Greetings friends and family!
Thank you to all of you who have so faithfully been supporting me these last eight months! I can’t tell you how much your words of encouragement and prayers mean to me. Your words help me feel connected to my Kansas home while still being able to learn and grow in my Slovak one. Thank You!
I want to send a special shout out to my fellow YAGM’s! Can you believe at this time last year we were merely dreaming of what our experiences might be like?! Time goes by so fast! I pray that you all savor all the remaining moments at your placements J. Enjoy the remaining time that you have with the people that you’ve grown to love.
Spring in Slovakia is life giving and refreshing! I’m eager to talk about my Easter experiences as well as update you on how teaching and youth group are going. I’ve updated my pictures (finally!). I hope that you enjoy the two albums I had time to upload. The first one is “Easter in Vrbovce” where you can get a week of my Holy week experiences. And the second one is “A taste of Slovakia.” I’ve faithfully photographed my lunch (and sometimes supper) meals for the last week (and laugh at the strange looks people give me for photographing my food!) – because I want to give you a “taste” of what my stomach gets to experience day to day.
I hope you have time to read on and I pray that this spring God breaths new life into your heart, body, and soul!
pokoj a láska, (peace and love)
Serving in Slovakia
Stories of a Volunteer in Vrbovce
April 2007
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation;
the old has gone, the new has come! ~2 Corinthians 5:17
Death has been conquered and new life has come! This verse from 2 Corinthians has always been one of my favorites, and it even decorated one of my blocks in the basement of Camp Tomah Shinga’s dining hall. This year I seem to feel the transformation from old to new more poignantly than before. Towards the end of March it seemed that all of Vrbovce, my host family, and the community at church and school all of the sudden started waking up from the winter. The oldness, coldness, and darkness of winter was gone and a new, fresh, bright spring was upon us! New life had come! Walking through town I could see the fruit trees blossoming white, bright flowers! They made the fresh, green hills look like they were powdered with white sugar. Tulips and daffodils bloomed and Kristina and Dusan’s rabbits had an overall total of 23 babies! (adorable! but I can’t get attached – they’ll someday be my dinner….) Kids are back to rollerblading and bicycling out on the streets. With the added daylight people are constantly outside, working in the garden, visiting with neighbors or playing a game of football.
New life has permeated the village with a renewed sense of hope. That same hope has come to all of us in the joy of Christ’s resurrection! I feel like something old has gone out of me too. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, but I sincerely feel that some small piece of me has been made new. The seeds that were planted in me during the fall had an entire winter to sleep, germinate, hibernate (whatever seeds do) and now, with this coming spring I feel something inside me blooming. It’s strange because I still struggle with some of the same things; the language barrier, the small misunderstandings that happen b/c of the language barrier, why more people don’t want to come to youth group, how to better teach rascally middle schoolers English, and how to best be able to serve people in this place. I deal with these things day to day, but Christ has given me a renewed sense of hope and a wonderful sense of belonging. This hope has enabled me to try new things, to be content with just “being” a part of my community, and has blossomed into a joy that I want to share with those around me. God has blessed me by giving me such a wonderful community – to live with, play with, learn with, and love. I pray that I can continue to learn what God has to show me in this place in my last couple of months and that I can share life (new life!) and hope with those around me.
Easter in Vrbovce + Slovak 101: Easter words for Friends and Family
I’m going to combine my language lesson and Easter experience this month because I want to teach you all the days of the week, plus describe my holy week – play by play – day by day. I really enjoyed Easter week, but have to say that I missed some of my traditions here more than I did at Christmas time. I did enjoy learning more about Slovak traditions and as you will soon see – they have some
Wednesday - Streda – I substitute taught here at the grammar school and gave a lesson about Easter in the United States. Since there is no separation of church and state in Slovakia the school takes a nice long holiday for Easter. It lasts from Maundy Thursday to the following Tuesday. So being a substitute teacher on the day before a big holiday and trying to get students to do tell me their holiday traditions was a little bit of a challenge – kind of like taming 20 wild horses in a two car garage…J but the kids at least learned the words for “whipping” and “splashing water” – part of their Easter traditions which I’ll get to in a sec.
Maundy Thursday – Zelený štvrtok (Green Thursday)
I was kind of surprised that there isn’t a church service on this day at all. I’ll admit I missed celebrating Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, reflecting on the meaning of servant hood, washing one another’s feet. On Thursday I had my English lessons and traveled to Myjava for conversation with two high schoolers. My service that day was speaking my native language – and I’m finding more and more that speaking English is one way I can give back to the people that are giving me so much.
Good Friday – Ve¾ký Piatok (Big/Great Friday)
Good Friday started out with a ten o’clock church service. This is probably the second or third largest attended service of the year (at least that I’ve experienced so far). I walked to church with Kristina a little early to help set up the hymnal numbers (that hang in the church – we don’t have bulletins) and warm up with the choir. Sitting in the pews during the service I glanced around at the sea of black, setting the tone for the day. Our pastor, Miroslav, gave one of his most passionate sermons I’ve heard so far about laying our sins at the foot of the cross. Holy Communion was served and the children were offered a special blessing, and with so many people the service lasted almost an extra hour! Friday afternoon I went on a small trip to the High Tatra Mountains and I had some time to relax, reflect, enjoy a fun car ride with four guys and take some great pictures.
Biele Sobotu – White Saturday
After my adventure “Four guys, a girl and a green mini-van” ended on Saturday evening we headed to Youth Group and I was pleasantly surprised with the great turn-out. The fellowship we had was warm and friendly – joyfully enjoying time together with members that hadn’t had time to come in a long time. Miroslav (pastor) led us in song and a short bible time and we played games and had fellowship afterwards, enjoying snacks and pop. It gave me great joy to celebrate the anticipation of the resurrection with this young community.
Easter - Ve¾ká Noc (Big/Great Night)
Church on Easter brought bright colored “kroj” (traditional costumes) and the joy of the resurrection. I helped with the children sermon by sharing my American tradition of hiding easter eggs. I hid a bunch of candy in the inside of the old school and killed a couple of plastics eggs with pieces of bible verses. The kids had to find the eggs and put the bible verses together. Eva (former pastor and fellow lover of children) led a cool devotion and helped me talk about the verses we hunted for. We sang several songs on Easter during the service - “Christ the Lord is Risen Today!“ was #600 one of them in my little black hymnal. The words were very similar to the traditional song that is song on Easter – but the tune was a different catchy melody with an Allelujah or two.
After church, we hurried back home to greet my host parents sons, wives and grandchildren. Lunch that day was wonderful! Chicken soup, potato salad, rice, chicken, shnitzle, and stewed fruit were on the menu. And of course Kristina had baked a mountain of cookies for dessert. J While I played with Mishko, Janka, and Adam the others cooed over little nine month old Samuel. In the afternoon Dusan and Jan (Kristina and Dusan’s son’s) started making korbac (whips) out of thin tree branches.
Here’s where I will begin to explain some Slovak Easter traditions – it was all so interesting to me! Slovaks also celebrate Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday. And traditionally, on Easter Monday the men and boys go from house to house to whip the girls and pour water on them. I’m told this is to drive out evil spirits and to make them healthy and strong for the next year. In Vrbovce, the water wasn’t quite as popular as the whipping, but I heard that in other parts of Slovakia - Monday was nothing short of an all day water fight! In return for the boys services girls are suppose to give the boys colored eggs, chocolate, and money. I’m thinking that this holiday was invented by men. I’ve heard that girls “idu prec” – go out of town on this Monday to dodge the water and the whipping.
My experience though was nothing life-threatening and was actually kind of fun. It was fun for the girls to get the attention (maybe this holiday was started by young people wanting to flirt!) and at breakfast Dusan properly whipped me and Kristina, reciting a small poem. I got whipped after church that morning (Yep, we had church!) and a couple of times that afternoon by visitors that came to the Elias home. J Pastor Miroslav got me with a little water, ganging up with a four year old after the church service – but overall I’d say I faired pretty good.
Easter Tuesday is suppose to be payback time for the girls. This isn’t as popular to do as on Easter Monday but I participated in a little fun with the triplets from youth group. We waited and waited outside the parsonage on Tuesday to go and “whip” Miroslav. We finally caught him in his office – and properly whipped the guy, and then sat down to freshly made cookies.
“OOOFun! Fact of the month”
Gardens! Almost everyone who lives here in the village has got one, including my host parents. I’m fascinated by them. In the mornings and evenings all over town you can watch people tilling, hoeing and watering. The gardens can be found in the front yard or in the back, with bright daffodils and tulips or with sprouting strawberry plants. If you’re seven or if you’re seventy you help work in the garden – age makes no difference. Lately more and more people have been busy planting and one friend told me that “babka” (her grandma) insisted that her and her sisters help plant potatoes for almost four hours, by hand. If I was a plant, I would want to be planted in a Slovak’s garden. They take great care of their seedings and take great pride in the food they produce. And the food is so fresh! I should know, I enjoy some of it almost everyday!
Teaching and Youth Grouping
Not too much new to report here. J I’ve started trying to speak more and more English outside of class with the students to try and encourage them to talk more. Majka – an eighth grader is doing great – she tries the hardest before she switches to Slovak. J With my afterschool English on Wednesday (third graders) I try and come up with creative ways to learn J. Two weeks ago we learn a poem that I used to jump rope to in elementary school – to help with numbers. And the kids loved jumping rope outside in the fresh air! Some of the fifth graders helped me with translation and I think they had fun jumping too. Does anyone else remember this poem?
Cinderella, dressed in yellow.
Went upstairs to kiss her fellow.
Made a mistake, kissed a snake,
how many doctors did it take?
1,2,3,…!
Youth Group is continuing to be a challenge. This group seems to be in the dying stage right now. I’m hoping that perhaps this spring, the group can grow a little and be brought back to life. We attended a small youth conference in another village called Krajne and had a great time with our small van of eight. Since the weather is bringing more people out of their winter caves maybe we can encourage more people to make it to youth group. I have a couple of fresh ideas that I would like to try too this spring, and perhaps with the help of the chaplain and the faithful three (Dominika, Monika and Veronika) maybe we can build the group a little.
As you are enjoying these next couple of spring months leading up to summer, I pray that God fills your heart with a renewed sense of hope and joy. For in Christ we are given second chances, for in Christ we are made new! The old has gone, the new has come!
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