Czech Visit

I promised I'd write about our family trip back to the Czech Republic after the summer conference. We'll, it's October but it's still worth writing about!

So we were at the conference in the south of Poland. We set off with 3 other families to spend a few days at the Josiah Venture hotel, Malenovice. When we arrived at the Cesky Tesin border crossing we were a caravan of 4 vehicles. It was so wild--one of the borders that we had crossed so frequently while living in Czech. The same border that we had crossed many times during our bible smuggling days.

All the security ingrained in us kicked in. The buildings and the little booths that they took our passports into were the same--but everything was so different. Because we were 3 American families and one Australian family with a German thrown in there we weren't just waved through like the European Union citizens. We had to sit and wait for about 15 minutes. Wayne kept saying, 'just don't say the M word.'(smuggling) It was so cool and weird at the same time. We told the kids how sometimes we would wait at this border for 2 hours or more. They were trying to take it in but I'm not sure if they could understand it all.

We then spent 3 nights in the mountains at the beautiful hotel with our friends Jim & Lina Miller, Paul & Reinhild Sydnor, and new friends Brian & Christine Cotrell. Beautiful weather, lots of long talks over coffee, no cooking and children playing card games till all hours of the night.

One day we drove into Havirov, the town we used to live in and where Erika was born. Jessica remembered things and so did Erika, which is really amazing since they were 5 & 3 when we left. We knocked on one door of old friends and spent an hour speaking Czech as best we could.

Erika said, 'Wow, this really is a nice place to live.' Wayne said, 'I really can still speak Czech, we could live here again.' Another highlight was eating all the Czech foods that we miss, like deep fried cheese with tarter sauce.

It was only 3 days vacation but it was an amazing trip that no one in our family will forget. We were also blessed to have a meal with our former teammates Ken & Andrea Pitch while their kids taught our kids some violent card games! And just a couple hours before we had to leave we were able to have lunch with Dave & Connie our former team leaders. It was great to see the hotel and new offices for the team and hear what God is doing. Those were formative years for us when we were on the JV team and it was great to remember where we've been, see friends and praise God for his faithfulness.