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