Blessings Upon Blessings

Christmas Joy

As many of you know, I had the opportunity to spend the Christmas holidays at home in Elverson.  It was such a blessing to see many of you during that time and to be able to worship alongside of you.  I was able to spend time with my family, which was great after the autumn that our family had, with my dad spending almost a week in the hospital with severe pneumonia.  While I was home I was able to get some much needed rest and enjoy some meals that I didn't have to cook myself.  But before heading home to spend the Christmas holiday with my family, we had our own pre-Christmas celebration in the Czech Republic during Youth Revolution.  We had our annual Christmas party and movie marathon.  We played some games together and exchanged gift with a white elephant gift exchange activity.  After the Christmas activities, the teens decided to watch some of their favorite animated movies, so we watched them throughout the night and through the morning.  The youth asked me to make tacos for the event as tacos are a rare thing in this country.  After the youth event I began my journey home for Christmas.

Difficulty Into Blessing

Upon returning from the US, I had a very busy schedule ahead of me.  I had a youth lesson to teach the day that I returned to the Czech Republic, because of that it was important that everything went to schedule.  The flight from Philadelphia went as planned and I arrived safely and on time in London.  In London, I got on the plane as scheduled, but for some reason we were forced to wait an extra 25 minutes on the plane before we took off.  Because of that delay, I was late arriving in Prague.  This made the small window that I had to catch my train even smaller.  So after getting through customs and getting my luggage, I ran to the nearest taxi and jumped in.  They took me to the train station with 3 minutes to catch my train.  I quickly paid the driver, got out of the taxi, got my luggage and headed to the elevator down into the station.  As I was traveling down the elevator, I checked through my pockets to make sure that I had everything.  I suddenly realized that I didn't have my passport and that it must have fallen out of my pocket in the taxi.  I took the elevator back up immediately to try to catch the driver, but he had already left.  So, I ended up missing my train and I didn't have my passport.  I took the next train to Ostrava and began trying to figure out which taxi company I had ridden with.  I got back to Ostrava late, but several of the teens were waiting for me at the train station.  I was exhausted with my mind in several places as I taught the youth lesson.  It didn't go as well as I would have liked, but one the teens said that she liked the lesson.  I spent the next several days trying to contact different taxi companies that take people from the airport, but in each case they said that no one had found my passport.  It seemed as though my passport was gone, so I began the process of alerting the local authorities that my passport was lost and arranging an appointment at the US embassy to have a replacement made.  Several days after making that appointment, I received an amazing email.  I got an email from the US embassy in Prague stating that someone had found my passport and returned it to the embassy.  So my appointment to have a new passport made became a short visit to pick-up my original.  What an amazing blessing to have God's protection during that situation!  It could have easily been stolen and used for some illegal purposes, but instead I was able to get it back safely.  Praise the Lord!