Grace Avenue UMC, Frisco TX

What a wonderful trip that we had and how blessed we were to have participated in the mission trip to Czech Republic.  We arrived safely back at DFW to a wonderful surprise:  Janet Odom, Chip, Molly and Victoria Sutherland and Steve, Alison and Stephanie Brim greeted us!  Check out the final pix and good night to all.

Pictures from the team are here

AHOJ  and Dobre Noce!  (Hello and Goodnight)

This will be short - 4AM comes awfully early. The Sunday service at Maranatha was great - Janet O., Bless your heart, my sermon was approx. 15 minutes long…and noone dozed off!!!  I think…

Pastor Petr thanked me, so I guess I did not disrupt international relations between CZ and USA.

We had a wonderful lunch in the church, then off to Tesco for shopping (I drove, slept in the van while listening to B52’s), then off to Pastor Petr’s home for snacks and coffee. His wife Ivana baked the most delicious multilayer cake - melt in your mouth exquisite cake!!!  I played with son Petr and his collection of cars and trucks, while talking and planning with Pastor Petr for future works.

Then, drove the team to the restaurant of Pilsner Urquell, for a last dinner with the staff of Maranatha and Teen Challenge. This year just the staff and team - the noise level of laughing and talking rose to approximate a 747 on final takeoff - it was the greatest time ever. So many wonderful warm people, so many stories and laughing…it was heartwarming and not as sad as usual.

This team of eight was a wonderful Godly team, working wonders on building relationships with students and staff of Maranatha and Teen Challenge, Friday Club (thy laughed when I told them about Gustav and “Friday…Wednesday…and maybe they will also meet on Monday, I don;t know.) at Grace Avenue.
They are progressing on their “Rainbow” program for children and working mothers, and other youth/children programs also.

Kevin and Clint - I discovered that the Friday Club and Holy Hill guys are getting together their music-talented members, and will form a band! They intend to practice and then perform at Maranatha some Sunday.  They can use some extra guitar strings, an electric tuner, and small hand percussion instruments. This is a great part of therapy, and I was quite excited by it…You guys and the Youth are key to this - Gustav and Pastor Petr were “WOWED” by your service.
Janet Odom - please accept our thanks and love for being one of our greatest supporters. We love ya!! (ya think 2 hours is still too long for a sermon???  <:>))

To all - thank you for your wonderful support, prayers and thoughts. We so appreciate!

Grace Avenue Family, your weary mission travelers will be wingng their way home to Grace Avenue  tomorrow - please pray for good weather and for no delays.

In God’s Love and Grace

Karel   (Charles Hampshire)

There are new pictures up of the sea of purple shirts in the service today.  Charles did a fantastic job on his first sermon ever.  Off to Pastor Petr’s house for afternoon tea/coffee and then a farewell dinner with the staff and their families. 
Departure time from the hotel is 4:30am, ugh, 9pm on Sunday night as many of you are getting ready for bed.  Pray for our safe travel. 
Love and miss you all!!!!

So, in case you haven’t noticed I am horrible at blogging, i always forget.  But, since this is the first AND last blog for the 2008 trip I guess I have a lot to talk about. Hm…
Well I guess the easiest place to start is the work we did on Holy Hill, my favorite place in the entire world. The guys this year didn’t seem as interested in getting to know us at first (or at least that’s how it seemed to me, maybe they were just shy) but by the end of the week all of us and the guys were one big family. The work this year was harder I thought, more manual labor lol and I definitely refined my raking skills, so I can now add that to my resume haha. I don’t know my favorite part about holy hill is always the clients, I like getting to know them, and talking, even though talking was a bit harder this year because not as many people spoke english. I think the best thing for me this year, as opposed to last, was that a few of the clients were younger. The entire team will make fun of me for one thing imparticular, which is a whole other story unto itself, but it was nice having some younger guys there because it was easier for me to connect with them. I got a chance to make some really good friends with the younger guys this year, and I am so excited to come back next year and hopefully see them all in re-entry, or even out living on their own. I have a lot of faith in these guys, they are all really good, sweet, awesome guys, and I honestly believe that they will all succeed tremendously in this program over the next year. We did a lot of work at holy hill, we got a lot done, but we also had a lot of good times along the way, and we all have lots of stories. As always I will miss holy hill the most.
What else? Well I got to see some of my non-holy hill friends while I was here, which was fun and exciting. Hanging out with Deidre and Matej was probably one of the best things i’ve done in the Czech. Mostly I say that because since they both live here I got to just hang out around Karlovy Vary (a city about an hour from Plzen, and half an hour from the German border) and see what it is the locals do. Plus I got to meet a lot of the people that Matej and Deidre hang out with, some very sweet and cool kids. The concert was AMAZING! It was this reggae worship band, which is awesome because they performed at this club in the middle of the city, something that I would next expect in a mostly atheist country. The band played for 3 straight hours, no breaks, and I think that they reached out to a lot of people. The band was also SUPER sweet, they gave me and deidre and matej all free cds, since you can’t buy them in stores. Lots of fun pictures from that night, just got to hang out with some old friends, and meet some new ones, which if you know me then you know that is one of my favorite things to do!
Another big part of this trip was the Friday Club kids, wow they are some cool kids. When we went on Wed. we knew all the kids except for one new girl, and it was so nice to see all the kids faces again! They are always so excited to see us!!! All of them are super sweet, and it was nice to get a chance to talk to them all again and catch up. We also went to the club on Friday (i didn’t get to stay as long as everyone else because we had to catch a bus to K. Vary) and it was packed!!! There were lots of old faces, and also some new ones. All the teens in the club are awesome, Lucas promised he would learn english for next year lol and i promised i would learn some czech (hopefully for real this time). Then there is our three bff’s from the club, those girls are amazing. They met us at church the first sunday, and one was even at church on the last sunday, she said she wasn’t going to let me leave and we could just live in the club and sleep on the couches lol i wish….
I’ve had a lot of people ask me if i’m ready to leave, get back to my friends, my life, graduation, summer, and all of that fun stuff, and honestly the answer is no. If I could stay here for forever I would. I love everything back at home, and don’t get me wrong, I miss everyone like crazy. But at the same time there’s something special here. It’s the guys at holy hill, and service at maranatha, and deidre and matej, and friday club, it’s everything. I’ve done a lot of things back in the states, name almost any club (academic) and i’ve done it, and I can honestly say that nothing compares to this. Hopefully I will come back in July for the language school, I am praying hard about it. At the end of the day I know that at some point in my life I will live here, it might not be soon, probably after college sometime, but I will eventually. I don’t know exactly what it is about the Czech but I just feel called here, I feel more at home here then I do in Frisco sometimes. It’s hard to leave, and I really really really don’t want to. But, it’s time to go back to real life, and I’ll be sad, but I keep reminding myself that I am still going to talk to everyone and e-mail and icq and skype, we won’t lose touch. I miss Czech already.
So, I definitely cannot even get anywhere near describing everything that happened this trip. But, thinking back on it all I don’t even think I could have put it into words at the time it was happening, it’s just something you have to experience, and feel. The Czech is life changing, no doubt, and it’s the hardest, scariest, amazing, and best thing I have ever done. So this is it, my first and last lol post of this trip. You’ll see the pictures, and hear the stories, and read the blogs, but the only way you’ll ever really get it is to be here. (which hopefully more of you will next year!)

We’ve had an amazing last few days here.  Friday, our last day on Holy Hill, we had a wonderful BBQ, walked to the church on the hill, and took our big team picture!  Then we shared stories of appreciation for the week and the time we’ve spent together.  Just like last year, I feel like I’ve received sooooo much more than I could have possibly given…it is surprising to hear the guys talk about the impact the week has had on their lives.  But I am joyful that they have been able to feel God’s love through all of us.

Friday night was “snacks” at Petr and Pavla’s house for all of us.  Pavla is such a wonderful cook!!  And they are such an inspiring couple.  We love to spend time with them.  And we ended the evening with Pavla’s famous pineapple cake and lattes.  It was a perfect evening!

Saturday afternoon was filled with shopping. And Saturday night we had dinner with the guys from Holy Hill at our favorite restaurant, San Marino’s.  We’ve been there 4 times this week!  They have THE BEST Margherita Pizza in the world!!   It was so nice to spend the evening sharing food and fellowship with everyone from Holy Hill.  We ordered so much food, but there were very few leftovers!  We laughed, we shared, we encouraged each other…it is such an uplifting time.  The guys this year are really nice, and they have so many gifts and talents.  I pray that with God’s help, their hard work, the guidance and support of the Holy Hill staff, and our thoughts and prayers and emails, that we will see them all next year in the Re-entry House.

Karel (Charles) did a GREAT job with his sermon this morning in church!!  We are all so proud of him!!  It touched our hearts, and was very meaningful for our work this week.  Lunch after church was very good, but sad as we said goodbye to the guys, and headed back to our hotel to pack.

We’re are headed home to our Texas families tomorrow!  We love you all, and thank you for the encouraging words and thoughts and prayers.

Many Blessings to All,
Donna

Charles did an awesome job today. You all would have been proud of him. All of his girls here sure were!
It is our last day and you can really tell God’s Love is in this place. I have been so excited to see all the guys from years prior. It is such a blessing to see the changes in thier lives. For so many at Church today we do not speak the same language but we can smile, laugh and put our hands to our hearts and know what we are saying. 
     I am really excited to see my family tomorrow night. By the 9th day I am usually ready to go home. We have said our good byes to our new friends at Holy Hill until next year. I really pray I will see all of them again and wish only love, peace and happiness for each of them. They will be in my hearts forever! The word i out that i like gardening. I was given an awesome gift today of seeds for Czech flowers. Watch and see you may see some in the flower beds at Church.

See you soon!
Love and peace,
Joyce 

We had an awesome sharing time tonight and some wonderful food.  The clients loved being out in a restaurant as for many of them, it had been months since they have been anywhere except to church.  We laughed, jokes, learned some new Czech phrases (Tracy is the only one that doesn’t butcher the language), cried a little, had a great meal, prayed together and heard their concerns. 

We also went to Charles Castle and stopped by the Re-Entry house to drop off the Team t-shirts as we will all wear them at church in the morning.  While we were there we got to visit with Thomas, a grad from last year.  He is doing so well.  He then joined us for dinner tonight and Joyce presented him with his 1 year sobriety chip and he was beaming from ear to ear.  Please see the pix for yourself.

Thank you for your prayers and we will see  you all next week.

Just a quick note - my sermon for tomorrow is finished. Trying to shave a few minutes off for the Maranatha folks - do ya think 2.5 hours is too long???????  <:>))   Subject is HOPE.  [Nadeje]         (Thank you, Billy)

For all you who sent Grace Avenue pictures - THANKS!!  I will have them playing on their new video setup like Pastor Petr did at Grace Avenue, up on the big screen, while I speak…in English, not Czesky (except for a few key words).

Reminder - tonight is the farewell dinner with the students from Holy Hill, so watch for lots of pictures. They are so wonderful - they say that now their road to a better life is easier, because of Godly people believing in them…and we do.

In God’s Love and Grace,

Karel   (Charles)

What a week we have had!!!  It has been amazing.  I keep pondering if it is because it is my second year and I am more comfortable with everything or if it is just a “better” year????  The clients at Holy Hill seem so receptive from the very beginning and have opened up with their stories in our sessions. 

Yesterday, we walked up to the top of Holy Hill and took so many pictures with the scenery and the clients with us as a whole team.  It was so special.  The change in their faces and the many smiles they return cannot be described in words.  This experience with this mission team is so very rewarding.

Today, we go to a castle and do some “power” shopping and great sightseeing.  Then tonight we take the 8 clients out for dinner and that will be so special for them as most of them have never been “out to eat”.  They grave family time and we feel we have impressed on them that Grave Avenue UMC and out team want to be considered their extended family.

Time goes by so quickly here as Sunday will be our last day to see everyone.  We leave the hotel at 4:45 a.m. Monday morning.  We are 7 hours ahead of Texas time.

It will be great to return home and share in detail all of our experiences.

Love to all.