It's All Grace

a journey with the Thomason family

Banana Bread for Breakfast

“Daddy, we’re having banana bread!” That’s what Avery told me around 4:00am this morning while I was laying in bed. Admittedly, I didn’t get up until about 45 minutes later, but she wasn’t joking. When I stumbled in to the kitchen, Bethany was wide eyed and the oven was baking away a fresh banana bread loaf with Nutella (shown above). She had been awake since 2:30am and finally got out of bed around 3:00 and got straight to work apparently.

As I’m sure you figured out, we’re still jet lagging and we’ve been home for a week now. Even we’re struggling to understand and believe it. But I guess we’re making the most of it. Today we had banana bread at 5am, enjoyed a cup, and even read a devotional. I even had time to read my 10 chapters in my Bible reading program. After all that, Titus and I started working on cleaning the house and he was getting serious with the vacuum (as you can see in the photo above).

Even though it’s been a little cold (mid 30s), the kids have been wanting to go outside and do bubbles. In the above photo you can see them dancing and playing outside after Titus got home from school today. It’s fun to see them enjoying the weather, even when it’s colder.

Titus’ teacher told Bethany that we should speak more Czech to Titus at home. When I took him to school today, I spoke a little with her in Czech and she seemed pretty happy about it. If we could teach Titus more Czech, we would, but since our own understanding is so limited it makes it tough. As I talked with his teacher this morning I can only get so far before I just say, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” (in Czech). It’s never easy to feel like you can’t continue a discussion (or even a relationship) because of the language limitation, but it’s just reality for us right now. Bethany and I have come to the conclusion that we’re not going to continue to feel bad about it, but just do our best to plow forward with learning and trust God for the rest of it. It might be a slow process, but eventually we’ll have opportunities to complete sentences and conversations!

January 21, 2015
Trees and Testimonies

You do some crazy things when you’re up early because of jet lag. For us, that meant pushing our dead and dry Christmas tree out the window of our apartment at around 6am this morning. We had already eaten breakfast at that point, and we were ready for some excitement, I guess? And I went with my gut which was thinking that if we left it by the trash cans that the trash truck would take it away and I’m happy to report that my gut was right! Later today the trash truck came and hauled it away which was kind of a load of my mind.

Later today I was a part of a meeting which could lead to some incredible fruit for the Kingdom if it plays out. Basically, Josiah Venture was meeting with an organization that helps do Internet evangelism. They are committed to the Gospel and the local church and I believe the Lord is blessing their efforts. Even hearing from one of their leaders today I was just impressed with his heart for the lost and his passion for this generation. These aren’t just smart guys with computers, but genuine evangelists that know we have been given an incredible tool in the Internet to get the gospel to the lost of the entire world.

In fact, one of the big parts of this online site is a place for people to share their testimonies once they have put their trust in Christ. As we looked at the different pages of lots of people I was reminded just how important it is to hear testimonies of the work of Christ in the lives of people. And it’s those stories that this organization is leveraging in order for more people to hear the Gospel. It’s really incredible just how God is using this unique ministry and I’m looking forward to being part of how Josiah Venture can be involved in using their technology to reach young people in Central and Eastern Europe.

Lastly, back at home, we’ve made a tiny bit of progress with jet lag. The kids slept until a little after 1am which is better than the previous two nights. We’re still really off and we even enjoyed breakfast burritos today at 5:00am. It makes me laugh as I think about it, but then again I’m really tired so just about anything right now could probably make me get the tired giggles.

January 20, 2015
A Short Night’s Sleep

For the most part, I did really good today despite being up since 3:00am. Like yesterday, Bethany took the early shift with the kids which started around midnight and I took the rest of the morning from 3:00 on. Getting up that early does have it’s benefits. First, I get some great time to read my Bible. My energy level is really good because I’m going to bed early, so getting up and reading my Bible in what is normally the middle of the night is nice and pretty quiet. Secondly, I’m getting other reading done, like the book you see below. Around 5:00am I actually finished this book which I started in the States and it was just nice to eat my cereal, drink my coffee, and read. Maybe I should just get up at 3:00am every night? Just kidding.

Technically the photo belwo is from last night, but it’s an example of what has been happening around our house the past few days. Even this afternoon when I came home, I found Avery asleep on the couch and Bethany and Titus in the back bedrooms asleep. It’s just weird, and it leads to Titus leaving the dinner table, getting on the couch and just falling asleep. It happened both last night and tonight. Today made a little more sense because Titus was back in school, so he didn’t nap or anything today until late this afternoon. Poor guy. I feel for him because I feel like I could fall asleep right now while typing this.

I was back at the Josiah Venture office today for the first time since we left for the States last month. It was nice to be back and to be with my team. I really feel like our time in the States gave me a little more clarity on how to lead my team better and in general was just really refreshing. There’s a lot of great things coming in 2015 for my team and I’m excited to lead them and see what God does with our efforts.

We had another hangup with our utilities in Czech, specifically with our power company. They called today telling us they would be shutting our power off tomorrow because we hadn’t paid. The only problem with that was that I had paid. With the help of our Czech friend Martina she was able to call them and explain that we had paid and to kindly ask that they not shut our power off. What’s funny is that they finally did admit we had paid, and they even added that we had a credit on our account! To be honest, this one baffles me, but as I always say, “Welcome to the Czech Republic.”

January 19, 2015
Snowy and Sleepy

I am struggling to understand just exactly why our kids won’t sleep past 11pm. We have done everything to keep them awake for as long as possible, but this jet lag has been brutal. Today marks our 4th full day in Czech and I really don’t think the kids have moved from the West Coast time zone. Bethany played with them from 11pm-2am and I got up around 2:30/3:00 and haven’t slept since. The kids took naps around 9am this morning, but we kept them very short.

It doesn’t really get light outside until around 8:00am right now, so it wasn’t until about that time today that we saw all the white outside. Apparently it snowed last night. Clearly it wasn’t a blizzard, but it was enough to cover everything and make it look nice. This is actually the first time since we’ve been in Czech that we have seen the snow on the ground. We were gone during some of the snow around the beginning of the year. It’s mostly melted now, but it looked really fun outside today (as you can see in the photo above of our yard).

Since the kids were napping, we didn’t go to church today, so Bethany and I decided to go ahead and take down the Christmas decorations that we left up before we went to the States. We got the Christmas tree ornaments down and most of the other things around the house. A lot of it is still sitting on our living room floor, bust mostly it’s all boxed up and just needs to be put away.

Titus and I did a few errands today, one to the hardware store and then to get some groceries. I had to walk every aisle at the hardware store to find Velcro, but we did eventually figure out where it was. Six months ago that would’ve drove me nuts, but today I planned on it taking forever and knew we would be hunting for a while. I’d say that’s progress.

I’m too sleepy to continue typing so this is where I’ll leave you. Here’s to hoping we can make it past an 11pm wake up time.

January 18, 2015
Learning New Things

One of the greatest blessings of moving overseas has been the opportunity to learn new things. I honestly don’t know if we would’ve had the motivation to learn certain things had it not been for us moving to Czech Republic. For example, Bethany now makes all of our pancakes from scratch. This week she even tried a different recipe because she felt like if she was making them from scratch they should taste a certain way. I have little doubt that had we stayed in the States we probably never would’ve tried to make our own pancakes. It’s just so easy to buy the big bag of pancake mix at Costco!

Today was another day of experimenting and trying new things. Since I was awake at 4am with the kids (p.s. they were up at 11pm…that’s right, they didn’t even make it until the next day), I decided to start pursuing something I have been thinking about learning: drawing. Because of the work I do, there’s often times that I need to sketch out an idea on paper before we design it on screen. I always feel like I’m behind in my understanding of drawing, so I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to learn. This morning I started an online class on the “Foundations of Drawing” which has been helpful and challenging. One of the tasks was to copy something in sections with the thing you’re copying facing upside down. The point is to train your brain to not think about what the picture is, but just look at the lines (you have to retrain your brain to see lines and not try to constantly figure out what the picture is). Here’s what I ended up with (mine is on the right). Mine isn’t perfect, but go easy on me…I’m a first timer.

Bethany was also learning something new today. She made English muffins! A friend of ours sent us a recipe on Facebook, so Bethany tried it out for the first time today. They tasted awesome and it was her first crack at it. Baking in general I feel like is pretty tough, so I’m super impressed. Again, I really don’t think we would’ve tried making those had it not been for the simple fact that we can’t just go pick them up in the store here. Tomorrow we’re going to make breakfast sandwiches with them and I can’t wait! Here’s some photos from the process (and here’s the link to the recipe!):

Jet lag has continued to be rough, but we’re doing our best. Avery just went to bed and it’s only 5:40pm as I write this. Titus is hanging in there and I’m hoping he’ll stay up at least until 6:30 tonight. We actually went over to our friend’s house, the Yormans, to have play time and chat just so we could stay awake. They were completely understanding because they just got back from California a week ago and are a few days ahead of us in the world of jet lag.

I’ve had some relief from my toothache today and it’s been feeling pretty good. I can’t eat an apple yet, but I’ve been doing my own pain tests and so far, so good. It’s been a slow process, but I am really I got that thing fixed before we left the States. Trying to explain all of that in another language would’ve been tough!

Well, it’s time for bed. Bethany is taking the first shift tonight (e.g. she goes to bed first and gets up when the first kid does due to jet lag) and I’ll be putting Titus to sleep later when he gets tired. We’re hoping to make it to church tomorrow, but we’ll just have to wait and see how we all feel. Thank you for continuing to pray for us!

January 17, 2015