It's All Grace

a journey with the Thomason family

Jan Hus Day (July 6)

Today is Jan Hus (John Huss) day in Czech Republic. On July 6, 1415, Jan Hus was martyred for his faith in Christ in the city of Prague. He was a man who believed what God’s Word says and was willing to put his own life down for the cause of Christ. Considered a pre-Reformer-Reformer, he influenced Martin Luther who eventually started and led the Reformation 100 years later.

It is men like Jan Hus who inspire Christians and missionaries, especially me. It could be said that he did more in his death than in his life, though his life was full of courage, conviction, and care for the cause of Christ. I feel honored and proud to stand on the shoulders of Jan Hus and carry on the work that he paid the ultimate price for. What an example of Christ-likeness we see in Jan Hus who was willing to lay down his own life, just like the Savior he loved.

I do not know how many Czechs will stop and consider today the great sacrifice this man made, but I can only pray that God would spark another spiritual fire in this country with men and women like Hus. May the gospel of Christ be carried to each and every soul in this country and would that many would turn to Christ and be willing to sacrifice everything for Him. And maybe one day, if it be the will of Christ that we too should suffer, that we too will pray “Lord Jesus Christ, I will bear patiently and humbly this horrible and shameful and cruel death for the sake of Thy Gospel and the preaching of Thy word.” – Jan Hus, July 6 1415, shortly before being burned at the stake for his faith.

July 6, 2014
Getting Our New Home Ready (Pt. 1)

For the first time since we arrived I’m actually tired, and it’s not because of jet lag. It’s been a very full day as we did a good amount of shopping in order to get our new home ready. We got word this week that our container is scheduled to arrive on Thursday (July 10)–praise the Lord! But with our container en route we knew we had to hussle to get everything ready for us to move in.

One of the things included in our “startup costs” (costs for relocating to Czech) was to buy appliances for our apartment. In our situation, we needed a washer, dryer and a refrigerator. We made a decision back in the States to not bring those appliances over simply because the American appliances are just too big to fit in European apartments. So today, with the help of our good man Mel Ellenwood, we hit the stores to see what we could find. I believe the Lord was very gracious to us today and we got some good deals and Mel really helped us get what would work best for us long-term.

The above photo is simply for scale. Avery is 2 years old and she was a head taller than the smallest washing machine available. To be honest, it looked like a toy. That wasn’t our final purchase, but in general everything is much smaller when it comes to appliances over. Oh, and don’t be fooled by the price listed on top. That’s 7599.00Kc (roughly $380 US). Not bad!

Believe it or not this (above) is the first refrigerator Bethany and I have ever purchased as a married couple. Our previous fridge (we’ve only owned one) was given to us by another couple when we moved into our first apartment. Today we actually purchased the floor model which gave us a HUGE discount and even Mel was super excited because it is a side-by-side which are kind of hard to come by at such a good price. We’re definitely excited about it, but I realized it’s impossible to buy a fridge without thinking about Brian Regan.

Another thing on our agenda was to look into maybe (let me stress…maybe) doing a little painting of our new place. We were just curious to know what it would take and much to our surprise Czech has it’s own version of Home Depot called Hornbach. It’s actually a German store, but it’s virtually identical to Home Depot. Everything from the orange coloring to the hand written, black marker signage. It’s Home Depot in Czech! We genuinely had no idea this kind of place existed over her. I was just laughing as we walked around…it’s identical! We really didn’t buy anything at Home Depot, I mean Hornbach, but it was fun to look around and see what they had.

Our last stop took us to IKEA which was just down the street from Hornbach. There really isn’t much difference between the IKEA in Burbank that we usually go to and this one. We’re looking for a new kitchen table and a few wardrobes. Most Czech houses don’t have closets (including ours) so we’re trying to get creative with what to do with our clothes. Bethany snapped some photos and we bought some small things. Mainly it was an exploratory trip to see what our options our. We should be back in a few weeks once we get officially moved and settled into our new place.

I wasn’t the only that was tired though. As soon as we got back from shopping Titus ran and laid in the window of our room (photo above). It’s still weird to me how much light you can see outside. I took this photo of Titus around 9pm and you’d think it was still early evening by how much light there is. I didn’t let the little dude sleep there, but I thought it was hilarious to find him squished in there.

We know that things like appliances are luxuries in many ways. For us, these are tools to serve the Lord and take care of our family. God is good to provide all that we need and then some. Praise the Lord for His abundant kindness and grace. We are so thankful!

July 5, 2014
Dependence Day

This is the first time in my life I’ve been out of the United States on one of the most American holidays that exists: Independence Day. I find it simply ironic that not only am I not in America today, but we spent our morning trying to get paperwork together which will allow us to live and work outside of the States. That’s why I have titled this blog “Dependence Day.” Because had it not been for our friend Jitka (pronounced Yeetka), we wouldn’t have gotten done today what we did. Right now we are very dependent on the help of translators and the Lord to get everything in place for our visa appointment next week.

Today we had one goal: get visa photos taken of the entire family. Since we live in a good size town everything we need is right in the town square, including a visa photo place (photo above). Oh, don’t let the gun-yielding, Inspector-Gadget-looking guy on the sign fool you. This place has the goods! In fact, I laughed when we went inside because literally the right half of the store is guns and knives (think hunting shop) and the left half is novelty photo gifts, photo development, and yes, a photo booth. I guess the only relationship between cameras and guns is that both are things that shoot–makes sense!

We had to walk to the back of the store where the vintage cameras were (think awesome) and where the little photo booth was. The man that took our photos (shown below) was very kind and patient, especially to our kids that clearly can’t speak Czech and don’t want to sit super still for 4 photos. Considering everything the kids did really well. Titus would puff his cheeks when we told him not to smile and Avery cried for the first part of it, but in the end we all got our Jason Bourne style photos done and we were on our way.

Should you normally give your kids ice cream cones at 10am? No. Do you offer it to them as a reward for not crying and sitting still to get 4 visa photos taken in a foreign country? Yes! Ice cream for everyone!

The last order of business today was to get some some papers notarized. Again, everything you need is in the town square so we just walked on over to the town hall (literally across the main square from the camera/gun place. In fact, we never used a car once today! The lady that helped us was very nice as well and we got our rental contract notarized (x4!) and away we went.

Even on Independence Day we’re all dependent. I’m thankful the Lord gave us Jitka to depend on today to help us get a lot of very important documents in order. And I’m thankful that we’re dependent on the Lord each and every day, no matter what the task or goal!

We’ll miss celebrating and watching fireworks tonight, that’s for sure. I have fond memories of enjoying fireworks on July 4th as a kid and I know that my kids won’t have that same experience. I guess that’s something I have to depend on the Lord for as well…new memories and new fun. He’ll provide the grace for that too.

Happy Independence Day, America. We hope you have a great night celebrating together! Now go crush the guts out of a baseball for us.

July 4, 2014
Containers and Visas and Paperwork! Oh My!

Let’s be honest: not every day is fun and games and trips to Poland. Sometimes you gotta have an admin day. You know the days I’m talking about. Pay the bills. Run some errands. Or like us, wake up in a panic because your kids accidentally read your email on the iPad and you missed an email dated 2 days ago from the container company telling you to send a pile of a paperwork or they’ll start charging you a small fortune to store your stuff at the port! You know, one of those kind of days.

Honestly, it was a stressful morning trying to pull together a ton of documents from powers of attorney to foreign police documentation to get our container released at the port in Germany. The last thing we wanted was to be charged a daily rate for storage at the port. By God’s grace, we have lots of support here with Josiah Venture and everyone is chipping to help. If I’ve understood the emails correctly, I believe we have everything in place and paid for to clear customs this week and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a date of arrival for our container in Czech!

Along with our container paperwork, I spent a lot of time today working through the documents we’ll need next week at the embassy. Our long-term visa appointment is at 9am on Tuesday (July 8). Obviously, when you’re applying for a 2 year visa there’s a lot that goes into setting that up. With that, I took my first trip into the Josiah Venture offices (pictured above). This is a place that I’ll be spending a lot of time with the communications team, but I just really needed a printer and scanner today to get everything in order. We’ll be getting our visa photos tomorrow with a Czech girl who is helping us so I’m sure that’ll be a fun little outing.

This photo (above) is of a little brick archway/window next to the Josiah Venture offices. I just thought it looked cool so I grabbed a shot of it.

Today marked a bit of a milestone for the kids. Both Titus and Avery woke up around 5am (still too early, but much better than 1-3am), took normal naps, and even woke up from their naps on their own! This might seem trivial, but it’s been a challenge to get our kids on a normal schedule with such bad jet lag. We have had to wake them up so they don’t sleep too much during the day. In general the kids have been happier today and that’s why I wanted to post a photo of Avery playing with her lunch. She loves her chicken hot dogs and now she has found it entertaining to put the pieces on her fingers. It’s a joy for all of us to begin to adjust back to some kind of normal sleep pattern. We’re praising God for these little victories we get, even when it’s just an admin day.

July 3, 2014
To Poland We Go

One of the joys of living in a border town is that you can cross the border and head into Poland! You would think you’d have to go through some kind of border guard, but there are actually wide open borders here and you can drive in like you’re crossing a state line in America. Today we had the pleasure of visiting our friends the Carlsons and kind of unexpectedly spending the entire day with them. It’s pretty great when you have friends that live in another country but are only a 20 minute drive from you! As a double blessing we got to spend time with two of our other teammates, Daniel Reimer and Jacob Hash. Those guys are currently traveling around all of Eastern Europe working on video stuff and I’m excited to see what kind of footage they get when they’re all done.

Heidi and Greg (Carlson) were so hospitable and we’re super thankful for their kindness to us. We basically called them last minute and said, “Hey, we wanna come to Poland today! Are you around?!” Thankfully they didn’t turn us away, but were even kind enough to cook us breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was especially excited about breakfast because we had pancakes. There’s just something about pancakes that screams “home” and Greg knew we would enjoy a little taste of home.

It rained a good amount today. We’ve been surprised about just how much rain they get here, even in summer. We were even told that the area where we live gets more rain than Portland, Oregon which just seems weird. Right now the change in weather is really great, but I do wonder how we’ll feel about it in the future.

I don’t have a photo of it, but we had our first team “meeting” today with all of the Josiah Venture Communications Team staff. I’m putting “meeting” in quotes because it was a video conference with the entire team. There are still a lot of staff out of the country right now and one day we’ll all be in the same office together. It’s exciting to begin to think about some of our upcoming projects and see how the Lord will use those things to change lives!

I couldn’t help but post this photo (below). During the afternoon Bethany and Avery fell asleep on the recliner and Titus was playing games on Bethany’s iPhone. Our sleep schedules have just been all over the place and I know I haven’t slept past 4am since we arrived. Nevertheless, we’re thankful to the Lord for a fun day in Poland and a great time with brothers and sisters in the Lord. We are serving alongside some incredible people and it’s a pleasure to join this work with them.

July 2, 2014