It's All Grace

a journey with the Thomason family

“What people are bad robot”

“What people are bad robot.” That’s a translation we came up with tonight while studying Czech. It’s also about as clear as we are on this new language.

Tomorrow we’ll have our second formal Czech lesson and Jitka (our teacher) got us our new books and gave us a little homework. Czech is not easy. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Just the basic greetings and salutations can be enough to make my head spin right now. There is a lot of formality to the greetings when you’re talking to someone you don’t know and if you use the informal and not the formal you can offend, so that’s a little tricky. I guess we’ll just have to take it step by step. See what I did there?

Even though there are no words, the IKEA instructions can sometimes be like learning a new language. I began building our wardrobe today and I’m just not in the groove of building IKEA furniture…yet. I messed up one hole and hammered something I wasn’t supposed to so I was little frustrated. In the end, I think I’ve got it right but I’m only half done. There’s another section to build and then I have to put the doors on. Hopefully I’ll have time this weekend to finish it off.

I’ve begun working a bit here in the Josiah Venture office and at home. My team (Creative Communications) has some big projects coming up and I’ve been helping with the discussions and starting to take a more active role. It’s been good to start slow here and get back to normalcy before diving head first, but I’m excited to get some projects going while we’re moving in and learning language.

Bethany made cookies tonight, but as she was about to put them in the oven I heard, “Oh no…” from the kitchen. Then I said, “What’s wrong?” Bethany replied sadly, “My cookie sheets don’t fit in the oven.” Welcome to Europe. Our tiny little oven/stove just doesn’t cut it with these big cookie sheets. Thankfully the oven has a few other sheets included with it so Bethany cleaned them and we used those. We got some great cookies, but I’m guessing we’ll probably have to get some cookie sheets that actually fit. Here’s a fun fact about Czech: you can’t really buy chocolate chips. Bethany brought a huge Costco size bag of them here, but if you want to make chocolate chip cookies without importing, you need to cut the chocolate chips up yourself! Oh the humanity!

I feel bad for Titus sometimes. These photos (above) kind of symbolize a little bit how his life is right now: upside down. Yesterday he said, “Dad, I want to go to In-N-Out.” Sorry, pal. Then tonight he said, “We go swimming there?” in reference to our friend’s house in California. Can’t do that either, buddy. I know this probably isn’t as hard on him as I think it is, but I also know that he understands our life is much different than it was before. We’re trying real hard to explain things to him like taking off your shoes when you enter someone’s house (cultural thing in Czech), and it’s going pretty well. It’s just weird for me to be experiencing the change with him and not having the experience ahead of him. I guess it’s like language learning–we’ll just have to take it one step at a time.

July 16, 2014
Your World. Delivered.

I think it was a few years back, but AT&T had a little tagline they were using in their marketing. It just said, “AT&T…Your world. Delivered.” For some reason it just stuck with me and it summarizes well what we did today.

We spent the morning outside with the kids. The weather has been warm, but very nice. We’e been trying to find a good balance with making sure the kids are getting good, focused time with us and then unpacking and setting up our house. It’s going slow, but we’re making progress every day. The above photo is of the little yard we have access to at our apartment. Every time we open the garage Avery grabs all of the chairs so she can “sit in the shade,” as she says.

Our teammates and new friends John and Erin just had their first baby, a little boy named Shade. But they are good planners and asked us months ago if we could spare a little room in our container to bring them an American baby crib. Once we knew how our space was looking we told them yes so they had it delivered to our house in California and we put it on the container. Today we had the privilege of delivering it over to John and Erin here in Czech. It took me a bit to figure out how to arrange the seats in our new car to get it to fit, but we got it in and I’m excited that their little family will be able to enjoy it now. If you look in the photo above you’ll see the top box has a number “3” and little hearts around it. It was box number 3 of our 200+ items and I think since Bethany loves babies it got the added hearts.

Sometimes when you drive you get stuck behind a tractor and a bike rider.

The last thing on the agenda today was to take a big trip to IKEA for a bunch of much needed furniture and lights. It’s been hard to know exactly what things we really need and how much space we have to accommodate those things. Tonight we got a lot of great things including our wardrobe, new lights for the kitchen, low wattage light bulbs to save money, and a carpet for one of our living rooms (yes, it’s like we have more than one…hard to explain). We had a few more items on our list, but we just couldn’t fit it all in our car.

We’re planning another trip back to IKEA which is about 35 minutes away from where we live, but we’re thankful to have the funds we need to setup our home and space here. Things are starting to coming together. Slowly, but surely we’ll have a home that feels like home and when that day comes we’ll definitely post photos! Until then, here’s a few from our time at IKEA today.

The sky as we drove tonight was just amazing. Czech is a beautiful country, and we love the clouds that roll through our part of the country. Bethany told the kids, “Look, it looks like heaven!” and Avery repeated loudly, “DADDY! It looks like heaven!” Yes. Yes, it does, Avery.

July 16, 2014
Oops

I began to write this blog and immediately the power went out in our apartment. We had been warned that often the power will do that if we are running too many electronics at once. We had the washer, dryer, and dishwasher going (which we’re used to running at night) so I think that’s what triggered it. After calling a friend, having our landlord talk to her on the phone, and flip a few breakers we got power again. Oops–we’ll try not to do that again

Actually, that wasn’t the first oops of the day. We got a call this morning around noon from another friend asking if we’d paid our rent. Oops. It’s supposed to be paid on the 10th, but we just got so busy with unpacking and things that I just forgot. Everything is still chaos in our house and it just slipped my mind. I felt like an idiot. I was able to get the cash together, go to the bank, figure out how to deposit money into some else’s account and then pay our rent. Again, oops. I’ll try not to do that again.

The weather was great today. A little hot, but not bad. In the afternoon we had a bit of a downpour, but it was mostly sunny until this evening when we had some thunderstorm type weather. Below is a photo of the sky around the church outside of our place. It was getting dark fast and we the thunder was roaring.

We mostly worked on the house again today. I installed more lights in the kids room and hallway and we tried to continue to clear boxes out and clean up. Bethany cooked a crockpot meal for dinner so we used our power transformer for the first time and it worked pretty well on our American CrockPot. Our language help, Jitka, brought over our new books so that’s exciting. We already have some homework that we need to get to work on. We’ve got a lot to do to get the house in order so we started a list of things we need from IKEA. One of the main things we need are those wardrobe closet things. There are basically no closets here so we have to create our own for our clothes. We’re hoping to go tomorrow, but we’ll see how it goes.

Every day we’re learning. Life here is similar, but very different all at the same time. Bethany commented tonight that our laundry doesn’t smell like us. It’s clothes. It’s just laundry. But you just get used to the way your detergent smells when you fold laundry at night after the kids go to bed? She joked about it, but I think in Bethany’s heart it was a weird realization that even the simplest things like that can be comforting among all the new. We’re learning to grow with it and adjust because honestly, what else can you do? I guess one way to respond is like Avery…just relax (photos below).

These trashcans are an example of something new. Questions we had: Which one is ours? And is that ALL the room I get for a whole week!? Wait, they pick it up once a week… right?

But even in all the new and oops we can still smile.

July 14, 2014
Home Improvement

It was a beautiful sunny Sunday here in Czech. We had the privilege of attending church for the 3rd time since we’ve been here and we even and English translation through in-ear headsets. The pastor was preached through the last part of Ephesians 4 and the first paragraph of Ephesians 5. We were able to participate in communion for the first time and we accidentally drank wine instead of juice because we thought the little cups were juice. I’m still not sure what happened, but we were able to laugh it off.

After church and after lunch we began to work on getting our apartment a little more functional. One of the different things we learned when we arrived was that people take their light fixtures with them when they move. So we only have a few lights in the house, and even those are a bulb on a cord with no fixture (shown above). So we shopped for new light fixtures and our friend and fellow teammate Casey came by to help me install them and show us where we can buy them. And off to Poland we went!

It’s sometimes easy to forget we live in a border town and it’s just as easy, if not easier to drive in to Poland (which is just down the road) and shop there for things. Prices are good and Casey showed us the wonderful store “Castorama.” It’s a great home improvement store, much like Lowes or Home Depot in the States and they had everything we needed. We actually went there twice today because there’s always something else you need when you’re working on your house. Casey installed two of our new lights and showed me how to safely install the others. It’s a little scary working with this 220V power over here, but there’s always a safe way to make it happen!

The other big project was getting our washer and dryer all hooked up and working. Thankfully Casey was a huge help there too and it really wasn’t too hard. We stacked the machines to save space in our little hallway area and we went to Castorama a second time to get a hose clamp so the water wouldn’t leak coming from the wall to the washing machine. Bethany and I had to search the manual to figure out what each setting is because it’s all written in Czech, but with a little help from Google translate and an English section in the manual we were ready to roll. The best part is that as I write the machines are running, not leaking, and we’ve got clean clothes coming our way!

Casey was such a huge help today and we’re thankful for his help! Casey and his family serve here in Czech on the “S-Team” and Casey is part of overseeing all English camp ministry in all 14 of the countries we serve in. I know he does even more than that, but you can read his family’s bio on the JV Web site. They live here in Český Těšín so tonight we all enjoyed a dinner together at a local restaurant that they love. Our kids really enjoyed the time with their two boys and it was a blessing to get to know them better. It’s such a blessing to have another family in the same stage of life as us that’s already walked the path we’re on right now. The Yorman’s were a gift from the Lord to us today and we look forward to more time with them in the coming days.

July 13, 2014
Our First Night Sleeping At Home

You would think after almost three weeks in Czech Republic that we would be sleeping in our own home already, but we’ve actually been jumping around a bit. Tonight is the first night we will actually sleep in our own place. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to do that. We’ve basically been nomads for the past few months, going from place to place and sleeping wherever we can find a bed. But as I type the kids are asleep in their new beds and Bethany is reading on ours. Oh, and if you’re wondering about that photo above…it’s the view from our kitchen.

Today was another unpacking day, but we also did a lot of cleaning up. As we unpack we create a lot of cardboard and plastic wrap piles so we’re trying to keep the piles to a minimum. I also worked on our garage a bit today as it was a little disheveled from container day, and now we can park the car in there and have plenty of room to get the kids in and out. We have a really good size garage and I’m super thankful for the space out there. Space is not something you get a lot of in Europe!

Something that has been a bit of a bummer has been the realization that we didn’t do enough homework regarding our electronics. We knew the power situation was different and I knew to check the appliances and electronics to see which ones would work over here and which ones don’t, but we’re find there are still many things that just won’t convert to the different power over here. We need to do more research regarding our transformers, but right now it’s not looking too good for things like our iron, fans, audio speakers, and even our electric hot water kettle. Such is life…you learn as you go.

This is a photo of Avery shoving grapes in her mouth. Don’t be confused by that beautiful living room and Titus in the background. This is our friend’s house, not our apartment. They were kind enough to let us stay there the past few days as we get unpacked and get settled.

This photo is from our new apartment. Bethany decided to make Jello today as we were unpacking some of our pantry items. I don’t know if the kids have ever seen Jello before, but they were excited about it. You may notice Titus’ right eye has a dark spot beneath it. He was jumping on his new bed yesterday and hit the side rail. He woke up with a little black eye today…poor guy. No more monkeys jumping on the bed!

I don’t know why I took this photo of the grass today, but right when I shot it I was reminded of some verses we had to memorize in high school:

The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
(Isaiah 40:7-8)

Tomorrow we will attend our church here in Czech for the third time since we arrived. My prayer is that God’s Word will be proclaimed! The grass will wither, but God’s Word will stand forever and that’s a wonderful promise.

July 12, 2014