Monday, May 7, 2012

You gotta keep me in Czech

//I wrote this post just before coming home, but never got around to posting it. I guess it's time to move the Christmas post down a bit...but anyway, I don't think I'll be using this blog much after this, I've moved everything over to wordpress, so check that out here. So now, enjoy this last post here, and know that I mainly wrote it so I could put a Czech pun in the title. And I guess also to tell you how wonderful my Czech Tour experience was. Ciao, Charlene//



I am really going to miss living in Europe. I mean, all I had to do to get to Prague was hop in a van and 3 hours later I was there. And now, I'm in love with the Czech Republic. Prague is a nice place, it's a lovely city to spend the day in, but I'm so glad that I got to actually visit some of the smaller cities and experience more of the "real" Czech culture.

So to begin with, here's a list of the towns I got to visit: Prague, Kutna Hora, Decin, Tachov, Plzen, Prestice, and Cheb. And that was just in 10 days. This whole going to a lot of different places for short periods of time seems to be a theme in my outreaches so far. But that's not important. What's important is that I, along with 6 others from Herrnhut joined with 3 women from YWAM Cheb, Czech Republic, to visit different churches and youth groups in all of these cities and tell them about our outreach, our DTS experiences, and to promote both DTS in Herrnhut and also the DTS that the women from Cheb are going to be starting up next February.

At first I was not very enthusiastic about the whole tour idea, I mean, we just got back from outreach a few weeks ago, I still feel like I'm recovering in some ways. And I definitely wasn't too keen on giving up my bed again after just getting it back. I didn't want to speak in front of people and I didn't want to spend hours and hours in the vans again. Nonetheless, I woke up at 8am almost every morning  the week before going to pray with the rest of my team, and through lots of prayer, God changed my perspective and I actually feel like I almost enjoyed tour more than outreach. Almost.

The Czech Republic is such a beautiful country, toward the end of the week the weather really started to get nice and I was just blown away by the beauty that is in this country. In Decin some students showed us around the city and they took us to places that have almost been around longer than Europeans knew that the earth was round. I just can't get over the richness of the history. But, like most places in the world, a rich history means that not only are there beautiful cultural monuments to the past, but there is also a lot of hurt and heartbreak that has taken place. I don't know a lot about the history of the Czech Republic, but the Soviet rule has had a huge impact on modern day Czechs, and now it is one of the most atheistic countries in the world. After finding this out, going to the different churches and sharing our testimonies had a much bigger impact to me. I mean, these are strong Christians, to survive in such a spiritual battle zone, and to share my life with them was incredible.

In short, the Holy Spirit showed up in a lot of incredible ways during this time, and I feel so blessed to have been able to experience it. Now I just have to get over the fact that we have less than one week left here at the base. It helps to know that I'll be going home to dear friends and family who I can't wait to see. Not to mention my brother's wedding. It will be an exciting time, I'm just praying that it won't be so exciting that I manage to forget everything that has happened these past wonderful, trying, exhilarating, beautiful, challenging, breathtaking seven months.