Today is Monday, I am currently sitting at a Laundromat in Prague about 5/6 metro stops down from the one by our residence. Prague is definitely a DIFFERENT place than Plzen, not better or worse... for the most part. It is a bit more sketchy around here, you really have to keep watch over yourself for pickpockets, etc.
Quickly I'll re-cap what we finished the week up with in Plzen... I shared about Valentine's night the last time I wrote. ACtually, I forgot to write about the day before... it was wednesday and the artists had the task of finding ways to decorate a "marriage" booth for a Valentine's market in the square. A couple from the YWAM team are involved with an organization that is all about marriage. I don't know how to describe it, but at the last minute they were able to get a booth at this V-day market in the square and they asked us to decorate it. For me, this task was super frustrating because we didn't have a good idea of how things were going to look, etc. Not to mention, we only had a day to plan it, with little resources available. We ended up getting some fabric to match the colors of the logo for the organization. Once we finished with that we went back to the villa and had lunch, and the rest of the afternoon was spent cleaning and practicing, as the musicians had a concert for a cafe night at the Villa. The artists prepped canvases for that night and finished some decorations for the Valentines night as well.
The cafe night went well, although I had a headache the whole time, I painted one of my best paintings. I actually struggled with it the whole time, not knowing what it really "should" be, etc. I've always had a hard time painting while the musicians perform, I think because it also feels like a performance for me as well. But, I fought the urge to just give up on the concept... and at the end as I was just letting myself do my thing, the song title of one of Matt Patrick's songs came into my head. It's not on any of his recordings, but on his myspace page, it's called The Mess Inside of Me. I added words to this phrase and wrote it on the painting. Here's the painting:
Friday was a pretty good day, although the market was still on and the same people wanted the artists to do portrait drawing at their booth. In the cold. Let's just say, only two people had portraits drawn, and one of them was me! Because I don't do portraits on the spot, and we needed to attract the people, so I was the example :). Andy and Laura are fabulous portrait drawers! That evening we went to a Plzen Jr. Hockey League game for something fun to do... it was, except it was very cold and we left the game early in three shifts. Actually, the last group to leave stayed until the end, but I left after the 2nd period.
Saturday was a long day. We had a creative arts workshop to run at 2pm, but had to clean the villa again and then get the rooms ready. There was one room that Laura taught, it was how to draw a portrait with the correct proportions, etc. I was running a session with Andy that we called "creative expression" where you didn't necessarily have to have any talent. The first part of it we had them get a partner and draw them as a "tree." Sounds strange, but it was cool because for instance, I drew Andy and the tree that came to mind was a birch. They are tall, skinny and strong... I drew fall leaves that were changing because I know there are changes and have been changes in her life lately. Stuff like that, others drew trees with big roots if they knew that person was really grounded or had deep connections with people, etc.
The second part of ours involved the musicians... they played three different kinds of music and the "artists" were supposed to paint according to what the sounds made them feel like painting. I really liked this time, it brought me back to times when I'd just paint with my niece and nephew and not really think about anything I was painting, it would just come out.
After the creative workshop we went to our housing and had dinner with a group of catholic young people who were at a leadership training weekend. They asked us about missions, etc. It was a pretty good night, but I was disapointed that we couldn't drink the Pilsner Urquell they offered us (it's Plzen's beer, the brewery is right in the city) because of the no drinking rule of the YWAM Brisbane base. I'm not much of a beer drinker in the first place, but at the same time it was something from their culture etc. that would have been cool to experience. Owell....
Sunday we woke up stinking early and met Kaja (the pastor we teamed with the whole time) at the cathedral in the square at 7am! He goes to the top every sunday morning to pray for the city, which was pretty cool... both the view and his prayer time. It was also STINKIN' cold!! I think the coldest I've been this winter season!! My toes took forever to de-thaw. Immediately following that, we went to a church service at a Methodist church. We did a couple testimonies and I painted... being that I was cold and tired, my inspiration was really lacking and I really have no idea what I was painting the whole time.
That afternoon we went back to the villa and ate lunch and killed time before the second service we were going to run. This one was at a Gypsy Church... it was really freeing and I really enjoyed it. We had a few people share testimonies, two people painted (not me), and then musicians did the worship. During the worship time I set out paper for the congregation to come up and express worship through words or pictures. The mistake I made was letting the kids come up first. I have nothing against kids, but it didn't quite work well because none of the adults really participated and the kids were really loud so it was hard to completely enter into the time. I didn't let it phase me though, because maybe the distraction of the kids was okay...
Later that night we had a fun night with the YWAM team as it was our last night with them. We talked about what we had experienced the last two weeks and what we'll take away... or different impressions or thoughts. I really enjoyed the YWAMers in Plzen, their approach to missions etc, really resonated with me.
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