Czech Republic Day Seven

Thursday, April 10
Well we cannot believe that it's Thursday already. Our team agrees, "the hours are long but the days are short" on a mission trip. We are tired but joyfully working by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are experiencing God's sufficient grace and His grace is ENOUGH.
We began the day with our team devotions. This morning Mark led us in 1 Corinthians 13:4 "Love is patient, love is kind. it does not envy, it does no boast, it is not proud."  We were reminded that God's love waits, guides and encourages us even when we fall off track! oh boy! haven't we all fallen off track from time to time and yet God's love is patient and He never gives up on us. We were encouraged to look for opportunities to display God's love even in moments of frustration. We all agreed that there have been moments when frustration has set in this week whether it be with an english lesson that didn't go as expected or with a student who seems uninterested or disagreeable and maybe possibly with a teammate. In any of these cases, this Scripture reminds us to trust God to use these moments to reflect His heart clearly to others. We reflected upon the question of "how we could intentionally practice this in our classrooms and with our students today ? " We each resolved that each interaction today would be an opportunity to reflect God's love.  Today's english lessons would allow us lots of intentional opportunities to do this. We are all really getting to know our students better and they are engaging with us in the classroom and with the afternoon activities. It is such a joy to see God move and work in answering our prayers.
 

   Sherry began our english lesson today discussing the food groups. She has done an excellent job of engaging and encouraging our students to practice their english. It's been a great watching Sherry work by the power of the Holy Spirit and step out of her comfort zone and serve the Lord.  Her love for the Lord and the students is evident. We saw a lot more confidence in our students and a willingness to step out and be confident. We played some really fun games to encourage conversation, categorizing and spelling. Our class discussed how to read a recipe for Nestle chocolate chip cookies and did some role playing on how to read a menu in english and order food from a restaurant. We even did a Scavenger Hunt in the classroom pertaining to food & cooking. This was done intentionally to invite the students to our after school activity. The incentive that Matt gave to the students was this, "come help your teachers at the Scavenger Hunt this afternoon around Sedlecany, the losing team's teachers do not get dinner"- WHAT?! more on that later.

Speaking of our class, Sherry and I have just adored our class. They are really a great group of hard workers. They shared with us today that they feel so much more confident in speaking english because we have shown patience and love to them and we don't scold them for making a mistake. Ah! that's exactly what our devotional was about. We smiled and let them know that we are all those things because we serve a HIGHER Being who is patient, kind and loving to us even when we make mistakes. We have also used this phrase all week with our students when they get frustrated or make a mistake that needs correction to help them, w say, "english is HARD BUT not impossible" and this makes them smile and just take a deep breath. 

Here is our amazing class. We must take this time to have you notice our feet. You see in the Czech Republic, you have outside shoes and house shoes. When you come in from the outside, you must take off your outside shoes and put on your slippers or house shoes. And yes, this also occurs in the schools. In fact when we walk into the school, there are two large locker rooms, right side for the girls and left side for the boys this is where you place your jacket and outside shoes to change into your house shoes.  And you don't have to worry about anyone stealing your shoes, they just don't do it.  Class time was wonderful today and went by very quickly. We finished the day with a reward game of Pictionary because that has become our students favorite activity.  Our team was also given some special gift bags from the school and teachers. 

Then we had lunch and quickly went back to the community center to prepare for the SCAVENGER HUNT.
  We prepared a few SNACKS and KOLKA (soda) for the students as they arrived afterschool. Matt placed us into groups with our students and gave us a list of 25 items that we had to find in Sedlecany. The rules were simple- find all 25 items within the time limit of 1 1/2 hours and you had to take a group selfie as the proof.  Sherry and I were so excited that five of our students came. We called ourselves, TINY BUT MIGHTY.  The goal was to use this time to have intentional gospel centered conversations. We had a wonderful time talking, running, talking, running and finding all 25 items and seeing all of Sedlecany. Guess what? Our team came in FIRST place!  This was so much fun, but the better story was that one of our students came specifically for the scavenger hunt to help so that we would receive dinner. In fact when coming to the community center, this student let us know that their father was a good cook and he would cook us dinner if we lost! Ah! don't you love that. 

Here's Matt and one of our students calculating our team total and making sure that we found all 25 items. Our team won a TROPHY and you guess it, a large CANDY of their choice.

Then we had more snacks and soda for the students while spending time talking with them. We let them know that we pray for them every night and will continue to pray for them even after we leave. Two of our students let us know that they have never had anyone pray for them and that this made them very happy. They wanted to talk more about that but had to go home and finish up homework. Would you as the reader, please pray for J, A, E, AA & L for us? Pray that the Lord will bring them back tomorrow for our last afternoon activity. Pray specifically that we will have the chance to physically Pray with them so they can experience God's love and care for the first time. Then we headed out for dinner (yes, everyone received dinner- ha! We have been eating really good on this trip) Afterwards, our team was invited to a special Czech movie (with English subtitles) at the local theater. It was a late night but super fun experience. Our team is tired BUT Full of God's abundant grace. Until tomorrow- Ciao!

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