It's All Grace

a journey with the Thomason family

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
The Sunday Dichotomy: When The Church Service Goes Long

When was the last time you were at church and the guy announcing an outreach ministry begins with a story about someone attempting suicide? That’s what happened this morning at our church in Czech. The man sharing was introducing a ministry called “Alpha” which, from what I could I gain through our translator, is designed to help people share their faith with those in their workplaces and neighborhoods. The story he was sharing was from his own work where a mom asked to leave work early because her son was trying to commit suicide. He continued that people at his work know he’s a Christian and are willing to share things with him. As well, he shared that in the case of the woman he asked her if he could pray for her son before she left and she said “OK.” This man encouraged the body to continue to tell others about Christ and the gospel, and invited them to “Alpha” where they can gain training and tools to aid in their own evangelism.

Watching the nationals in our church is so encouraging and spurs our own missionary family on towards gospel ministry in this place. Lord willing, more people will come to Christ because of that ministry, our church here, and the faithful witnesses of Christ.

Church today went almost three hours long. Our kids did exceptional, but we ended up going outside around the two hour, fifteen minute mark. There was a lot going on, including an entire group of students that recently came back from camp who shared about their experience and sang a few songs (video above of one part of one song). We also had a guest speaker, communion, and an extended prayer time. School will start here tomorrow (Sept. 1) and the pastors wanted to pray for all the kids in the church so they asked them to come forward and the pastors and elders prayed individually for students, teachers, and families. The place was very full today so the lines for prayer went all the way to the back and we watched as the pastors would place hands on the families and students and pray (photo below).

Bethany and I talked during lunch about how to respond to a longer service. We feel the burden of living in two worlds now: World #1 (the more American view): Being on time is right and good. It honors God to be on time–church services should end on time. World #2 (maybe a more Czech view?): Spending time with your church family is right and good. If the service goes long, it’s just extra time for prayer and fellowshipping with other believers which is a joy and encouragement–it’s OK if the service goes long. It’s a Sunday dichotomy. Both feel right and good, but you can’t have both at the same time.

I like what one friend told me in the States. On the possibility that the service might go long on a particular Sunday he told me, “Hey, you really don’t hear people complaining when the football game goes into over time.” I think he’s right. Often we (Americans) make exceptions in our minds for sports and entertainment, but not so much for church. I know I do this and am guilty of complaining when church doesn’t end when I think it should. Maybe I do need look at the other side and learn from my Czech brothers and sisters that spending a little more time at church might just be a joy and not a burden. It’s like what our Czech pastor said today about the service running long, “We love our children and our teachers. This is the wisest thing for us to do.” Amen, brother.

Above is a photo of Titus with his hands in his pockets just watching the service. We like that kid.

Towards the end of the service there were a lot of kids outside. The boys turned the grass area into a scene from Braveheart, each boy for himself with a stick for a sword. We had no clue where the other parents were.

Finally, our two little ones which seem to betting bigger every day. Thanks to Bethany they always look so nice when we go to church.

August 31, 2014