Gifts from Abroad

So I must be honest: When I heard that there was a package coming from America to the Czech Republic for me, I was a bit worried about the hassle that would be caused by such a package: the cost, the time, the adventure and travel to the special post/customs office (which a friend of mine affectionately called the 3rd circle of hell) and then the money they would charge me to receive this package. Luckily, Satan wasn't around when I went to pick up my package; everything was fine and I was really glad to receive such a package from my Church family in Franklin! So here are the pictures of my joy:

OOOOHhhhhh a PACKAGE from AMERICA

WRAPPING PAPER

Couldn't wait to finish opening my gifts before I had one of these...

Really, this was an awesome package to receive!

 

 

 

 

So thanks to everyone who gave time and money to send me a little something special this holiday! I really appreciate it! God bless you all, you'll be hearing more from me soon... but I want to be hearing from you also!  So send me a line--
rebecca.ashton@my.wheaton.edu

church thoughts

About a month ago, I started to write a blog that went something like this:

"I can genuinely say that church on Sunday was the worse part of my college experience.
For the past 4 years while I was away at college*, I always struggled with Sunday. Sunday meant getting up and going through the ritual, when I had a million homework assignments due the next week that I should have done instead. Sunday meant that campus was empty. Sunday had a massive existential and angsty feel to it; was it the end of the previous week or the beginning of the next? Either way, it was stressful; I was either finishing behind or starting behind. And church didn’t help it. Whether I was at Jericho Road or Resurrection, I felt like a consumer. I went to one because I believed that their vision of what the church should look like was right. I went to the other because I liked the liturgy. But each week would pass and I never seriously met other people outside my college friends. They were my community, except I had that community all week, whenever I wanted. So what was the point of church? I didn’t see one. I was far too busy to participate in anything extracurricular to Wheaton. I went because I knew I ought to. I went to “do the right thing”."

When I started this blog about a month ago, I wanted to finish it with "But here in Prague, I've found a place where I belong and I'm content." Yet a month has passed, and so my thoughts have progressed.

We'll start with these thoughts, and I will add more in the coming days.

a real God deserves real bowing

A few summers ago I read Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer by C.S. Lewis. As an Evangelical Christian I am obliged to commend the entire work because he is our Patron Saint (I jest, but it was a good book), but I remember, really, only one part. Lewis talked about the place of the body in prayer, and made the point that what we do with our body (when we pray and otherwise) matters.

A specific quote, courtesy of Google books:

“The body ought to pray as well as the soul. Body and soul are both the better for it. Bless the body. Mine has led me into many scrapes, but I’ve led it into far more. If the imagination were obedient, the appetites would give us very little trouble. And from how much it has saved me! And but for our body one whole realm of God’s glory—all that we receive through the senses—would go unpraised.”
Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 17

I have the tendency to pray in bed—right before sleep, right after sleep, in the middle of the night when I wake up and am entreating The Lord for more sleep—prayer comes with the act of sleep. I have trained myself to do this. Unfortunately, when I want to sleep my body is lazy. My thoughts are too. And so I am supposed to be praying and my lazy mind wanders off into wild areas. Because, you can pray wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, and this is acceptable. And God still loves you, even if your prayers aren’t perfect and you fall asleep before finishing.

I’m not saying this isn’t true. I am making the observation, that when our bodies are trying to do one thing, it is awfully dualistic to believe that our minds don’t follow or are not tempted to follow the body in its endeavors. In fact, what you are thinking about usually has to do with what you are doing. That’s why we have certain etiquette and expectations for different gatherings, whether that is at school, at home, at the table, at a meeting. Your body expresses the attitude of your heart and the focus of your mind. It assures a person that they have your full attention, and you are invested in what they are saying or doing.

So this morning I was sitting on the couch, comfy in my living room, and wanted to pray. And this same thought about what Lewis said flashed through my mind as I was laying comfortably with a blanket on the cushions. Was I really serious about this prayer? Because I have found that not only do I disconnect my thoughts from my body and consider the life of the mind more important than that which is seen, but when I do that I tend to make God just as nebulous and disconnected from my actions and life in the world. Christ becomes an intellectual assent and not the focus and devotion of my entire being. “I don’t need to close my eyes and bow my head or get on my knees or fall flat on my face because God won’t judge me regarding these things. By the way, God is invisible, so all of the above is just for show.” This attitude has allowed me to compartmentalize God into the reality of my thoughts alone, making my body and how I live and act in the world secondary. If God is real, however, then He demands all of our reality. Even if He is invisible, we must make the visible world subject to his domain because He is the rightful ruler and creator of all that we perceive through—wait for it—our bodies. It was his actual body that He gave to save us from ourselves, not some idea that a philosopher wrote down that requires our agreement. It was His body that rose again from the grave, not some apparition the disciples saw in their holy minds. We must bow and it must be in conformity to the reality of our world. A real God deserves a real, physical bow.

So, the cheapest wine comes in a cardboard box.

Don't worry, I'm not using it to drown my sorrows. I'm cooking :D I'll let you know how my stew turns out!

That is one exciting part about living abroad: learning to cook. As if it weren't hard enough, now we need to find the translation for things like baking soda. Hey, that reminds me of the time we tried to make ricotta cheese pancakes in Ljubljana...

Trip to Kutna Hora

settlin' in

Teaching is a challenge.  I have this massive learning curve to jump in order to deal with 6th & 7th graders.  The main problem isn't culture shock. No, it's lesson planning in my own language.  I often think of my roommate Rachel from my last semester at college, and just how long she spent preparing lessons for 90 kids. 90. Highschoolers. Public school. No, all I have is 18. And they're dropping like flies as their parents leave for furlough or other reasons. 18 kids in a private school, divided between two classes.  Three forty-five minute blocks for each every week. Hours to prepare.

And now I understand why people go to school to teach for four years.

It really hasn't been too bad.  Needless to say, I'm learning a lot.

Also, it's hard to understand what a 7th grader can and can't understand.  I just graduated from college with a BA in Philosophy.  I like to sit and listen.  They don't. I like abstract concepts. They're still pretty concrete. They're all really fact-smart. They know their Bibles for the most part. They've corrected me.  I didn't know nearly anything that they know about the Bible at their age.

So. This is part of God giving me a heart for all kids.

I made it to Prague, despite the gov't ;))

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind! I received my visa on the 20th of September, exactly 3 months after the consulate received my information.  Everything had gone through. I could hardly believe it. . . I really thought I would see more fall colors in VT.

But. That's life. So I bought a plan ticket for that next Saturday, packed one suitcase, one carry-on, and one backpack, got on a plane to JFK, and flew Swiss airlines to Prague via Geneva. My first overseas flight by myself. I bought one of those neck pillows in an attempt to get some sleep. It semi-worked.  I recommend it.

And I made it to Prague. There was one familiar face there to greet me at the airport, my friend Jake who was a year ahead of me at Wheaton and who I did YHM with the second year around. It was nice to see a familiar face. And I met a few more faces, Melodee and Michelle, who both work at the school. They each took a piece of luggage, and bought me a bus ticket via a cellphone (that's something new).  And we made our way to Chodska Street, which is about 2.5 tram stops from IP Pavlova metro. It was a beautiful day. We got to the top floor. We went into the apartment. They put me in a closet.  They were grateful I didn't have a lot of luggage.

Ha, in all honestly, it really wasn't as bad as I just made it sound. I just like to put a sarcastic spin on things.

On a serious note, I am so very happy to  be here. I couldn't stop smiling, I felt like an idiot walking through the familiar places as if in a dream, really out of it from hours of travel, but enchanted with the place. So much happened last week. I beat jetlag with benadryl the first two nights, and then crashed the next two. The girls I'm staying with for now are excellent cooks, and all work at the school. The weather has been unusually warm--it feels like summer, which is so welcome. I don't want the shock of Europe in the fall and winter; none of my memories are so.

I taught my first real class today. I made two very obvious mistakes. But the kids are so smart, they caught them. I'll spare myself the embarrassment of sharing. As I was teaching, I realized I loved it. It was exhilarating. I lost energy near the end. Seventh graders. 8 of them. All boys. I'll pick up the 6th graders next week. But tomorrow, they're doing a secondary school retreat, which the 7th graders are a part of, so I get to go. It should be good!

Also, I have a roommate with an apartment I am in the process of moving into.  It's gorgeous.  It's big; much bigger than I expected to get. It was unfurnished, and that was unexpected as well. So. We went to Ikea, which was also big. Much bigger than I expected, and extremely overwhelming. I did my best to buy the very cheapest things. Do not store for yourselves treasures on earth . . . but having a bed to sleep on is pretty standard for our culture.

So I am finally here, and I feel a bit overwhelmed, but God's peace has certainly made it go a lot easier.  Peace definitely comes from knowing that you are where you're suppose to be, and trusting that ultimately God's say wins out over all of our second-guessing. Please pray for continued peace that comes from focusing on all that Christ is to us: purpose and meaning, the crafter of our destinies. Please pray that Czech would continue to go easy for me and that I would reach my language goals. Please pray that I would become a good teacher, and provide well what these Mk's and TCKs need. Please pray for the opportunity to meet Czechs and to learn about the culture and learn how to do ministry effectively in post-modern environments.

Please pray for my dad, because he tore his meniscus and has a very bad infection that he continues to go to the hospital for in order to fight it. I don't totally understand the situation, so I may have the details wrong medically, but it's going to be expensive and they don't have health insurance.

Love
Becca

someone tell the czech gov't to get a move-on that visa

because there are moments that I don't think that I'll stay sane if I'm in VT.

Hurricane Irene is dumping rain at a steady pace all day, and despite our prayers, even some horizontal trees.  I'm listening to Sufjan (something I haven't done for a while) and taking in the poor-quality air of my old room at home so that I can have privacy and an internet connection.

So in lieu of a passport, I feel like I need to come up with creative ways of staying not-board. Last night I watched Tangled and thoroughly enjoyed it (I think the story-line is similar to a story that Jerry Root once told in class [?!] or that I heard in a sermon, but I'm not sure) and today I watched Avatar for the first time, and that felt like a time commitment.  Two-and-a-half hours for a movie is a lot for me, but I felt it was necessary because the movie was frequently referenced in culture theory.* Anyway, both good movies, both recommended, but I can't help but notice how good movies make me feel that our own lives are lacking a certain spark (not to mention Sufjan singing in the background something like, "It's a long life, better pinch yourself, put your face together . . .getalifegetalifegetalovegetalove").  But when I'm stuck in VT for the moment, and all the people that have been closest to me for the past 4 years are absent, trying to keep in touch with people through phone calls, emails, or skype doesn't really satisfy the desire to be present with people who know you.
And then enters that tricky philosophical question of, who really knows us anyway? So much for Junior year solving that question.

And then the realization that life requires an embrace of all sorts of experiences and moments, and not just of the adventurous or the ones that seem to give us quick, easy fulfillment. Because the endless hours spent watching movies, playing games, or whatever other entertainment we mindlessly take in is just a means of avoiding silence, doing the things you know you ought to, and ultimately avoids the question of meaning and pondering what really makes this worth it.

And maybe I wouldn't feel bored if I wasn't conditioned by Western culture. There's so much possibility outside of a screen, yet, most of our time is spent in front of one.



*It's like if the Matrix had been on--I would have felt obligated to watch that because I haven't seen it yet and it was referenced all the time in philosophy class.

I finally finished up work on Saturday, and I am in the process of packing for the big take-off.  I've been keeping track of other approved visa numbers, and I think that mine ought to be close to approval status.  Thank you so much for your prayers! I'm so blessed by them. I have not bought a ticket yet because I want my passport back before that happens. School starts September 1st, so being present there is not an impossibility right now, but perhaps a stretch.

But, we know that God loves to show off His power in what we believe to be "stretches". He has been extremely faithful financially. What I felt to be the biggest burden at the end of last semester has turned into an amazement. I have about $10,000 in my RCE account, and about $10,000 more pledged to me for the year! I tell you this so that you can praise God with me at the fact that He provides in such an immense way when we ask Him to.

I've also been having a lot of quality time with the people around me.  From scrapbooking Clare's wedding with Adrienne, to a family get-together around the deep fryer, to talking about credibility and the Gospel with Jason and Jennifer, to having breakfast with Karen Scheffler at Joey's Junction and talking about the place of morality in our faith, my time here in Franklin county since I've ended work at the TP has been full and wonderful.  Tonight I'm meeting with some friends and teachers from high school to reminisce about the good ol' days and to catch-up--it's been at least four years.

love all of you

I didn’t want July to pass without sharing some sort of reflection on the summer.  What a summer it has been.  No, it wasn’t a summer of traveling to distant lands, but even when I’m in my own backyard, somehow Eastern Europe enters the gate and makes herself at home on the Adirondack chair. This summer I’ve been housekeeping at the Tyler Place, a local family resort in my town.  Basically, well-to-do families come and stay in upscale cabins and apartments, and we clean a combination of 11 accommodations from 8.30 am to 1.30 pm 5 days a week; on Saturday we have to strip every place and get ready for the new guests in the afternoon.  It’s not an easy job and the pay isn’t very good, and the supervisors are poor leaders and mostly stress you out; but the other workers are what have captivated me this summer. Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians—the sounds of Slavonic languages have filled my ears for the past two and a half months, and will continue to for three more weeks.  I have also started to pick up Russian again with my friend Inna.  Inna and I have recently started to meet before work in the morning in order to switch-off teaching and learning Russian and English.  We have also had the opportunity to talk about the differences in worldviews between Americans and Russians, and share personal thoughts on life.  Inna has also been an attendee at Church softball on Friday nights, and seems to be everyone’s favorite player.  She’s kind of the “Happy Gilmore” of softball.  She came out of complete obscurity, but has that exotic edge that comes from having a foreign accent and mad skills at something she went from merely observing one week from a bleacher, to playing the next without being half-bad.  The finer points take time (like remembering the terms “safe” and “out” or that you can run past first, but not second—and yes, you need to tag home base, not just run by it.)  But everyone loves watching her play and talking with her.  She insists she merely goes so that she can get a creemee after the game (that’s “soft-serve” for those of you outside the state of VT), but I know it’s more than that.  She likes interacting with all the local folks, which is something that most Tyler Place resident-staff do not do.  They stay in their bubble, drink Thursday through Sunday, work like dogs, and miss home.  This may be a gross generalization, but it’s really not all their fault.  Come on, how many people reach out to them in order to show them small-town America? How much can you do without local friends?

So Inna and others have been the bright spot on my summer. I could add to it stories about conversations, days I worked with Nicky, Melissa, or Artiom, or the difficulties of such a low-paid and under-appreciated work position.  But all of that would spark further ideas about justice, money, God, blessings and curses, the corruption of those who have and wield power, sin nature, Marxism, work ethic, sacredness, worldview, evangelism, faith, culture, and loving others—that this one blog entry simply does not have time for. Perhaps there will be time for reflections on this in later entries.

In regard to heading to Prague, every prayer, every donation, and every day brings me a little bit closer to being on the European continent. When I will receive my visa is still up in the air, but I have received close to $10,000 in support for the school year, along with an additional $4,550 that has been pledged but not yet received. This is an amazing blessing beyond anything I expected when I set out to support-raise around three months ago, and it brings me much closer to my estimated needs of around $18,000 for the first year. If you would pray for me, these are the areas that I really need prayer for:

-- Discernment and wisdom—especially for the next three to four weeks as I navigate working in less-than-desirable conditions. I feel like I’ve made some poor decisions at work this summer, and it’s hard to climb out of that hole.

--Pray for God’s Truth to shine evident in the midst of spiritual warfare.

-- My visa, that it would be accepted and come in soon!

-- Skill in lesson planning, especially because I’ll be doing it shortly and have basically zero experience . . .

-- Continued financial support

Thanks for staying tuned-in on this adventure ~

Update

VISA

TAK!  Today I—Finally!—sent in my visa application.  Please pray for its safe delivery and quick approval.  It takes about 90 days for it to be approved, but hopefully by some miracle it will return before then.  In difficult circumstances, it would take up to 120 days, so please pray for it to go through before that time.

PRAYER

I’d like prayer for preparation.  I’d like to be diligent in my studies, whether of the Bible or the Czech language, or even for being yearbook advisor—and especially for the students I’ll be mentoring! I’ll be wearing quite a few hats this next year, and I’d like to be prepared insofar as I’d like to have deep and unfaltering trust in God and His sovereignty.  And of course, acquiring some of the knowledge and skills that I’m lacking now. “God equips the called . . .” 

FUNDS

I’ve had some generous donors! For those of you who have given, THANK you so very much—I’ve been blessed by it.  For those of you who are planning on giving, every day counts! The Christian International School of Prague (CISP) would like me to have 80% of my support raised before I buy my plane ticket, and 100% of my funds raised before I head overseas. This does not leave me much time.  I am looking to raise between $1,200 and $1,500 for each month, so that’s between $14,400—$18,000 for the first year.  Right now, I’ve had $4,365 given or pledged to me thus far.  If you know that you would like to give, doing so by June 30^th would bless me immensely. Although one-time and occasional gifts are always welcome, I am praying for those people who will regularly and generously support me on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.  Thank you for your sacrificial giving!

society of children

I was recently reading Dostoyevsky’s the Idiot when I was struck by a passage from part one, where Prince Myshkin is revealing his mysterious pull toward children. 

“I don’t really like to be with grown-up people . . . Whatever they say to me, however kind they are to me, I somehow feel depressed in their company and I’m awfully glad when I can get away to my companions, and my companions have always been children.  But this is not because I am a child myself; it is simply because I always felt drawn to the society of children. . . . When . . . I sometimes, on my solitary walks, especially at midday, came across all that noisy gang of children running home from school, with their satchels and slates, shouting, laughing and playing games, my soul went out to them at once.  I don’t know, but every time I met them I was overcome by an exceedingly powerful sensation of happiness.  I stood still and laughed happily as I looked at their little legs, flashing by and always racing along, at the boys and girls running together, at their laughter and tears . . . and I forgot all about my depression. . . . I simply could not understand how and why people are sad and dejected.  I devoted all my life to them.”

With the advent of the coming school year, I will be working as a missionary in the Czech Republic at the Christian International School of Prague, teaching Bible to middle school students.  With all that this opportunity affords, I hope that my time with children will help me to understand what Dostoyevsky meant through a personal experience of serving and loving and teaching children.

But there was a double meaning to the phrase “society of children” that memorably entered my consciousness, and it was the admonition of Christ to live as little children in order to enter heaven:

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’” (Matt 18.1-4 ESV)

Children rely upon their parents to provide for their every need and want.  Dependent, weak, and vulnerable, children cannot survive without the care and guidance of their parents.  As an “adult”, I sometimes forget that I need to be completely reliant on God in every endeavor I pursue in order for it to be fruitful and meaningful.  But I also can see that many people of the world forget or reject God’s power and purpose altogether, and merely scrape by in their lives because of stubbornness or denial.  I don’t want my life to be like that—and I don’t want the people I know and love and interact with to live in that sort of oppression either.

So what if we were to become a society of children? How would obedience to God in little things, and reliance on Him change our lives? At this time in my life, I have decided to become a missionary out of obedience (and maybe what the world would diagnose as a twinge of insanity) and a desire to see God provide first-hand for me and the people around me, and do amazing things in an area of our world where His light is being largely ignored by the populous. The faithful living in Prague are on that mission, and I want to join them—at least for a time in my life.  I want to learn to be a child. And in some small way, I want to inspire the reign of that society in this world.  Lord have mercy.