Czech Team 2008

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

From Ben Rathsam

One of the things I learned while on this trip is the power of prayer. For months we’ve been praying that God would open the hearts of the Czech students who would be attending English camp. We prayed that they would be open to the new ideas we were presenting to them. We prayed that God would give us strength and energy as we quickly became tired. We prayed for patience with each other as some people started becoming annoyed with other members of the group. Now as we rest in KFC on the last 24 hours of the trip I can thankfully say that God has answered all of these prayers. Some people are still tired of each other, but nobody hates each other or absolutely can’t stand to be with each other. Even though we are all tired God gave us enough energy to finish engish camp strong, and enjoy follow up. The students during English camp were incredibly open during camp. We had two people come to know Christ as their savior during camp. Two people in my English class who were atheists were asking the Czech youth leader a lot of questions about Christianity. So that was really cool!!

from Kyle

Tyler and I lead games for the evening gatherings

As trip is coming to an end, I’ve had some time to reflect on my experiences here. The students here have impacted my life so much. The biggest thing that I’ve learned here is the ease of communicating with the students despite the language barrier. I had great conversation with students who spoke next to no English. With a little bit of patience it is possible to translate what you are trying to say. Also, one thing that I realized is that the students are just like us. Sometimes it is so easy to go into another country and just think that because they live four thousand miles away, they must be so different. But they aren’t. They enjoy going out with their friends, watching baseball, playing sports, and so much more. It was completely eye opening to me to how oblivious I was towards their culture. I was not expecting to be discussing the latest movies that have come out or who my favorite Simpson character is. I treasure these conversations the most because they opened up some great friendships for me in the Czech Republic.

From Dakota

Well, now that that our trip is coming to an end, I would just like to say thanks to everyone that supported me both before and during my stay in the Czech Republic. During this trip, I was really able to appreciate the way that God has been working around the world and. While at English and during my stay with a host family, I was also able to see how similar Czech is to the United States, and at the same time see how different the countries are.

PS - this is me with 2 members of the Canadian Olympic Track and field, they are staying at our hotel in Prague

From Pearl

I have been doing a lot of reflection on this trip about next steps in life for me. I recently resigned from my job to take some time of self-discovery, to find some clarity about what God has gifted me in and where I am excited to invest. Partnering with the Frydlant church this year, meeting the people, experiencing the new community, has been a neat time to think broadly about options for the future. I don’t know if I will necessarily end up serving in the Czech Republic, but it has been encouragement to be willing to think outside the box, outside the current comfortable place I am to consider what new adventures God may have for Matt and I.

On another note, I have been encouraged these last few days in caring for my soul. One of the days at camp, the theme was “soul”. We talked about what are souls are, how it plays into eternity, and how we care for them. I think it may have caused me to do as much thinking as the rest of the students! It was so interesting to think about our soul being the unique person that God creates each of us to be, our eternal being that mirrors God’s image in creativity, justice, relational wiring, etc, and perhaps even where our personality, passions, and gifts reside. How do we care for this? How do we nurture who God created us to be? How do we nurture the relational nature he has deeply rooted in us—with others and with Him?

At the same time these discussions challenged me, I was processing how easy it was to be at camp, investing in students, discussing God, but at the same time not really taking time out for my own soul. Time to sit and ask God what I needed to hear each day and what my team needed to hear. Even time to just care for who God created me to be, time to run or listen to music, time to rest and rejuvenate. Instead, it was easy to just do the next thing we had to do and to try to escape whenever possible.

I was working on reading The Church on the Other Side to write a reflection as a writing sample for my grad school application, and the author said something that caused me to continue thinking about these ideas. McLaren said, “Leadership must once again become a matter of love and spirituality, a place for spiritual sages, not just organizational technicians” (121).

He then goes on to quote Henri Nouwen:
“It is not enough for the priests and ministers of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is very valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is, are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s incarnate Word and to taste fuly God’s infinite goodness?” (121)

What a cool opportunity I have in life during this time of transition to not only seek self-discovery but also to pursue authenticity and to explore rhythms of caring for my soul.

How do you care for your soul?

From Alyssa

So…this was my second year in Czech and I went into the trip so incredibly excited to be here again, to make new relationships and to spread God’s word to un-believing people. However, this year’s trip was not nearly as easy as last years for me. My class last year was talkative and really earnest to learn. This year I had a few quiet and a few louder, and all of the topics that we were doing they seemed to show no interest in. So, once this started happening, it put incredible stress on me as the teacher. I started praying, and the whole team prayed for my partner and me. And prayer, I found again, does so much. Sometimes in the hustle of day to day lives we can take prayer for granted, but these trips always show me just how powerful it is. I also built relationships with people while I was here. I really plan on keeping in touch with the friends I made. The friends I have from last year I have kept in close contact with and I can’t wait to see what God does with the relationships we have, and I can’t wait to see them again tomorrow. On a happier note- this year I started the daunting task of attempting to learn Czech. I wanted to use it as a way to connect with the students if they seem nervous about speaking English. And my work was not in vain! I used my Czech a lot and I absolutely love it! During follow-up I had the opportunity to stay with a girl from the Frydlant youth group whose family are unbelievers. I tried my best to communicate with them and just show them a great example of a Christian. Follow-up was fun, but hard. By the time we got there the energy of the team was slacking. Not only were we tired, but many of us, including myself, just kept thinking of our nice warm beds at home that we would soon be in. We spent a day in town with the students and then yesterday we went to Poland to visit Aushwitz. This was really hard to do. I felt so overwhelmed emotionally just because it was so much to soak in at once. It really hit me when they talked about how the Nazis thought that the people of eastern Europe weren’t as good, even as human, as they were. They were talking about the Czechs, the people that were standing right next to me. The friends that I have built relationships with over last year, some of my closest friends in the world allegedly weren’t as human as the rest of us.. That just really hit me. Over all it was a great trip and some amazing spiritual things happened at camp. I could really feel God’s presence with us.

From Cory

What have I learned on this trip? It would have to be that Jesus loves in all languages. The statement came to my mind during this trip. Even though there was a slight barrier between us and the Czechs. We were all connected by the same goal. The same love for Christ that we all wanted to share with others. We were able to create new relationships. I was really touched by our journey to Auschwitz. My heart was torn to see what those people had to suffer through. That was an experience that no history class could describe. What impacted me the most I think was seeing the prosthetic limbs and children’s clothing of the people who died at the concentration camp. Then walking through the gas chambers just sent an overwhelming feeling of sadness over all of us. I remembered touching the palm of my hand. It’s still sore from my scooter adventure the day of the hike, but as we walked down the platform of Auschwitz II I thought about all of the people that suffered so much more then I did. When they stepped out of the train with all of their worldly possessions. They were promised a new life and a better future. They didn’t know that their families, friends, and neighbors were going to die. They had no idea what was going to happen. Then I thought about all the stories that I have heard about the faith of these people. Even through all of their grief they knew God would rescue them. He would set them free and deliver them from their hardships. That thought was a great comfort to me while we were walking through the camps. It made a huge impact on how I will look at my life in the future. Even though this was my third time to Czech, I think this journey made the most impact on my life and I wouldn’t change that for anything.

From Ben Floyd

Through this trip I have learned a lot of things about me and about God. First of all I learned that prayer really can change someone’s life. Through the week we prayed that God could open their hearts to accept him. It may not have been immediate change but just the fact that some of them were asking really in depth questions about God and Christianity really showed that God was present there. I also, through this trip became a lot closer to God in general. I have been praying for our team and the students and it really showed. The hour of prayer that we did through the week at camp really was a great way to connect with God. In our area with all of life’s busyness you really do loose touch with God. Here our main focus was to serve God and it really makes a difference. As I was here I felt like I was really doing Gods work. Though I can’t say that I personally changed anyone’s life I believe that I did help to have some of my students question God and Christianity. I really do hope that God continues to give them questions that may be answered.

From Tyler

Some things I learned in Czech this year are that God can speak many languages, (in fact I think he knows them all). The way God showed me this was when in our first discussion group one of our students was really questioning Christianity...Another thing I learned on this trip is that it is possible to communicate with people who speak another language by pointing, grunting, and grabbing a translator.

From Brittney

I was asked to write about how this trip went, what I learned while I was here, and this was a very hard question to answer. Since this is my third year coming to the Czech, I didn’t think it would have had a big effect on me, but what I realized is that I’ve never felt so satisfied with one of these trips in my life. After one of Matt’s speeches, he told us if we wanted to, to go out and think about our lives, who we are, what we stand for, and pray, pray for everything around us and moments before that the drama team preformed a skit so perfectly I wanted to break down, because I believe it was exactly how I believed God worked in my life. Day’s before one of my best friends got into an car accident, and is lucky to be alive, I wanted to come home-but God being the amazing person he is kept him safe and I was able to keep my mind on relationships at camp. Camp was an amazing experience, I got closer to the team, who is now apart of my family, and watching the students connect with each other and ask questions about God- two days into the camp, I knew we were doing what we were supposed to do while in the Czech, I am very lucky and honored to be able to spread God’s word, with people so special.

From Stephanie

I've had so much fun on this trip. It has also been exciting and challenging. I've learned some things as well. First of all I've learned to be flexible. A few things happened that I just had to be completely flexible. I've also learned the great importance of prayer. Before the trip I'd been praying a lot for the students who would be coming and then I spent time praying while we were here. It's been amazing to see the results of that. At camp, there was a specific prayer room and we were to sign up to pray for an hour. It seemed like a long time- like i have to prayer continuously for an hour!! But it was very cool to just get away for an hour and to be by myself and just pray. So that's basically it. I've had a great time, and I am truly blessed to have been able to come to Czech again!!
Steph

Monday, July 7, 2008

Off to Prague

Well everyone, we take the 8:15 train to Prague today. We'll arrive around 12:30, get settled in, play a little amazing race game to help the students learn their way around, eat some dinner, and have a team meeting to start preparing to come back home.

Tomorrow will be a free day for everyone to do some site-seeing and shopping around Prague, and then we'll have another meeting as a team in the evening.

Sorry we haven't been able to do many updates since before camp started! Today and tomorrow the students will be putting up some posts to fill you in more on how camp & follow up went.

See you soon!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Alyssa's blog!!

Hey hey! so, we have had soo much fun! i'm finally recovering from lack of sleep! or at least i was until last night when we were locked out of our room and then had other problems in the room. not so pleasant. I'm getting ready to leave for camp next week, but it will be sad to sad goodbye to malenovice. i've already met some girls from our EC, but they could barely speak english. it was still fun, they taught me the camp song, so i've got that down so i can teach it at camp. i can't wait. other than that there isnt much going down in the wonderful life of alyssa, though i have been loving the food. and trying and failing to speak czech. neway, cau!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Wednesday, June 25

Hey everyone!!
This is Steph. So far, Czech has been amazing! Malenovice, where we are for training right now, is a beautiful place! It's so great to be back here and being able to reconnect with people we met last year. It's also been a lot of fun being able to meet new people. This morning we had a session with worship and prayer time. Nate Hughes,a missionary in Czech who runs English camps, spoke on sharing testimonies and the most effective ways to do that, and also preparing for camp. After an amazing lunch, we had another session. Two American interns taught on english classes and gave us some pointers on teaching Czechs. In the afternoon, our team had to make decide how we were going to introduce our team to the rest of the american teams. We made a sweet video...I think it might be on the sight. We just ate another great dinner and are hanging out, waiting for the evening program to start. I think we are going to be learning the camp song, which seems to be pretty difficult, so we'll see how that goes!! :)
I think that's all for now! We are all having an awesome time!!
steph :)

Here's some more videos

here's a little "phase 10" and then our morning here at training.

Here' s our "sweet intro" video to show tonight at our evening session.

Untitled from Matt Parks on Vimeo.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

sitting on the porch with the guys....

So Kyle wanted to do a group blog…
Here we go, Ben R, Tyler H, Ben F, Kyle K, Dakota, Chris G, and myself.

Question: “Kyle, what do you want to blog about”

Answer: “our day, potty stories, sleeping, the train, and others about potties”

Kyle adds: “we woke up too early, like 7:30 early. The Cappuccinos where already there, the Parks’ quickly came, but the other girls, where still out cold, now that’s too early”

Dakota adds: “we forgot our tram tickets, not our fault though, so we had a runner sprint back for it”

Chris adds: “we sat on a train, I’ve got nothing to add, what are we doing again”

Ben R adds: “tell them about that interesting toilet on the train, you know the one we took a picture of”

Tyler adds: “ummmm, that old guy was funny, you know the 82 year old who sat with me on the train and posed for a picture”

[Tyler just burped and it was disgusting, sorry mom’s we’ll try and teach him better]

[Matt just farted, he felt bad for people laughing at Tyler]

Ben F. adds “it was really funny watching you (matt) trying to squeeze by the big guy on the train, there was defiantly some belly rubs going on”

Brittany adds: “I don’t’ know, oh you’re actually going to write that (yep)”

Pearl adds “Guys I think we need to head back to the hotel, serious we should be leaving soon”

Ok, so there’s some of our thoughts,

PS - Kyle’s having fun blogging and here’ the video....