Non-lugagge Update

So in other not-baggage news, here is our update. We arrived in Ceske Budejovice Thursday at about noon, rather exhausted from 25 hours of travelling. I was veering a bit on the roads, but really that is not so different from the Czech drivers here. I would have had Krista help drive, but she had only one hour sleep in 48 hours, and was mumbling some nonsense about snack foods and such...
We arrived at the OM Villa and was met by Pavel and Drahus Zoul, the director of OM CZ and his wife. They took us to Globus, which is a sort of Mega-WalMart, but with czech rules. For example, Krista wanted to buy makeup and was "assisted" by an angry czech woman, who had to unlock the makeup case to retrieve its valuable contents for her, to prevent Krista from shoplifting. We had lunch with them (some cafeteria-style czech gulas with knedliky) and then went shopping for some essentials like a toothbrush, underwear, socks, deodorant, etc.
Follwing this, we returned to the OM base and met some of the other members, and then went to dinner in Mexican/Italian restaurant. Our hosts had pizza, while I had Fajitas (actually quite good - but a little different) and Krista has chips and tortillas (pronounced tor- till - uzz - they did not understand when she asked for "tor-tee-uz"), Actually it didn't really matter how you pronounce it, since they never brought her any tortillas or tor-till-uhhhhhssss. Then we had a nice walk through the city, and came home and slept for 12 hours.
Today (Friday), besides the luggage adventure, Pavel took us around the city to show us several neighborhoods. We looked at some houses for rent, and met with one real estate agent who took us in a few houses. Priced range from about $400 for a small aprtment in a communist era highrise, to about $725 for a newly constructed 4-bedroom house. I was pleasantly surprised to see some of these houses - especially for the relatively small price swing to go from a small apartment to a (relatively) spacious house. Pavel thought that $725 was pretty expensive for a monthly rent, but to inhabitants of the central coast of California, it was a nice surprise for us. (You should see what $1000/month will get you - but we do not want to live at that kind of level, as it can be detrimental if people perceive us as "rich americans").
Tonight we had a dinner get-together with most of the staff of OM Czech Republic, and had a nice talk with the personnel director. The staff here is rather small, consisting of 9 staff members.
So far our first impressions of the Czech Republic have been pretty good, considering our lack of sleep and lack of luggage. Stay tuned for tomorrows update (which should be posted by noon Saturday) for what happens with the Czech Customs Police....

AND KEEP PRAYING FOR US PLEASE :)

Luggage woes

Ahoj (Hi) everyone! We have safely made it to the Czech Republic after 25 hours of travel!! Unfortunately our luggage did not make the trip with us. That's right - we have been here two days now living with only the clothes on our back and what was in our carry-on's (mostly snacks, magazines, laptop without a power supply, and one toothbrush).
We had an interesting and little sad time at the airport, staring at an empy luggage carousel going round-and-round, hoping that our luggage would make a dramatic entrance out of the little rubber door. Instead, we finally realized that our luggage would not arrive, when passengers from the following flight (arriving an hour later) began to arrive for their luggage. Danny spoke with the baggage "official", and was informed that our luggage did not make the transfer to the Prague plane, and would arrive on Friday morning, and be delivered to us by Friday evening (we are about a two-hour drive from the airport).
Unfortunately what has followed has been a comedy of both airline and customs bureaucracy. We were informed this morning (Friday) that our luggage had arrived in Prague, and would be delivered today. Then we received a call from Czech customs, who statedf that our luggage was detained because of "questionable Materials" - which are 8 mysterious boxes, possibly containing illegal narcotic substances. Our Czech friend Pavel (director of OM Czech Republic) patiently explained to them that these boxes are in fact Sees Candy, which are gifts for friends here. So Czech customs agreed to release the incarcerated baggage, and send them to us today. However we later received another call that for some reason the baggage was not picked up by the delivery service for some reason, and would be delivered Saturday. Then we received yet another call that we needed to drive back to Prague, and discuss the content of the luggage with customs officials, and open the luggage in their presence. Following this, I (Danny) called the airline baggage department, and was told that this was the first time they had heard about this missing baggage, and they would look into it. Then they called back and said the baggage was cleared by customs, and was on its way to us (this was Friday evening here). Yet another call followed, saying to not pay attention to the previous call, and that we needed to travel to the airport, walk to a special phone located in one part of the airport, and dial a special code. At that point the customs police will escort us to our jailed luggage, and we will have to explain ourselves.
So as I write this it is Friday night at 9:30 (which is 11:30 AM Friday Califonria time), and tomorrow morning we will make the 4-hour round trip to Prague, hopefully returning with our luggage. The plus side of this is that Krista has bought several new Czech outfits (ha ha), since she could not be seen in her "travelling clothes". I however, am still wearing the same unwashed jeans for 4 days now....

Co delame ted? (What are we doing now?)
(the picture at right is the OM base in Ceske Budejovice)

Right now we are preparing to move to the Czech Republic. We are all studying the language (a close relative to Russian only much harder), we are raising support, both prayer and financial, and we are continuing to nurture the relationships with our Czech friends. On March 29th, Danny and I will be going to the Czech Republic to work with the OM team, look for housing for us, teach some English classes in a Czech elementary and junior high school, and meet up with our Czech friends. We will soon be selling our house and pretty much everything we own (yikes!) and, once our support is raised, heading out in August for training in Holland and in Hungary before finally landing in CZ around October. We are in awe as we watch how God is going to take our family from here to the Czech Republic by August. Daily we must surrender to Him, and place our hope in Him, not in what we can do, or understand, or accomplish. But trusting in His strength, His wisdom, and His Plan.

Months before we embarked upon this process of missions, Danny had felt a burden for Eastern Europe, specifically Slovakia and the Czech Republic. He began learning the language, studying the culture and befriending nationals via the internet in preparation for a trip he wanted to take over there. As we sought out wise counsel and researched missions and were we would go, it was amazing to see that God had already planted seeds in Danny’s heart for this unreached part of the world. God continues to amaze us as we watch Him weave this elaborate tapestry.

Philippians 1:6 “Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

We planned a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in March of 2005 to meet with several missionary agencies and work alongside the teams. We were eager to know exactly what God had planned for us, especially since this was such a huge decision. God spoke through a missionary we were visiting during this vision tour in Eastern Europe. He simply asked where would faith enter in if we knew every last detail of our lives…if we knew the answers to every question. We began to ask God to show us the next step, to open the next door of this journey, instead of asking Him to reveal all so that we can be sure. We ask Him for the courage and faith to follow Him where we cannot see. This has been tested almost everyday for us. Are we putting our hope and faith in what is seen and known or are we putting our hope and faith in a God who loves us? As we continue to walk through each open door, so far every one of them leading to overseas missions in the Czech Republic, our faith has grown immeasurably.

“Why do we need to go when there are so many who still need Christ right here in the U.S.?” We raised this question early on in the mission process, and a missionary friend from Bosnia answered it so wisely…”There is a church on every corner in the U.S., and in some parts of the world there are no churches…” So God is calling us to go to the Czech Republic, a country of 10 million people of whom 20,000 are believers. After two generations of communism, the country is 95% atheistic. The remaining 5% are nominal Catholics or searching and putting their hope in the B’hai or Mormon faith. Our family will be serving in Ceske Budejovice (about 2 hours south of Prague in Southern Bohemia). There are relatively no evangelical churches in Ceske Budejovice (CB)…it is the most spiritually dark portion of this country. It is not an international community and we would be among a handful of foreigners in this city of 100,000 people. We have hooked up with Operation Mobilization (OM) and will be working with the OM team in CB teaching English, helping with the local church plant, and Danny will also be doing business administrative work for the team.

The people of the Czech Republic so desperately need the hope of Christ. I wish you could see it for yourselves…the country is beautiful filled with incredible architecture, and pastoral countrysides. But among this beauty rises, like a pox, the ugly and austere panalak (cement block apartment typical of the communist era). It so mirrors the spiritual decay of this country with such a rich Christian heritage that they have since walked away from. We have read that the Czech Republic is where America will be in 50 years if we continue to turn away from the God on whom this country was founded.

A crash course in surrender

Jeremiah 29:11 “’For I know the plans I have for you’, declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and to not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

About two years ago God allowed circumstances into our life that caused us to evaluate what and whom we were living for. It seemed that we had been surrounding ourselves with our agenda, with our desires, and with our own plans. Don’t get me wrong, we were still believing in and loving God, serving Him in ministry…doing all the good things Christians do…but something was missing, something was wrong. We were brought to a point in our lives where, for the first time as a couple, we surrendered fully and unconditionally to the Lord. Many times throughout our walk with Jesus we have said, “I give it all to you”, but it was always conditional: “I won’t give up this…”, “so long as it doesn’t involve that…”, etc. This time was different…we were humbled and emptied, together saying to God “not our will but yours”. We truly desired to know God’s purpose and plan for our lives after so long living out our own plans.

Proverbs 19:21 “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

It was like an epiphany: Our lives are not our own! God paid for our lives with His Son’s blood…He bought our lives at a steep cost. Whatever He desired for us, however we could be used for His kingdom…that we would do. It was life changing and utterly transforming, as we began to see our everyday life held up against the eternal. It is amazing the changes in your priorities and decision making when viewing heaven as your true home, this world as your temporary assignment and when your purpose is to know God and to make Him known! It was at this point that we began to feel a funny feeling that was either a call to missions or a case of indigestion. (it was hard to tell at the beginning because missions sounded so scary it made us nauseous)…We began to pray for discernment…God are you telling us that this is what your plans are for us, to go halfway around the world to share the hope of Christ?