My Refuge & Strength

Day 5

Again, I wrote this last Saturday. So slowly but surely I’m catching up!

Training camp officially ended last night, so this morning we began our trek to Litvinov. But before I get into that, let me just say a few things about the camp that I didn’t have time to earlier. Not only did we get to hear from some pretty sweet speakers, but we got to learn how to effectively teach English in a way that the students don’t normally do in class. Usually they just memorize, write, & read but don’t speak all that often. So we learned how to get them talking with games & skits & all these fun activities that they would never do in class. Also, we learned how to lead discussion groups well. After each evening talk, we will break off into our English class groups & discuss what we just heard. & as if that weren’t hard enough. Apparently, Czechs enjoy awkward pauses. During our meeting, we literally sat there for a minute & a half in complete silence - which is very, very long when nothing is happening. Also, there’s that language barrier… So we were encouraged to just let the conversation go in Czech. I will be in charge of both leading the class & the discussion groups - so both lessons were extremely helpful.

Training ended with this thingymajig called a Labyrinth. The best way for me to describe it is to just break it down, piece by piece. There were five stations throughout the hotel, & we all began in the basement with worship. Then they let us go team by team to start at station one, where we drew little trees. On the trunk of the tree, we wrote the word “myself”, on the roots we wrote the names of people that have shaped us & changed us, & on the leaves we wrote the names of people that we’ve had the opportunity to impact. At the next station, we each got pieces of clay & formed them to be an object that was supposed to represent what we think is the center of our lives. The third station took me the longest. We had to write letters to ourselves - which I had done multiple times before, so I knew how it usually went. Sarah, you need to work on this. No, seriously. You need to work on this. You cannot go on living your life without working on this. & what do I do once I receive those letters a couple months later. I say, “Oh yeah, that’s right,” & continue on with my merry little life. So this time I tried to do it a little differently. I won’t really get into it because I’m already writing way too much, but I will say that I believe this time, it will work. At the forth station, we needed to come up with someone who we need to forgive, & write their name/s on a tiny little pebble. This totally brought me back to some friend issues I’d had earlier this year - & the thought of whether or not I truly gave my forgiveness. Then the tables turned; on the other side of the pebble, we had to make a mark for everything we still need forgiveness for. One name can fit on a pebble, but not the number of apologies I still have yet to make. The fifth station hit me the most. It was very similar to washing people’s feet, but not really. There were two buckets - one with water & one with sand. Above the water, there was a sign that read, “God created you to be pure,” & then it instructed you to dip your hands in the water. Then above the sand, the sign read, “However, you chose sin,” & we put our wet hands in the sand, thus making them dirty. But there was still one more bucket, where a Josiah Venture staff member took your dirty hands & washed them clean for you. That symbol of man’s betrayal, & God’s persistent love reminded me, yet again, of the wonder & greatness of the gospel. At the final station, we each lit a candle to represent our commitment to the students we will be serving.

Phew. Okay, onto travel.

Now, Malenovice is in the southeast corner of Czech, while Litvinov is in the northwest corner of Czech, right below Germany. In my follow-up letter I sent to all my supporters, I mentioned that the trip to Litvinov would take roughly ten hours by train… but that was supposedly wrong. Apparently, it would only take about two hours & we would be going by bus. Before I left, my dad was like, “That can’t be right. Are there even ten hours worth of that country?” or something like that. I guess I just got confused with the plane trip or something. I don’t know.

But anywho, this morning I asked my “Czech Mom” Carla what our trip was going to look like, to which she responded, “We’ll be going by train.” What? Really? Hmm, I guess I was right. But for how long? “About twelve hours.” What?! Wow. Take that, Dad.

So nearly a dozen hours later – which included many transfers (if I had known there would’ve been so many transfers, I wouldn’t of worn my superhero pajama pants, btw), throwing water on the people in our team who dared to sleep, finishing up friendship bracelets, realizing just how amazingly beautiful the Czech Republic really is, & nearly getting decapitated while hanging my head out the window - we finally made it to Litvinov! Nope. We still hadn’t made it to Litvinov. We had to drive for about an hour on the windiest road to ever exist to finally get there. But, thank you Jesus, I’m here now - in a really funky hotel/hostel/whatever you wanna call it. The campers are supposed to arrive tomorrow afternoon, & I am downright terrified. I have to teach English? I have to lead a discussion group full of kids who would rather be playing twister & making fun of my Czech? What on earth did I sign up for?