Nate Hampton In Ostrava: The Ups and Downs

First the Downs

As is common throughout life, there are times of great joy and happiness and times of difficulty and struggle. These last few weeks have certainly been a mixture of the two. My schedule over the last few weeks has been quite busy. About three weeks ago, the youth attended Brodfest, a gathering of all CB youth groups in the country, which happens once every two years. It was a four day event and required four hours of travel each way. Although it was very nice to spend the time with youth that weekend, it was quite exhausting to have all the activities and seminars during the weekend as well as the fact that I spent three nights sleeping on the floor of a school classroom while the event took place. After returning from Brodfest, I was justifiably tired, but I needed to prepare for the Youth Revolution Halloween party several days later and also for my brother, Chris, to make his first visit to the Czech Republic. I began working on my costume and gathering some of the supplies needed for the Halloween party as well as cleaning and preparing for my brother's visit, but I soon found that I was not only tired, but that I was actually beginning to feel sick. My body was sore and tired and my temperature was beginning to rise, but I still had things to do and tried to push through. By Friday, I had a temperature of 100, but thankfully, the Lord answered my prayers for energy for our Halloween party. That weekend, I did everything that I could to get rest and heal, because I needed to pick up Chris from the airport in Prague several days later, but I continued to get more and more sick, with my temperature rising to 103 and by Monday morning I was forced to do something that I try to avoid as much as possible, I visited the doctor. The doctor confirmed what I suspected was the problem, I had bacterial pneumonia and needed to go on antibiotics. After taking the antibiotics for a day, I woke up the next morning, traveled across the country to Prague, picked up Chris and returned to Ostrava. I had organized several meetings and activities so that Chris would have the chance to get to know a little bit about Ostrava and the Czech Republic as well as spend some time with some of the people that I have come to know and love during my time here. Unfortunately however, all I had the energy to do was the absolute minimum. But the last few weeks weren't all bad.

Now the Ups

Although Brodfest was exhausting, we did have our largest group from CB Poruba to attend Brodfest, including several first time attenders and we were able to spend a lot of time together talking, playing cards and having coffee and desserts. We also had a really fun time playing games during the train rides, taking turns putting on my noise canceling headphones and trying to figure out what someone else was saying by reading their lips. It was so funny to watch others try to guess what was being said and listening to them almost shout out their guesses.

The following weekend, we had our annual Halloween party, which is a great evening for the youth to have fun and invite some friends. It is also an evening when many of the youth who don't often attend come out for the night. As always, we had our costume contest, played some games and carved some pumpkins. Several days later, we received a wonderful gift from the BLCC Czech team, a gigantic edition of Dutch Blitz! The group loves playing Dutch Blitz and the gigantic edition allows for much more action-packed game play. The group was and is extremely thankful for the wonderful gift, which is sure to get a lot of use. A day later, after picking up Chris, I was able to show Chris a bit of Poruba and try some tasty food. We spent some time with some people from the church, took part in the English conversation group, Chris got to meet the youth group and share his testimony with them, we made dinner for Klára and her family, shared lunch with the church, hosted the Estes for dinner and spent some time together in Prague. More than that, we were just able to spend some quality time together and Chris was able to help me recover from bring sick.

Not only was it a blessing to me and the church here to have Chris come and visit, it was also a huge blessing to have Steve and Verna Estes come and visit the church. The church was able to get to know them a bit during a lunch that we all shared together as well as during a time of Q and A, and Steve delivered the sermon later that afternoon and many visitors came to the church in order to hear it. I spoke with several people after the service and all of them said that they were blessed by the message. Later that evening, Steve and Verna came over to my apartment, where we shared a dinner together and I got the chance to speak with them about the church here and the different difficulties that exist for this church in particular and for the Christian church in general within the Czech Republic.

Although God allowed me to suffer through a few difficulties over the last few weeks, He also provided many blessings to help me get through those tough times and as always His timing was perfect. In order to help you see some of the blessings from the last few weeks, here are some pictures for you to enjoy.