This past Thursday looked very similar to a typical Thursday in America! Mission Church pulled off the most beautiful Thanksgiving Day celebration as we came together to recognize how thankful we are for each other. They wanted to make the Thanksgiving as traditional as it is in America, so dear friends organized it all and divided up all the traditional foods for each family to bring. They went over the top buying a full-sized turkey (difficult to get in Czech) and it just fit into the European-large oven we have at our church location! Since my friends wanted to make sure I could enjoy all the traditional foods, nearly all of it was accommodated to my dietary needs. These gestures show the greatest amount of love and care! As one friend and I wrote after the event, it showed mostly just how much we can do as a church together when we all come together and express our gratitude for each other and all the gifts God has given us.
After finishing all this wonderful food, my friend asked me to cut the pumpkin pie. The five-year-old sitting across from me (who had been eyeing the treat all through dinner) was already invested in dividing up the pie. His eyes were round as saucers and he knelt up on his chair as I cut the pie in half. He declared, "Yes!" as he reached out to grab his "half" assuming the treat between us was for us to split! I simply said, "I have to cut it again to share with others, just wait, okay?" I divided the half again, and he said, "Okay, now?!" and reached out to take the quarter. Again, I explained I still needed to keep cutting. I divided the quarter into thirds and he looked at me with really longing eyes as if saying "don't cut it any more" and said, "Okay... most definitely now!" He was happy that we had finally come to the point when we could eat the pie, and others were very happy we had cut it more times to share. We all enjoyed the food so much!
Before eating, the kids and I enjoyed many activities to help out their parents who were busy finishing up the cooking. We made Thanksgiving decorations, colored puzzles, and used adorned everything with stickers! It always makes me so happy when the kids show their creations. These two are both very diligent in asking how long before I have to leave for America, and I love soaking up the time with them and pouring into them. At one moment, the little girl grabbed onto my arm, and I asked, "Do you need something?" She replied, "Just your arm to hold." I'm so thankful for these children and getting to watch how they are growing in the ways of the Lord.
Kid's Club - Letovice
Due to school conferences one day this month, our club time ended up being a little quieter, so we started the afternoon with a long game of Carcassonne. Since it was the first time playing for our young club student, we played with simple rules and enjoyed building our kingdoms, roads, and cathedrals. She won and had a really fun time. I then taught her Spikeball and, as a volleyball player, she quickly picked up on the rhythm of the game. We were both warm with red cheeks from playing for so long, and she couldn't wait to teach her friends the next week!
One of my favorite parts of this work is watching young leaders engage with the students. Many of our junior leaders have given these students a huge gift by being role models for them and engaging with them in activities. One junior leader encouraged many rounds of ping-pong "around the world" with the students and was very patient to help a new learner get the hang of the game instead of letting her give up. He then joined in many rounds of BINGO with the students as they made up animal sounds for all the animals on the BINGO board. Knowing these junior leaders are very busy with their own work, school, and activities and still make the time to be examples and leaders for these students shows me that they have all the skills to continue the work. Just as they were invested into through Kid's Clubs, they now turn around and invest into others.
Kid's Club - Boskovice
On the days I am on rotation in our club in Boskovice, I have been bringing a couple new activities to introduce. This group of teenagers are some of the sweetest kids and they form a great collective together! They had lots of fun making diamond art animals and decorating their phone cases. We played BINGO here too one week and they are requesting it again soon! I had little prizes - like candy and stickers - for the winners, and it became a competition for who had the most wins and motivated everyone in the game! We see a lot of the teenagers at these youth clubs who are more "rough-around-the-edges," and watching them jump into these "child-like" games and activities to just enjoy the time and work together encourages me for this generation of upcoming young adults.
Kid's Club - Velke Opatovice
Though I forgot to take pictures at club in Velke Opatovice this month, we enjoyed the time at club talking and playing games like foosball and ping-pong. Many of the kids who stated coming to our Velke Opatovice center a couple years ago are now in high schools that are closer to our Boskovice and Letovice locations, so we are encouraging them to come to these locations now and further develop the connection of the locations. Our other locations are a bit more comfortable for the high schoolers as there is more space for games, to spread out, and not shared bathrooms and hallways with other after-school activities (we currently share the building space with music school and art school). It is always so fun to see the friendships between the students develop as they spend time together at clubs.
Little Linguists
The toddlers enjoyed themes about Spiders, Autumn, and Fruit this month. In our Spider theme, we sang about a ticklish spider! Then, we made pipe-cleaner spiders on paper plate webs, and it was a huge hit. The kids all loved attaching their spiders to their webs and placing lots of bug stickers on the web. The toddlers spent lots of time crawling under and through a spiderweb of ropes. They used googly-eye finger puppets to make their little hands into little spiders crawling over everything (to the joy of all the mothers...). Our interactive manipulative table was filled with plastic toy bugs, fly swatters, and picture books of six and eight-legged creatures!
With our Autumn theme, we collected apples and mushrooms (a popular fall free-time activity for families), fed chestnuts to a hungry squirrel, and masked up like forest animals. We sang about the changing color of the leaves and put the paper leaves on a parachute to launch them and let them fall around us. The moms are always so excited to see how they can continue these forms of play and activities in their home. I even found one mom had created another squirrel-feeding box and brought it to the toy closet for the kids to continue playing with the activity on different days the Mother's Center is open!
We made a "fruit salad" together one week and talked about all the different kinds of fruit. The toddlers worked on their matching skills in many different activities and fine-motor skills with fruit cutting. They worked together in the play kitchen and market to sell their fruit and make a fruit salad. We even read a book about a mouse protecting his strawberry and one child had the most fun watching what happens to the strawberry throughout the story! As some of the toddlers are growing, they have started preschool now in the second half of the school year. While I miss these toddlers and moms, I am also grateful for more focused time with moms and toddlers to help them and answer many questions about child development.
Youth Group & Mission Church
This past weekend, we had a full weekend of activities with all the churches in the city to prepare our hearts for advent. It started on Friday night with our youth group and a night of worship. We had time for prayers and testimonies and lots of praising Jesus. One of my youth students made me so proud as she shared her story with the youth group and how she is growing in faith. I remember the moment she started her journey with God so many years ago, and it brought me so much joy to hear her share her story. The weekend continued with mass on Saturday and speakers at the Catholic Church and then a discussion, prayer, and worship all afternoon into the evening at our ELIM Center. Sunday morning church was a wonderful advent message about the coming of Christ and looking at the traditional story with a different perspective. There is much to anticipate in this season!
Special Visit
One of my dear little buddies came for a very special visit! The daughter of some close American Missionary friends who has a love for books, bunnies, and little joys in life like me came for an afternoon at Kendra's. We colored, read, talked, painted, baked banana bread, and spent time out on one of the last semi-warmer fall days in the garden. All the bunny licks and cuddles was the cherry on top! One of the things we find we like to talk about is wondering what Heaven will be like (we've decided that in addition to fullness in presence of God, that bunnies and gardens with hammocks would be pretty "heavenly."). The last time I had visited her, she said very wisely for her age how she wished we could be neighbors but knows God has us in our neighborhoods for purposes of sharing His love with those around us. Though this sweet little friend knows we will still see each other many times as she travels to America and I to Czech, when we saw each other this past month, she said, "You know, maybe we can finally be neighbors in Heaven. I'd like that."
... I'd like that too.
