A Little of This; A Litte of That

Since Sandra and I moved to the Czech Republic, 18 months ago, people have asked us regularly, “what do you do?”. People we meet ask us, government officials have asked us, folks in the USA ask us. So, I thought that I would try to give an answer. Whatever answer I give will likely be incomplete.

But, wait. What DO we do? The answers usually go something like this: “we do what God lays out for us to do,” or “a little of this and a little of that.” Let me give it a shot, though.

First, we are retired. After 30 years of pastoral ministry, we came here to continue to visit and encourage friends in this part of the world. You see, for many years we had been coming to this part of the world to talk to people about education and about Christian Family Living (see our website). This also included a good bit of encouraging and supplying of educational materials, which wonderful publishers had provided and we carried. We often referred to ourselves as “camels for the Lord.” Back when airlines were more open to this sort of thing (not requiring us to pay extra for baggage) we often had nearly 200 pounds of educational materials to distribute (free) to the folks we visited.

These relationships have continued and we have added new ones. Since we moved to Europe we have visited Bulgaria, Kenya (just a bit outside Eastern Europe!), Slovakia, Norway, and the United Kingdom. We’ve also ministered to people here in the Czech Republic. Next month we’ll be doing a conference in the Netherlands. We constantly keep in touch with many of our friends via Skype and email.

We’ve also worked on the completion of our book, Children in Church: Nurturing Hearts of Worship, which is due out any minute now. This is a labor of 30 years, explaining the “why” and the “how” of families worshipping together. Look for it at Great Waters Press.

We’ve found a church at which we can worship our God in Spirit and in Truth. We’ve been honored to welcomed in the Reformovaná presbyterní cirkev z Modrany (note that the website is in Czech, so you'll want to use a browser which will translate) and we’ve been doing what we can to serve in this small, Czech-speaking congregation.

On Thursday evenings we host a group of young people for dinner and discussion of Biblical and theological topics. This group includes both American and Czech young folk (they're all in their 30s, but to us, of course, they are impossibly young). As I write this we are studying the topic of hermeneutics.

Of course, we blog (check out Sandra’s blog  and look for her also at the Far East Broadcasting Company's blog. We’re currently working on the ideas for our next book project.

So, what do we do? A little of this and a little of that. Mostly, we try to stay in tune with the Holy Spirit and do what God lays out for us to do. Oh, and we enjoy our the city to which God has sent us.

How about you? What do you do?