X
Message us by email
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
After several months in the hospital, Natalie's maternal grandfather, Karel, passed away. He had been in declining health for the past few years, but the end came very quickly. Thankfully we got to see and visit with him one last time only a few weeks before his death. In a positive light, I feel that Natalie and I have been able to be a spiritual witness and support for the family during this time, but have also been working through a lot of emotional pain with the family as well.
My bike was stolen from our apartment, so I got to have my first experience making a police report in the Czech. Thankfully insurance covered a fair amount of the cost.
Right before I left for the states last October, I bought our first house. Natalie's grandparents live on a large parcel of land on the edge of her hometown, Český Těšín. Its an old multi-generational farm house split into a duplex that was built by her great grandfather, Rudolph and housed her grandparents and her great aunt and uncle. During the pandemic, both her great aunt and uncle passed away. Natalie's uncle decided he wanted to sell it.
There were several factors that led to us eventually buying the uncle's portion of the property. During the pandemic, Natalie and I were both living and working out of a small 1 bedroom apartment. Although this current lockdown is subsiding, it showed us the wisdom of having something more open, out of the city, and closer to family to go to in case another emergency occurs. The property is complicated legally as many over here are. If someone else bought the other half of the house, it would have further complicated the title as well as created tension for the grandparents by having strangers next-door in a very interconnected property. Since a our headquarters is on that side of the country, I have to travel there a fair amount and having a base of operations near there to stay as I work on projects will be beneficial and, once it is better prepared, offer a place for other missionaries to stay while they are visiting or in transit. Although it is old, it is a large property and offers all sorts of opportunities for personal and ministry use in the future.
We are still based in Prague for life and ministry, and do have plans of changing that anytime soon, and we were not looking for something in that area of the country, but this felt like a prudent move for our future here. I am excited to start digging through and reclaiming the history in the property and seeing how God can use it to bless us and the ministry.
Contrary to popular belief, Natalie still exists and continues to work at the embassy. Due to the travel restrictions to the US, she was not able to join me for home assignment this past fall, but she made use of the time by studying German. German fluency is a very sought after language right now in Europe, especially in Czech due to the business connections and she has been encouraged for the advancement of her career to get her fluency back up (she studied in high school). She plans to take the B2 proficiency test in September followed hopefully by the C1 test in the winter.
Just earlier this month, my parents visited Turkey on a missions conference and I met them on a side-trip to Greece for some business my dad had to do and also to visit some missional activities Scottsdale Bible Church has been involved in supporting their. While we were there we got to go the location of the last stand of the Spartans against the Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae, stand on the Areopagus overlooking the Acropolis of Athens where Paul shared the Gospel to the philosophers of his time, and visit Ancient Corinth, which btw, is one of the cooler ruins I have been to and seen. We also got to visit with Stavros, one of the missionaries we have partnered with doing Syrian refugee ministry in Athens. While we were touring the Olive groves for my dad's business meetings, we learned several interesting spiritual insights. One that stood out was that 1 shepherd can lead a herd of 100 goats but 100 sheep takes 3 shepherds to wrangle because of how much trouble they get into. Also, that olive trees are not meant to produce fruit every year, but usually once every two or three years. If they are forced to produce every year through fertilization and watering as opposed to just naturally growing in the land, they produce smaller, more pitty olives and the process gradually kills the tree.
Greece is definitely cool, and if you have an opportunity to go Corinth I highly suggest you do so.