It's All Grace

a journey with the Thomason family

Free Vitamin D

My dad grew up in the desert of California and delivered milk when he was really young. He would always tell this story when we visited my grandma’s house because the roads we would drive on were places he delivered milk. If my memory serves me, I remember him saying that the dairy farmer he worked for would give you your order for free if the sun didn’t shine that day. It’s been a few days since we’ve seen the sun here in Czech. We didn’t get any free milk, but we finally did get some vitamin D. By noon today the fog and clouds blew away and we got a beautiful, sunny day. I always loved cloudy days in California because they were so rare. If we never saw the sun I would be fine because I knew it would be back in full effect soon enough. I’m starting to wonder now how I will feel about that here when I’ve heard that there are literal months where the sun doesn’t shine. Only time will tell, but we’ll take a little sun in the meantime.

Above is a photo of half the office I share with our team here. I’ve written already this week that we are hard at work on a 155 page leadership training manual. It’s been a big project and one I’m hoping will be literally out of my hands this coming Monday when we send it out to be printed. But each day we come to this office and work hard at communicating the heart of what we do as an organization. On that whiteboard is a list of projects we’re currently working on, all of which I think reflect the work that God is doing in Central and Eastern Europe. On the floor you’ll notice some big photos that we printed out for another book we’re working on. Story after story of God’s faithfulness in the lives of young people will eventually fill the pages. It’s an exciting time here and I’m truly thankful to be part of it.

As I often do I spent some time outside tonight with the kids while Bethany made dinner. Titus and I were playing basketball in the driveway when Avery popped her little head of the kitchen window. Our apartment is the lower floor but’s elevated above the street so she was looking down on us and just giggling and smiling. Finally I took a photo of her because she’s so cute.

File this next photo under “random Americana in Czech.” Bethany bought cranberries at the local Kaufland (a German grocery store here in Czech) and after closer inspection of the packaging realized it was very, well…American. If you look, you’ll see at least 3 American flags, a cowgirl, and a sign saying “Las Vegas.” What do those have to do with cranberries? Your guess is as good as ours.

Tomorrow is an extremely full day with lunch at the preschool headmaster’s house, a birthday party for our friend’s kid, and then our first youth group at our church here in Czech. I’m praying for energy and hope our kids hold up. It’s probably not how I would’ve planned it but it’s what God has for us. I guess we’ll all find out tomorrow when we blog about.

September 5, 2014
Window Sills and Chicken Talk

Czech Republic is a land that has history dating back as far as 870 AD. It’s an old place with old buildings and things, but the one thing that impresses me about Czechs is how they clean they can keep things. For the most part I find that they like their houses very tidy, clean, and well kept. This would include the yards too. Our landlord is no exception. Just the other day, we saw a cleaning lady out in the driveway meticulously sweeping the bricks and with a pickaxe she was scraping in between each individual brick removing dirt and moss!

Today our landlord left a note about the window sills on our place needing to be cleaned. Amazingly, Bethany actually had that on her list of things to do and had started on one side of the house today. She was halfway through cleaning them when she found the note on our doorstep (shown above). I’m positive our landlord using Google Translate to write us and it’s just funny how they sound. Bethany told me later that she took a photo of the window sills because she wanted people to see just how large they are (photo below). You can practically sit on them like a bench and they are definitely a chore to clean. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen anything like them in the States, but we’re happy to make sure they look nice.

My teammate John and I went to a little restaurant near the Josiah Venture offices today for lunch. Its a great little place that I’ve shared about before and we like it because for $4 you can get hot soup and a lunch entree. Only one time have I ordered anything but pizza there because I think it’s amazing. As we were doing our best to translate the menu today the waiter came over to us and motioned with his arm like a chicken. He was trying to tell us that the third item on the menu was chicken wing, but for some reason I was said, “Chicken breast?” and he nodded and smiled in affirmation. I don’t know what I was thinking and I definitely don’t think he understood me. A few minutes later he came over and in broken English said, “chicken?….” and was motioning with his arm like a chicken. Then I heard the words, “chicken breast?” come out of my mouth again and he got excited and ran over to another table and told them “Chicken breast.” There were some other native English speakers at a nearby table (which is rare) and our waiter was excited to speak English to him, I guess. Nevertheless I felt like a failure but his one-armed chicken wing motion still makes me giggle.

Speaking of chicken, Bethany made amazing chicken and dumplings tonight. She was really excited that she was able to get all of the ingredients at the store by herself and the meal was wonderful. Now she’s in the kitchen reading on how to make her own chicken stock! She tells me those are her chicken stock ingredients in the above photo. This girl has gone true Pioneer Woman and I like it! Watching Bethany adapt here is actually really fun and I think she’s risen to the occasion of being a foreign missionary, engaging newer things with a willing and able attitude.

Tomorrow is another early day for me but I’m hoping to spend the latter half of the day with Bethany and the kids as I’ve been plowing pretty hard this week with projects for Josiah Venture. God has been gracious with our health and energy during some busy days. Praise the Lord for how He continues to show his kindness to me and my family.

September 4, 2014
Working From Home

We had a pretty normal day today, with the exception that I worked from home today for about half the day. My team is working on a 150 page training manual for young leaders that will be launched in a few weeks at our fall conference. Our short-term intern and editor, Amy, and I had to work through a lot of edits and instead of heading to the office we worked at our apartment. Titus kept coming to my desk telling me about his drawings on the magnetic drawing pad we have. The first one was “of you, dad!” and I think even got my hair right. This is probably the best person drawing we have seen him do.

While I was making edits on my computer I could hear Avery giggling over at her little table. Bethany was painting the bottom of Avery’s toes. A friend on our Facebook had posted about a little craft where you make a leaf etching, paint the kids toes, and make little caterpillars. Below you’ll find photos of both the kids giggling away and the final result.

I’m a little tired tonight as today was pretty full at the JV offices. There is a ton of ministry items to prepare for, especially with the upcoming conference. I have to constantly remind myself that the little things we might be working on day to day are a big part of what we do as a ministry and will eventually have, Lord willing, a great impact on the leaders and missionaries in many countries. I guess we’ll just rest in October!

September 3, 2014
Reflecting and Lots to Pray About

For the past two days I have found myself saying, “I can’t believe it’s September.” On this date last year I was starting my last two weeks of work at Paul Mitchell and our family was stepping into a new adventure called full-time support raising. I can’t believe that was a year ago and I can’t believe I’m sitting here in Czech Republic writing about it. No doubt God’s hand has been in this process with our family and has brought us many miles physically and brought us further in our faith. Praise the Lord for His goodness and faithfulness to us in this journey.

Maybe I’m just reflecting more tonight, but I’m amazed at the growth in my kids. Titus and Avery both seem to be making big strides in all areas of their little lives. Avery is still have accidents, but she’s consistently using the potty and telling us so we can take her. Titus is building more complicated things with his legos (photo above). He’s helping more around the house and he’s just talking a lot more. Every day he comes to the door when I get home and says, “So dad, how was your day?” I’m so thankful for their growth and for the work that Bethany puts in with them. Praise the Lord for His grace and kindness to us with our kids.

Tonight we had dinner with our new friend Soňa (pronounced “Sown-yuh”) over for dinner. You may remember that Bethany met her at a little preschool in our town. We don’t believe she knows Christ, but she told us tonight her family is Catholic. In fact, her mom texted her while she was at our house asking her to pray about the situation with Putin and Russia as she heard reports that things are escalating. Like all Czechs she brought us a little gift and even thought of our kids (photo below).

Soňa is a very busy girl with multiple jobs and she’ll be starting university (like college) later this month. She has offered to babysit for us but we wanted to spend more time with her. We see an opportunity to minister to her and see what God does. Pray for us as we seek to make wise decisions in this area. Soňa also told us about the new English teacher at the preschool who is from New Zealand. Bethany is going to try and contact her as well and see if we can help her with her visas stuff. We feel like we need to push into some of these relationships and see what God has. It’s a reminder to pray.

After Soňa left Bethany got a phone call from the lady who runs the preschool. They continue asking Bethany to come and speak/teach English. Right now they are asking her to commit for a fews day a week and we’re just not sure about it. The woman that called insisted we go to her house to discuss it and now we’re scheduled for lunch on Saturday so we’ll see what this might entail. Obviously, we’re not her to hold jobs like that nor are we legally allowed to. We would have to work out some kind barter, but we just need to pray and have wisdom. Again, I don’t believe these are accidents, but we need the wisdom that comes from above. Just another reminder to pray.

September 2, 2014
A New Month and a New Store

Tonight we had our monthly time of opening an envelope from our Bible study in the States. Until June of next year we have envelopes for every month which they have put together with gifts and fun things inside. The September envelope brought lots of fun things so here’s some photos of our kids unwrapping it all (captions below each photo).

Titus found a light up yo-yo which also wanted to take with him to bed. Avery found a rounded object that she began to unwrap.

Avery found a princess wand and finally unwrapped a great candle. She went around the house saying, “Sprinkle sprinkle, do your thing” with her wand. No clue where that came from or what exactly it means.

Titus found a Cars sticker book which he loved.

Oh… Avery found Daddy’s favorite, an iTunes gift card! She also found a book called “Lone Survivor” which is the background for the recent movie of the same name.

The kids found a letter from our friends, the Shanks family. It was written from their kids and had some great questions about our life here in Czech. Here are the questions with some answers:

Q: Do you play basketball in your new house?
A: Yes! But not in the house. We have a basketball hoop that we keep in the garage and when it’s not raining we roll it out and play in our driveway.

Q: Have you made lots of new friends?
A: Definitely! There are so many fun friends here and we’re having a blast getting to know lots of new people.

Q: Do you like your new church? What is your church called?
A: Yes. We love it. It’s called “Církve Bratrské” which means, Church of the Brethren.

In other news, we had a little hiccup at the Josiah Venture offices today which required me and my teammate, Brian, to go to Ostrava for a few things. We needed to get a couple new computer hard drives from the store because of some issues with someone else’s computer. The mall in Ostrava is actually where Bethany and I went on our second date in Czech and it’s just an amazing place. In the photo above you can see Brian using a giant touch screen display to find out where the computer store was. When he picked the location it showed us where we were and how to get to the floor above where the store was. I have never see anything like it in the States. We walked up stairs and got exactly what we needed.

Since we had already made the thirty minute drive, Brian called his wife to see if they needed anything from the mall. She said they needed brown sugar from this British store called “Marks and Spencer” which Brian knew of but I had never heard about. I couldn’t believe my eyes when we got inside. Chocolate chip cookies, English language packaging, sauces, salsa, and even brow sugar (which is apparently hard to find around here). The store was amazing considering this is the Czech Republic and I ended up calling Bethany to tell her while I was in there. I only bought two things but I think we’ll heading back at some point. Here’s the photos I showed to Bethany when I got home.

Funny thing is you have to walk through a department store to get to where this store is located. It’s all part of Marks and Spencer, but I was still confused by it.

These are the little bags of brown sugar. They cost a little less than $3.00 (US).

On the left is lots of coffee and on the right is lots of ice cream toppings. The ice cream stuff is probably splurge items, for sure, but it’s amazing that they have that kind of stuff.

Last but not least, jalapeños. I don’t know if these are hard to come by but seeing anything spicy which is even related to Mexican food makes my heart happy. You’d be surprised how these little things make you feel when you haven’t seen them a while.

September 1, 2014