On my fifth birthday my mom brought my kindergarten class “grab bags.” They were brown paper bags filled with stuff from a little convenience story, maybe even a dollar store. I remember it being pretty fun to reach in and not know what was in there. Today was a bit like this. It was pretty normal Sunday, but it came with a few surprises.

This morning we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the church here Český Těšín and Dave Patty was asked to preach. Bethany didn’t feel great this morning and the kids still had coughs so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go or need to stay home and help. I ended up going, but I was a little late and got there while they were singing. Even though we don’t live far, I drove, but that proved to be a poor decision because with so many visitors it took me a while to find a place to park. The same was true when I got inside…no place to sit. It was absolutely packed inside! A nice man spoke to me in Czech, offering me a seat in the front row, but I really didn’t want to be a distraction on such a big day so I just stayed in the foyer area and listened through the speakers. Dave preached in Czech so just like last night, I didn’t really know what was going on and since I wasn’t sitting next to anyone I couldn’t really get the gist so I basically just tried to see if I recognize any of the words. I trust Dave preached a great message and that the body was edified.

After church…we went to the zoo? This is why I say it was a grab bag. We had originally planned on going to the zoo yesterday, but everyone just wasn’t feeling good so we canceled that plan. Bethany asked me today if we could go because she felt like we’re going to run out of good weather like we’ve been having and that made sense to me so we went for it. We have annual passes, so it doesn’t cost us anything and the weather was so nice it really turned out to be a great time outside. Our kids love the zoo here and I’ve mentioned before, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there’s like fifteen parks in it! There was still one thing scheduled tonight so around 3:30pm we left the zoo and headed home.

We’ve been trying for a few weeks now to schedule some time to take photos of our new friends Romi and Pichal, with their new baby Ondra. Today seemed like a great time for that and with the sun shining it’s great light for family photos. I had a great time photographing them. They are such an easy-going family which makes it nice to take photos of them and just enjoy the time together. Here’s a few shots:

It’s fun to open up a grab bag once in a while.