Good old Saint Nicholas

Tonight my little town switched on its Christmas tree lights! Today is the 5th December which means it's Saint Nicholas' day, or Saint Mikuláš here in Czech.

In the run up to today there are angel, demon and Saint Nicholas figures around - including special sweets and breads baked into their shapes. As I drove back from my Czech teacher's home this morning I saw the trio walking outside a primary school. The bad photo above has the trio and a little kid singing.

Why an angel, devil and Saint Nicholas? Why singing?

Well, you should watch this short video to find out! It was shared by the wonderful Petra and it will tell you about these traditions. Tip: it involves threatening little children that they might be dragged off to hell. 

Josef's Terror: St. Nicholas Day in the Czech Republic from Amy Hadley on Vimeo.

Funnily enough there was a nativity set up on the main square today too. It's just accepted as part of the fairy tales surrounding Christmas. 

One of the stalls on the main square had a "Jesus postbox" - a postbox for you to post your letter to Jesus in, because it's baby Jesus who brings the presents on 24th December.

I'm glad the Christmas lights have been switched on, and it was a lot of fun to spend time with the Thomason family tonight, and I'm praying that this Christmas many in this country would come to know the true joy of Immanuel, God with us. 

Frozen for six hours with half a kinder egg.

This morning I woke up a little late and was in a rush to leave the house. As I walked to my car I realised that I’d probably need to clear some ice off it. Just before I did I snapped the above picture and planned to post it online with a caption of “Well, at least -4 degrees is pretty.”

I’m sitting at 10.09pm in a car, 10 kilometres from home, and I have changed my mind about it being pretty.

Shortly after 4pm my colleague, whom I brought to work this morning, came into my office and said that her dad had called saying the roads were really bad, like glass, and she decided to sleep in the office building (there’s a little flat in the attic).

I decided to head home but didn’t even leave the town the office is in before I was turned around by an accident (I wasn't involved - it had just closed the bridge) and experienced my car’s ABS.

Oh and getting into my car was an adventure in and of itself – it was literally an ice sheet. Freezing rain and a high of -2 today led to just one big ice sheet over the car.

I headed back to the office and got a lift with Shay, who lives in the same town as me. I'm so grateful I could jump in his car - for the first ten minutes or so me leaving my car at the office didn't seem really justified. It normally takes 30-40 minutes to do the 35km route and we were making good time.

We’ve now been in the car five hours… We have moved less than 0.5km in the last three hours. We’re 10km from home and have heard the road will be closed for another two hours.

We’ve had six police cars, two salting/gritting trucks, two tow trucks, an ambulance, and two fire engines pass us! And by pass us I mean navigate through the two lanes of traffic. It has been crazy.

We also spent time texting Daniel, who was stuck for around five hours on another nearby road. He had two labradoodles in the car! 

We've also all started planning the snacks we're going to keep in our cars... In Shay's car we had a kinder egg that had been smashed already. My car has a few emergency cereal bars but I'm definitely going to throw in another warm jumper.

I think this part is my favourite of the journey - for a long time we were beside a guy with a trailer filled with live fish. After we'd been stopped around an hour he got out and on top of the trailer, opening it and pushing a brush in there to break the ice. 

And, yes, we're writing blog posts in the car.

Our friend Martina is also keeping us updated - the photo above shows a Czech news website and we are the story along the top!

Always an adventure! And welcome December!

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At 11.20pm, over six hours after Shay and I left the office, I walked in through my door! They opened up the road and we got home. Many prayers were answered and we are safe! I'm so very glad I decided to turn back and drive with Shay. 

It doesn't look like it'll get above freezing tomorrow, and our usual Tuesday morning meeting had been cancelled when we'd only been stuck in the car two hours. So it'll be a day of working from home (and my boss has already approved a late start!) and hopefully I'll be able to pick up my car later this week! 

A retreat, a birthday party, Thanksgiving, and a broken boiler

How is it Monday again? And once that question has been answered can someone tell me how we got to the last Monday in November? Although that does mean I have just four sleeps until my Christmas tree is going up.

Once again this Monday morning finds me in McDonalds before 7am with a cup of coffee and a little space to write. So here are some thoughts at the start of my week.

This past week has been a full one!

On Wednesday I headed to Selah. When people ask me why I picked Josiah Venture as my missions organisation one of the reasons I give is their pastoral care for their missionaries.

And Selah is one such example of their commitment to provide access to care to their missionaries. We have a cabin on the other side of the valley from our offices and hotel/conference centre. I booked the cabin for two nights last week.

It was so good to have a couple of days to rest and get quiet enough to listen to that still, small voice. God was so gracious to meet with me there and refresh me. I feel like I’ll be processing what I learnt for a while and I’m so thankful I was able to take a couple of days out, without looking at email or even touching my phone, to be refreshed.

Saturday was quite a full day – the daughter of teammates, the Thomasons, had a birthday party to celebrate turning three! So that was a lot of fun with a lot of little people running around.

I had to leave the party a little early to head to youth group where we had our Thanksgiving party. This is a special event that we use to invite students from camp to again.

Landen, an American missionary who moved here a couple of months ago, talked about Thanksgiving and how we can and should incorporate thanksgiving into our daily lives. It was good to be reminded of the many blessings we have! His lovely wife Jenny, a Czech, translated for him.

After they shared we had a feast! A lot of the girls had baked, we ordered turkey from a family in our church, and I brought a big pot of mashed potato. It was so good! And good to have extended time to hang out afterwards.

On my way home from youth group I stopped at Tesco for a couple of things and arrived back to a flat in need of a clean! I hadn’t really unpacked from my time at Selah, and it had been a full Saturday complete with making four pounds of potatoes and sewing a birthday gift.

Well, I started cleaning after putting my heating on because it was fairly cold. And then… my pilot light went out! This happened when I was gone in Latvia so the Thomasons, who had been staying here, had had to deal with it – a quick call to them helped me know what I needed to press.

And I got the flame relit! Until I turned the hot water on. Casey came round to have a look at it but couldn’t get the flame to stay lit. So we turned off the gas supply.

Washing a lot of dishes without hot water wasn’t super fun.

Yesterday before church I texted my landlord asking what I should do. They gave me the number for the man who had been at my flat a month and a half ago to fix my boiler before.

I called him after church and he wasn’t able to come that day but he’s coming today at 5pm. Still, the phonecall seemed a success because I was able to communicate! I’m thankful that some “every day” situations are becoming less scary in Czech.

Getting out of bed at 5.30am is never easy but this morning it was especially painful. It’s a wee bit cold. So I’m praying that it all gets fixed today! Thankfully I was able to shower at Casey and Kristin’s and I have a wee hot water bottle.

So, that was my full week.

This week involves three days of work and our Josiah Venture Thanksgiving celebration. I still need to decide what I’m going to make! I’m excited to see lots of lovely people and celebrate Thanksgiving for the second time.