. There were some fun brick buildings and the weather was great so we snapped a few shots. The photo above is them walking right through this very long street where many people are walking and trains and busses travel through. You would never see anything really like it in the States, but we made use of it for a nice walking photo. When we finished there the kids all got suckers for doing such a good job. Here’s a little shot of all them.

After the downtown area we headed over to a park just a few blocks away. I don’t know why I didn’t get a picture of the giant tower in the middle. Not joking, I think it was like a 10 story sun dial. The play area had like a twenty foot climbing net that would never be legal in the States. Our kids loved it! But the sunlight was great at that time of day so I grabbed the Millers for a few more shots. Here’s one I really liked.

Behind them is an old fire station and really nice cafe/restaurant area. Bethany walked over there with Avery to use the restroom and she said it really felt like she in Europe and said it was very nice. I’m bummed I didn’t go check it out. We let the kids play a little longer and packed up the vans and headed for the Millers house.

We had a wonderful, American style dinner! Cheeseburgers, homemade mac-n-cheese, and veggies were all part of the spread. It was delicious and I’m not gonna lie, I had two burgers. It was fun to hear from their daughters about their school experience as they have all only been in Poland for about ten months. Language is obviously still hard but their girls are getting along pretty well in school. It’s encouraging to see another family walking through the same kinds of things that we will be experiencing very soon. After dinner we enjoyed some fun desserts: rice crispy treats and frozen bananas with chocolate and nuts! Mmmmm…

Before we left we had a short time of prayer for each of our families which was a blessing. As we were walking out the door, Titus kept saying, “Goodbye! Thanks for everything!” which we had never really heard him say before. It was hilarious and cute. He’s right though. Thanks, Millers, for a great day together and for having us over for dinner. Let’s do it again sometime!

Tags food, friends, fun, photos, Poland

365 Czech Republic

Taking A Few Family Photos

All we needed was one. One photo, that is. A supporting church of ours in the States was updating their directory and asked us for a new photo of our family. So late this afternoon we walked over to the center part of town and tried to get a couple shots using my tripod. What you see above is the best we could do. All in all, it’s not bad, although I was hoping for a better smile from Avery. I guess that’s the best you get when you tell her to say “coconut” because for some reason the word “cheese” was off limits.

We went ahead and took a few other photos since the light was great and the kids were playing. Here’s a few more of just the kids…enjoy.

Tomorrow we’re headed into Poland to take some family photos for our friends there and we’re looking forward to visiting them and exploring a new city. Until then…I bid you adieu.

365 Czech Republic

New Creations

One of the joys of working with young people is seeing God change their lives. Whether it’s watching God transform their hearts in to new creations at salvation or watching them on the path of discipleship as they become more and more like Christ, it’s always a joy. The video below is a sampling of some of the ways God has worked in the lives of young people this summer. Even though I only had minimal involvement in the creation of this video, my team was responsible for creating this content at this year’s fall conference. What I love about this video is how these young people, many of which are brand new believers, respond when they are asked about Jesus. The freshness of their faith is real, exciting, and even a little contagious. It’s a joy to think about Jesus and I think this video will remind of you of that.

Tonight we had another “family night” dinner with our friends that live near us here in town. Kristin (who’s house we were at) made homemade chili and cornbread and Bethany brought a salad. It was a delicious meal, but more than anything, it was a great time together with the Yorman family and our mutual friend Rachael. The Yorman’s boys and our kids love to play together and that’s always fun to see them enjoy their friends. I was really thankful that they took the time to pray for our family and Kristin even shared that if we’re ever just in need of prayer that we shouldn’t hesitate to call or text. Isn’t that just a really practical way to minister to someone? I know Kristin read’s this blog and I just want to say thank you for your heart to serve our family in that way. We are blessed to call you friends.

Last night at the store we found a wooden sled for $5 and bought it. It was in the clearance section for 75% off. Why something for winter would be on sale right now is still a little strange to me, but I was just as excited as the kids were to buy it. Titus said, let’s go play with it and Avery (age 2) quickly replied to him, “It’s not snowing outside!” She’s right, and even though we’ve been enjoying nice weather of late, I’m sure the cold will be upon us sooner than we think. To be honest, I’m a tiny bit concerned about how cold it gets here but I guess we’ll just have to trust that to the Lord as well.

Tags change, ministry, sled