the day before the adventure…
Posted by armitage on 23 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: Life
So we are getting ready for 3 weeks of travel…1 week in Serbia for NLI’s Organix event. This is the last of our 4 modules of training for emerging leaders. Serbia is a colorful nation that has gotten a lot of press recently because of the Kosovo situation. The nation has seen it’s share of civil war, strife and ethnic divide over the last 20 years and the church has struggled throughout this time. Current statistics say that there are roughly 7-10 000 evangelical believers in this nation of 10.8 million people. This is why it is so important for us to be involved in training new generation leaders who will build a creative and innovative church in the Balkans.
After this we will be heading up to Slovenia for a bit of R and R. This will be our first family holiday since Livia was born so we don’t quite know what to expect. We’ve been able to rent a nice little converted wine cottage in Northeastern Slovenia and we look forward to a few days trips and some swimming. It will be well deserved after the conference and after the last few hectic months that we’ve had.
We will arrive home for a couple of days before we are off again to Eastern Slovakia for a pastor’s family camp. All the pastors from our movement have been invited to come with their families for some rest and spiritual refreshing. Steve Hertzog, a Slovak favourite and president of Vanguard College in Edmonton will be the guest speaker for the week.
Did we mention that we are driving everywhere? Even with the price of gas over $2 a litre ($7 a gallon) it is still the best option for a family of four. It will be a long day tomorrow to Serbia…over 7 hours of driving through three nations. Please pray for our sanity and safety as we drive in 35 degree heat (100 F.) with a toddler and a 4 month old, colicky baby.
In fact, we almost lost our sanity today as we were packing up what seemed like everything we owned into the back of the Skoda…here’s how it all happened. Mia and Livia both decided that 6:00ish was an appropriate time for them to get up and demand milk…Livia from mommy and Mia from daddy (that’s a bottle that daddy gets for her…not…well you get the idea). Daddy was not fully awake when he stumbled his way into the kitchen. He still had his eyes closed and so he didn’t quite see the dishwasher door that was 3/4 open. He managed to absolutely clobber the topside of his right hand on the corner of the dishwasher door…which led to a spiritual expletive (”mother father”) to which Mia replied “Monkey!” (we sometimes use that as a kinder, gentler expletive). Immediately his hand swelled up like a party balloon and his right side became as useless as a screen door on a submarine. He did run it under cold water and put some Slovak balm called Yellon Gel (think Windex and my big fat greek wedding except for Slavic people) on it but that didn’t help.
Livia, from Friday onward, had been coughing like a 67 year old chain smoker…her poor little raspy cough was enough to break your heart. We had already planned to take her to the doctor that morning but now with daddy’s hand a mess we decided we all needed to go. Keep in mind that nothing was packed yet and the house was still a mess.
So after Livia screamed for about 45 minutes (for whatever reason a 4 month old colicky baby cries for) we packed ourselves into the car and drove to the doctor. Of course our doctor wasn’t in until the afternoon but we managed to get seen by another doctor who prescribed antibiotics and cough syrup for our baby. That was the easy part. As we left, Sheldon was still complaining about his hand which he though he had fractured. Anna told him to suck it up and get back to work (not in those words but that was more or less the meaning) but relented to get some x-rays done, “just in case.”
Luckily the x-rays were taken in the same building as our family doctor so we trekked over to get a recommendation from her. While we were waiting, Livia decided it was time to fill her shorts with baby goodness so we had to change her in the hallway. The doctor then told us after 20 minutes of waiting that because it was an accident Sheldon didn’t need a recommendation and so we stood in line at another doctors for another 20 minutes. He then sent us to get x-rays.
By this point in the preceedings, Mia (who had been on incredible behaviour) decided she had had enough and wanted to have her “picture” taken like daddy. This led to a bit of screaming, discipline and a snotty nose but nothing too serious. After that x-rays we had to go back to the doctor, wait another 20 minutes only for him to say nothing was fractured but to put ice and another Slovak balm on it. Anna 1, Sheldon 0.
So after about 2.5 hours we were finally ready to start packing…of course it was now lunch time and nap time for Mia. By about 1 pm we started the task of sorting through clothes, summer gear, food and other necessities. By about 6pm we had shoved and wedged and kicked everything into the car. This took multiple trips up and down the elevator, slowed down by Sheldon, the one armed man, and Mia, his overly helpful 3 year old daughter. We had to recruit Matthew Price in the end to help carry down boxes which was a big help (thanks Matthew) and finally we were ready to go…to Grandma’s house where we are now staying the night before the big day.
Mia is excited about going to Serbia…though she keeps asking, “What’s a Serbia?” Of course that seems to be the question everyone is asking these days, in Belgrade and Pristina and the United Nations so I think she’ll fit right in.
This week marked the end of the first ever Catalyst training program. Catalyst is a once a month, young leaders training program that Sheldon developed and ran with another missionary (Mark Holdcroft) for our network of churches here in Slovakia. They had 18 participants from 4 different cities in Slovakia that ranged from mid-teen to young adult. All of the participants are involved in some areas of ministry within their churches and have been identified as the next generation of leaders. Catalyst is a great interactive process that relies heavily on activities, feedback and small group learning…this can be a little difficult at times due to the language barrier but all the participants had a great time and some have even signed up to help next year with a new group of leaders. It is our goal to develop a stand alone program that participants can be trained in to take back to their churches, schools or areas of influence and thus reproduce our own effectiveness.
We are tired…but that happens any time you host people. But this is a good tired because we had good friends stay with us here in Nitra. John, Abby and Emma Allard came to visit from Wednesday to Sunday and we had a great time with them. Sometimes visitors can be draining, they’ll suck the life right out of you. Not so in this case, it was wonderful to catch up with these great friends and share life with them again. We have known them from our years in England and now they have grown their family and we have grown ours. Emma is an incredible little girl who has a enormous smile (and appetite!). She traveled well with us as we toured Nitra, Piestany, Vienna and Bratislava.
But our week was not just BBQs and melting in the sun. While Mia bounced the days away on her trampoline (her third birthday present), we both got caught up on a lot of work, including preparing for our upcoming Serbia leadership training conference in June, planning out our upcoming trip to the USA and Canada in September, and developing new curriculum for our young leaders training here in Slovakia that starts in September. It was good to get away for the week to be able to focus on planning and development as we move into a very busy summer. Here’s a quick look at what we will be doing over the next few months:
Looking back on the last 6 years on the mission field we have come to realize something…our communication has definitely slipped quite a bit. Our first year or two was very good, post cards, regular updates, Christmas cards, phone calls, dessert nights…all the regular things that you would expect from good missionaries. Then something happened (okay, mainly kids happened) and we went from emails to blogs to…well a mismash of attempts to keep our partners and friends updated on all the goings on here in Slovakia.