A Bit of a Whirlwind

It's Been a While

For those of you who wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, wondering if I have updated my blog I must apologize.  Since the beginning of December, things have been a bit of a whirlwind for me.  I had several different school visits before Christmas, where I was asked to talk about how the Christmas holiday is celebrated in the United States.  I had weekly conversation groups.  I preached a sermon on the importance of Jesus as Immanuel.  And we had several youth meetings including a Christmas party.  About six hours after the Youth Revolution Christmas Party ended, I was on a train traveling across the Czech Republic, headed for the airport in Prague to get on a plane and head home to Pennsylvania for the holidays.  God was so merciful that He gave me the energy to power through a busy schedule, He inspired me as I put together a sermon and several youth lessons and He allowed me to travel home for the holidays without any issues or delays even though it was only days before Christmas.  Below are few pictures of our Youth Revolution Christmas Party.

The Holidays At Home

This was the second year in a row that I have been able to be home for the Christmas holiday.  Last year I was able to be home for a little more than two weeks, but this year, because of when Christmas feel, I was only able to be home for a little more than one week.  Even though the time was short, it was wonderful to be able to spend some time with my family and visit a few friends.  This Christmas was a little bit out of the norm because of my brother's work schedule.  Chris had to work on Christmas day, so we ended up celebrating Christmas much like Czechs do.  In the Czech Republic, Christmas is celebrated on December 24th.  Families will spend the morning preparing the traditional Christmas meal of pea soup, carp and potato salad.  Some people try not to eat until the main meal in hopes that they will see a golden pig.  In the evening, families will wait for Ježíšek, or baby Jesus, to bring the gifts and place them under the tree.  And after opening the gifts, some families will go to a midnight church service.  We didn't have pea soup, carp or potato salad, but we did celebrate Christmas on the 24th.  This made things pretty crazy for me because I didn't arrive home until the evening of the 23rd.  After about 42 hours without sleep, I slept for about 7 hours and went to the Christmas Eve service.  After the wonderful service full of worship and a wonderful Christ-Centered sermon, we grabbed a few last minute things for the Christmas meal and celebration, I wrapped my presents and 15 minutes later we opened our gifts.  In the evening we had our Christmas dinner together and spent some time together before Chris had to go to sleep.  After spending several days at home and out of the cold, I got to catch up with some of my friends.  Since I was last home, one of my close friends had gotten married, so I got to meet his wife for the first time and another one of my friends gave birth to her third child and I got to meet that little gift from God.  Even though the time was short, it was still wonderful to spend time at home during the holidays.  I headed back to the Czech Republic on January 3rd and God was once again incredibly merciful in that I was able to fly out of Philadelphia without any issues or delays just hours before the storm hit, shutting down airports and canceling flights up and down the Atlantic coast.

Chris and I together on New Years Eve

Since Returning

Since returning to the Czech Republic, I have jumped right back into things.  Over the last two weeks I have had a couple of school visits and several English conversation groups.  Robert, Míla and I have also met and planned for the next several months of youth activities and we decided what we would focus our lessons on.  During the first meeting of the new year, Barča was asking some good questions about some things that she has noticed in the Old Testament.  Because of this and because I have been trying to show the continuity of the Bible in the youth Bible studies, we decided to spend the next few months focusing on recognizing God's plan of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ and how it is woven throughout the entirety of the Bible.  So far, I have had the first two lessons with this focus and have spoken about Jesus as the better Adam and Jesus as the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament.  These lessons have gone fairly well as the youth have had to think through these things, ask questions and search throughout the entire Bible as we talk about these things.  Pray that God would give Robert and I wisdom as we prepare these lessons from week to week that we would not only make these things clear, but also express joy and amazement for the wonderful plan of salvation that God has been working out since the beginning of time.  Below are a few pictures from Friday and Saturday night.  The first few are from our regular youth meeting and the last three are from a concert that several people from the youth group went to.  Miky, the son of Robert, plays drums as part of something called Tensing, which is a Christian organization designed to build relationships and share the gospel through music.  Since Miky is part of our group, some of us went to support him in this.