Photo Friday - 26th June

Every year our town have a festival to celebrate its founding by three brothers, so it's called the Three Brothers' Festival! It's a lot of fun with activities on both sides. It was really fun to explore both towns, and here's a photo of the Czech side.

Sometimes I do crazy things... like buy a cheap chest of drawers from Ikea and spray paint it blue... in my kitchen. I adore how it turned out! 

It's always fun to go to the gun store in town... to get a passport photo taken for my Czech driving licence... always an adventure! 

Sick day the first. 

Sick day the second.

My little car was all alone at the office when I arrived on Thursday morning. 

My little town is having lots of renovations and the train station's signage is becoming bilingual! So here is the Czech and Polish names of my town. 

Photo Friday - 19th June

Youth group: we went to the home of someone from church and had scrambled egg cooked over the fire. Someone gave a talk and we shared testimonies and prayed. We also sang, and I loved the song sheets - songs in Slovak, Czech and Polish altogether and sang together. 

Katka, a wonderful Czech friend who has been with a missionary with JV for years, moved to Latvia to be a missionary with our organisation there. So on Sunday we had a goodbye party for her! I'm so excited to see what God does in and through her there!

Have you noticed my love for fresh fruit and vegetables in the summer? I love this rhubarb custard shortbread things?

I loved having Michael and his intern team over for dinner and to show them my town and home. I had to take a photo of my friend Michael washing up.

Summer sunsets.

I am not above enlisting even little people to help me do things in the office... and Titus was a great help! 

Do you ever realise how gross something in your home is? Well, I realised how gross the grout in my bathroom and entryway was... and a bottle of bleach and a few hours with a toothbrush helped it all a lot! And made me a lot happier! 

Photo Friday - 12th June

I love the Polish farmers' market in my town!

And late night walks through my town (this is on the bridge between Czech and Poland, walking from Poland to Czech)

They're renovating down by the river on the Czech side and I'm loving watching it develop.

I roasted a banana in the oven with marshmallow and chocolate.

The view when you step inside my front door. 

What ends up on my desk after events: lost property.

Breakfast with a friend! 

Photo Friday - 5th June

Thirty minutes after this photo was taken this room was filled with 110 interns plus staff and Intern Training officially began! Don't worry, we had chairs for them.

It is so fun to have someone from Saintfield here for the summer! And it was good to spend time over cake and hot chocolate catching up. I'm really excited about what God is going to do in and through Michael as he leads an intern team in Czech!

Some of our European interns were asked to share about life and faith in Europe to help us understand the culture we're serving in.

For thirty minutes I sat in this chair being recorded for a training video we're prototyping this summer.

On Tuesday night we commissioned and prayed over all the interns, taking each country in turn, and on Wednesday morning they left for the nations! I'm so excited about how God is going to use their summers to draw them and many in these nations closer to Him!

After eight days away, plus busy days before preparing, it was good to have a day that mostly looked like this!

Summer in Czech is a magical thing. And there's something about quiet days that are hot enough for skirts, and meandering through my town, and buying flowers and visiting friends who just welcomed a new little person! 

Photo Friday - 29th May

So, I introduced Casey and Kristin to Eurovision and I feel like this photo sums it up - confusion and laughter. I think my favourite quote of the night goes to Casey who said "Ok, I officially declare that Europeans can no longer make fun of Americans. At all. Ever. For eternity. Eternity is a long time."

I love my church here.

Monday meant packing, packing for the Amazing Race and Intern Training. Two years of living here and lots of travelling mean I'm getting this down to a very fine art.

The helpers' meeting for the Amazing Race.

They all arrived! 110 interns plus staff (minus a couple of pieces of luggage) and the Amazing Race began!

The start of Day 2 of the Amazing Race!

After many years of running the race Team Estonia won!

The Amazing Race!

Today 110 interns arrived at Prague airport, plus lots of full-time staff, to start the JV Amazing Race 2015! This really marks the start of the summer for us and it's so exciting! Especially exciting is the THIRTY Europeans we have serving this summer! 

We have more than twenty teams racing and completing team challenges across Prague and the country this week. They'll eventually get to Malenovice before Saturday morning. 

The goal of the race is to build teams as these people land from all over - we have Americans, Canadians, Northern Irish, Scottish, and people from China, Czech, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary... And I hope I'm not forgetting anyone! And they will be serving on teams together all summer. This gives a shared experience and allows personalities to be seen and debriefed early in the summer.

Here are some photos from the day:

Photo Friday - 22nd May

Saturday was a cleaning and organising day! I even went through all the plastic bags I had hanging around and throwing out all the ones with holes etc! It feels good to get my flat cleaned and organised before summer travels and hosting interns!

Baking cookies on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

On Monday I had a new experience - driving home from the office I was pulled over and breathalysed as part of a random check! In Czech there is a zero tolerance policy with alcohol when driving. It was 3.15pm so I'm guessing that they were trying to catch people who had had a beer at lunch. Of course, I blew a "negativni" - negative, no alcohol at all.

Tuesday was clean out day at the office! We spent most of our time cleaning out this big garage (second from the left). It felt good when it was all reorganised! 

There will be two intern girls living with me during the summer so I had to empty out my office/spare room to make it an intern bedroom! It was chaos but it's all done now. 

I'm learning to use little pockets of time in my day! I keep a daily devotional book in the pocket of my car door and I usually have these prayer journal. 

Friday night: playing banana-grams with the Yormans! I was very proud of this in my first turn during one of our games.