-22º C (or -8º F)

Do you see that thing to the left. Yeah, that white thing with numbers running up the side and some red thing beside the numbers. Yeah, its called a thermometer. It measures outside temperature. Do you see the black numbers. Yeah, the ones below the red ones. Well, those measure negative temperature. Negative temperature (in the Celsius system) is below the freezing point. Yeah, that says -20º C. That was last night before I went to bed. When I woke up this morning it was -22º. I can't believe it. It is so freakin' cold here!! This is what I've learned so far...

• It is possible to have 1 inch of ice coating your car
• If you don't breathe carefully, you are bound to freeze the snot inside of your nose
• If I don't blink frequently enough my contacts will freeze to my eyes (seriously)
• When walking from my office to the apartment, keep legs moving or risk never moving again
• Alcohol always sounds good
• No wonder the Russians lost so many soldiers in WWII
• Buildings are my friend...walking in open areas = wind...wind = colder...colder = SUCK!
• Don't forget your power plug for your laptop at home on the coldest day of the year
• Why did I leave Arizona again?

Uncle Rico

Church services are interesting here in the Czech for me. I know enough Czech so that I can pronounce the words when I'm singing. I know enough vocab, so that I can usually get the main meaning of the song. The sermon, on the other hand, is another level in which I have only begun to ascend. Half the time it is Polish anyways, so what I usually do is find out what passage the pastor is speaking on and just read the surrounding context and related passages for 45 minutes. It is a really great practice, but I began missing the art of preaching. I missed hearing the Scriptures read and expressed from another's mind and experiences. Because of this I started downloading sermons and listening to them on Sunday afternoons or on long car rides. Rob Bell has become one of my favorites and so I listened to him this morning.

The title of this particular sermon was "How to Lose Your Life". He started with telling the story of Mary (the one called Magdalene) seeing Jesus in the garden from John 20. He talked about how, after realizing it was Jesus, she clinged to Him and how Jesus told her to stop and to go tell her brothers that He is going to return to His Father. Rob asked, "Why did Jesus do this? Why did He tell her to stop clinging to Him? Why did He tell her to go tell her brothers that He must return to the Father?" His answer, expounded upon through the Scriptures was because a new time was coming in which Jesus wouldn't be on earth and that she couldn't hold onto Him and the way things used to be, but rather, by the power of the Spirit (2 Tim 1:7), she needed to prepare for this new time. His application was that our tendency is to hold on to the way things used to be. We fear change and the future, so we remember the past and we fight to keep things the same. This is when he moved to Matt 16:24-25. Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." We cling to life. We cling to the way we want life to be, we cling to our hopes and our dreams and we cling to the past. Jesus says that if we are trying to save our life, we will miss life. We will lose out on what He has for us. But if we lose our life, if we lose our life for Him, we will find it!

Man, this spoke to everything that is inside of me. I love the old days. I love the way things used to be. I find myself remembering Arizona. I find myself remembering Oregon. I find myself glorying in the past. It's sad but am I much different than Napoleon's Uncle Rico? Glorying in the days of the past only to be living in a van, watching life pass me by? God has something great for me. He has taken me from humble Redmond, Oregon, population 7,000, child of a raised-Catholic neighborhood babysitter and an Agnostic mill worker/landscaper (who now are both following the Lord) and moved me to the Czech Republic to work to expand His Kingdom! He has given me the responsibility to help run and organize 20+ camps in which 300 American students and youth leaders will be profoundly changed by experiencing dynamic, life-changing, relational evangelism, where 300 Czech students and youth leaders will experience that same evangelism with their peers and 800 unbelievers will hear the Gospel, some for the first time! And yet, I think back to yesteryear. I think back to what was. I sometimes LONG to go back to what was...internship, seminary, the familiarity of friends, the feeling of knowing and being known.

I am losing my life. While watching re-runs of 1996's Senior Year or 2000's Summer of Fun or the ever popular hit from 2001-2004, The Intern Years, I am missing the show that God is filming now. I am starring in a show right now in which I am a missionary in the Czech. God has huge things planned. God has a never-ending budget and I am watching re-runs in poor quality. He has brought me so far and yet I am not grasping onto the future. I am not living for now. I am just content with living in the past. And in doing all of this I am going to "lose my life"...

So what do I do? I don't know. I know that God called me here. I know that God called me to do what I am doing. I know that I have the Holy Spirit inside of me who wants to use me. Even though I often feel no passion for what I'm doing, I know that I need to take hold of what He has called me to. I need to heed Paul's words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1, "to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control."

Mufin Muž (pronounced "Moof-in Mus"-pronounce s as in measure)

OK, first off, it is freakin -15 degrees Celsius outside right now! That is 5 degrees Fahrenheit for all you "Americans" (I put quotes, because I feel that is something Christian would do in his mocking voice).

OK. So, one day I am hanging out with some friends (Ameicans and Czech) and we are talking. Now, you have to understand, my Czech is not good, but I like to translate American things into Czech, just to screw around, because I know my American friends who can speak Czech will think it is funny. So, I don't know what we're talking about but I start singing a song. It goes like this:

Znate Mufin Muž
Mufin Muž
Mufin Muž

Znate Mufin Muž,
když bydli na Drury Lane?

Translation:

Do you know the Muffin Man
Muffin Man
Muffin Man

Do you know the Muffin Man
who lives on Drury Lane?

So my American friend, Leah, starts laughing...the Czechs laugh too, because they've seen Shrek and we're all having a good time. Then they start calling me Muffin Man.

Fastforward to yesterday. I spent Sunday afternoon at, my friend, Lucka's house and she has a nephew. I walk in the door and he says, "Mufin Muž!" So all day he calls me Mufin Muž...

Next time I go over there I'm bringing muffins.

Crazy New Year's Day: Part Two

So, part two actually occurs chronologically first, and humorously second, but I still think it is a good story.

Prague was insane on New Year's Eve. I mean crazy. If It would've been twenty years ago during the Cold War, I would've thought that the Russians were attacking all day, because the minute it looked somewhat dark outside the fireworks came out! It was crazy. There were explosion after explosion all night. It was definitely sweet. So, obviously, fireworks are readily available and one of my friends bought a ton of awesome ones. Our plan for the evening was to kick it, play some games, talk, then go outside for our personal firework show, and then head downtown to watch the fireworks from one of the Bridges. So, we went outside around 10:30 for what we thought would be about a 30 minute firework display. Well, Chris had bought a ton of fireworks and one of our other friends did as well, so we proceeded to go nuts. We were rigging these "artillery shells" so that we could launch them at a 30 degree angle down this path. Then we would go down the path and try to stop where we thought the fireworks would explode so that we could be showered in sparks! (Side note, we were all sober...) So our firework insanity ended up lasting an hour and before we knew it, it was 11:30. We had about a (normally) 20 minute trip by tram and metro to the bridge, so we got our stuff together and hustled to the tram.

The tram ride went easy and we got to the metro about 20 minutes before the New Year. The trip is about a six minute trip by metro and in the metro stations there is a clock that shows how long has passed since the last metro left. Ours said 5 minutes, so we knew we didn't have long to wait...

As the metro station filled with awaiting (mostly drunk) passengers the clock rolled on, 6 minutes, 8 minutes, 12 minutes and still no metro. We knew there was still one metro coming, because the metro doesn't stop running until midnight, but we had never waited so long for one. We thought about going back at least to be above ground before midnight, but we decided to press on to the bridge. We joked about how "fun" it would be to celebrate the New Year's on the metro. Then at 11:54 the metro pulled up. We crammed in with the thousands of others on their way to the bridge. 11:55, 11:56, 11:57, 11:58, 11:59. We were one stop away and time was clicking away...as we pulled up to our metro stop my watch hit midnight...yes, New Year's on the metro! Marisa and I shared a kiss and then prepared for the mad rush out of the metro.

We were in one of the first cars and close to the escalator, so when the doors open we made our run for it...and so did everyone else! Luckily we were in front of the pack, but people were closing in. As we neared the escalator we glanced up to the digital clock hanging above it...the glowing red numbers showed 12:00:21. Yep, we had surely spent New Year's in the metro. Others saw the clock as well and began yelling and cheering celebrating the beginning of newness. As Marisa and I held hands running up the escalator (probably 50 meters long), she panted, "I'm dying". I was too, but we had to keep running or fear the trampling of two thousand feet. I pulled her along as we reached the peak of the escalator. With the chill air of winter surrounding us and the sound of explosion and cheers all around, we rushed the final few meters to the bridge to meet thousands of other onlookers watching fireworks explode over the Vltava River.

When I pictured celebrating New Year's with Marisa I imagined a romantic night on the Charles Bridge holding each other and counting down to midnight and sharing a romantic kiss together. The last thing I expected was to be holding on to her with hundreds of bodies pressing against both of us, the smell of cheap beer and cheaper champagne wafting through the already stale air of a metro, counting down to midnight on my watch, and almost getting trampled.

Crazy New Year's Day: Part One

It is late on the first and I had to post a story before I went to bed. This will be the first of two funny stories from my New Year's.

Marisa left this morning. She was here for three weeks (hence the lack of blog posting!) and we had a great time together. But this post isn't to talk about out time...

This morning my stomach was feeling a little uneasy, but we had to get to the airport early, so I didn't have time to go to the bathroom. I got Marisa taken care of, we said our goodbyes, and I watched her pass through the passport checkpoint, on to her gate. Immediately after waving goodbye, I made a bee-line to the bathroom. I hustled my way in sat down and did my business. As I sat there, I heard a voice from the stall next to me. The voice startled me, but not because of what they said, but because it was a woman's voice!! I sat there in disbelief thinking, "No, no, I'm totally in the guys bathroom...aren't I." Then I heard a brutally loud fart come from another stall...this again made me question whether I was in the women's bathroom. Then I heard more voices and they were all female. "How did I make such a drastic error," I mused. As I thought back to coming into the bathroom, I couldn't remember seeing any urinals and I remembered thinking to myself, "That is unusual that all but one of the stalls is occupied..." It now all made sense; I really was in the women's room. But to finally confirm it, I took a peek at the shoes of the person next to me...yep, high heels. Mistake confirmed. Commence embarrassing scenario.

So, I sat there, and sat there, and sat some more. I thought through all my options: pull my hood over my head and run out (no, too creepy, stalkerish), yell from the stall, "Hey, there is a man in here. I'm sorry, I didn't realize I went into the women's room (no, no guarantee that anyone would understand me in English and too much trouble to try and explain myself)...the only other option was just to wait it out and hope that I can find a time when there are no women in the bathroom.

Women take forever in the bathroom. I knew this before, but nothing makes you realize it more than when you are sitting in one of the stalls! One mother and daughter had to have been in there for 10 minutes just talking to each other. I had no idea what they were doing. Before this experience I would have said that I would want to know what happens in a woman's bathroom, but now I wish I didn't know now, what I didn't know then...the loud fart, the constant chatter...it was not a pretty scene.

Eventually the talking and flushing stopped. From my position I could look under my stall and see the other stalls. I couldn't see the sink area, but I could see most of what I needed to in order to determine if someone was in the bathroom. When I didn't hear the mother and daughter any more, I made one last check from under the stall, saw no one there and made my break for it. Fortunately, no one came in and I was able to make my way to the men's room to wash my hands.