Prague

As I said in the previous blog post, Monday was our day of travel to Prague.... and now I believe my laundry is soon to be done.... here are some thoughts of the beginning of our week in Prague...

We've been here for about a week so far and have had some challenging times going through some conflict within the team, etc. It's never easy learning the hard way, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Actually, the dryer needed two dry cycles to be really dry. It's kind of expensive too, 60 crowns for each washing and drying, but I suppose it makes up for not having to pay for laundry the two weeks in Plzen and not really doing it anyways for the last week and a half. I didn't wash much in Plzen either, because the washer was about 1/4 the size of a normal US washer and there was little room to hang stuff and 7 other people who had to do small loads every now and then in between. So, yes, this outreach has definitely been an adventure!

This past tuesday was a pretty crazy day. We are teaming up with two different churches here. One is called New Beginnings Christian, and the same people run a Highschool outreach program that runs during the lunch times of the students. They are welcome to come down to this cafe type place and have pizza's, coffee, tea, etc. They've got ping pong and music videos going on during the time as well. It's a pretty cool place, but I guess they just run it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was talking to one boy who told me he wishes it was everyday. I haven't had a chance to ask the main guy who runs it, why they can't do it all week. I played ping pong with all the guys, it's that kind where you play all around the table.. I forget what you call it. That way, everyone can play and I actually like it better I think! :)
After the High school thing, we all went back and had lunch at our place. Which I must mention is a tight squeeze. The shower is actually in the "kitchen." We're actually really living in an office of the other church we're partnering with, Prague Christian Fellowship. There are two rooms we squeeze everyone in, the beds are all tight together with no space in between.
During lunch, we had a "family meeting"... and that's how it turned out... like the "typical" one would go... it was not good. We learned lessons about how to approach conflict... that's really all I'm going to say because, well, there's no reason to re-tell it. We came together again for a meeting with all the leaders the next day and things went much better.
Tuesday night we sat in with a youth group and shared some testimonies and heard some testimonies from the youth that attended. It was a small group and they ranged from 16 to about 22. During the time that we were praying at the end, we were pick pocketed! I guess the doors to outside weren't locked and someone came up outside our room and looked through the hanging jackets. They took the equivalent of about 40 US dollars from Laura's wallet and two other pairs of shoes of a couple of the guys of the youth group. (sorry, that was a jumbled mouthful!) Atleast it wasn't any identification documents or anything worse. How odd though, I actually think they took chapstick our of my coat pocket! How stupid, chapstick... I mean, it is good stuff... Chapstick brand and strawberry, my favoriite. But, come on.... how lame. I'm so glad I had the sense to keep my purse with me in the room!! That turned out to be a late night, we hadn't eaten dinner yet, so at like 9pm we went to a Chinese restaraunt for dinner. I had lemon chicken, and regretted it... not quite what I was thinking. Owell.... it was food and mostly edible...(had to be careful of bones).

Wednesday we went to Noah and Andy's place and had our meeting... it was good. We all got on the same page with things... Noah and Andy explained some changes with their leadership, which explained a lot of the confusion and frustration we were having.
The rest of the day we got to look around town for a bit and relax before going to the same youth group place from the night before. This time, it was younger kids, more about junior high ages. It was a lot harder with them, because they have only learned english for about 2 or 3 years... and probably the same kind of understanding that I'd have with french after only studying after two years or something. I still enjoyed observing and trying to communicate... I told them that I used to help out with youth at home and that no matter where you go, youth still all act the same way (you know, like body language, giggles, etc.). I so had wished I could have a good conversation with them, but even the interpreters were a bit hard to communicate with at times.

So... I still have more days to report about... and this is a long blog...
Thursday we had the highschool group again. The people who run it are Jerry and Carol and Jerry's sister and her husband. I forget their names... oops... they both have daughters, so during the outreach time I volunteered to watch them so they didn't get in the way of the kids playing ping pong. They were fun... gets me excited to see my nieces and nephew... I miss them so much. The girls' names were Sophie and Grace, Sophie is a few months older than Grace and talks a bunch. Grace was a bit quieter, but liked to randomly scream out at the top of her lungs.
After it was finished, the musicians practiced and we made and ate lunch at the center. We had some "chill" time and then Julia, Mary Kate, and I went to an IHOP evening of prayer. If you haven't heard of IHOP it stands for International House of Prayer... not Pancakes! :)