Escalators

You should very much head over to the family blog and read my wife’s post about one of hear fears in moving to Prague.

Thanksgiving as a Pilgrim

Read this Thanksgiving greeting from our Prague team leaders. We can’t wait to be there sojourning with them next Thanksgiving.

A Step Toward Prague

I quit my job.

Support-raising has gone well for us; people have been very generous. The biggest limitation we’ve faced has been time. I’ve had a fulltime job, and with Sam Melissa basically does too. Then support-raising is a part-time job on top of that. So we’ve considered it a great week if we could spend 8-10 hours on support. At that pace, it would take a L  O  N  G  time to raise all the support we need.

But the good news is that we have enough money raised that it’s financially viable for me to start working fulltime on support. So starting Monday, that’ll be my gig. It will help us to be more organized and deliberate, it will free Melissa up not to have to do all the admin work, and we hope that putting in more like 40 hours a week will mean that God provides all the support we need quickly, so that we can get to Prague in early spring (hopefully March).

Please pray for my work– that I’ll be organized and disciplined, and that God will bless our efforts and get us to Prague ASAP.

Dispatches From the Support-Raising Front

Not many people get a glimpse into what life is like as a missionary raising support. Melissa and I were talking about some of our funnier moments, so I thought I’d share some with you, gentle reader.

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Non-Christians, understandably, do not know Christian lingo, and they come up with funny stuff in its place. (Sometimes theirs is better. Who in the world came up with the phrase “quiet time”?) Yesterday I was explaining our Prague plans to a guy I’d just met, and he said, “So, you’re planning to build a church for your religion in Prague.”

That will certainly get worked into 1) our standard support talk and 2) my Facebook status.

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Once in a support meeting, a guy who’s known me my whole life asked, with no context or warning, “So what do you think about the Catholics?”

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Another person was very disappointed to see a picture in some of our material of an event in Prague where a guy was drinking beer. Of course, the real story there would have been if there were an event in Prague where there was no beer. But it was really pretty stupid of me to waltz into the home of a conservative Christian in middle GA and not expect that to happen. The picture has since been scrubbed. (At a later appointment the same day, we had a glass of wine with the potential supporters. You just never know.)

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I do not at all enjoy the formality of going through our presentation and then making an appeal. I would prefer to sit around, have Prague come up, answer questions, casually get everything said that needs to be said, and then have them say “Well, we’d love to support you guys.”

Once we had dinner with some friends for the purpose of talking about support. We’d had the talk, then we drifted to other things, had dessert, and when it was time to start putting kids to bed the guy and his wife exchanged glances and he said “Well, we’re ready for the ask when you guys are.”

I’ve since been much more deliberate and purpose-driven in support meetings.

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We always get asked about ministry to internationals vs. ministry to Czechs– e.g. why is it an English-speaking church, will you try to meet Czechs, etc. In the most formal version of our talk, this comes under a section that Melissa handles. But for the first couple of months, she had a really tough time getting a handle on the summary answer, which is that there’s a “two-pronged approach.” Really, any answer that uses the phrase “two-pronged approach” would do. But early on, Melissa tended to stumble over that point and be less than clear. In one presentation at a church, she basically gave the impression that we could care less about the souls of Czechs and probably wouldn’t walk across the street to share the Gospel with them. She was temporarily relieved of her duties where that question was concerned.

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More to come, I’m sure. Thank goodness it’s God moving through his people, not our mad social skills, that brings in the provision we need!

The Weakened Dollar and Missionaries

When I came back from Prague I meant to write about the drastic effect of the falling dollar on missionaries serving overseas. To give some perspective, the first time we went to Prague (November 2006) the exchange rate was 24 Czech crowns to the dollar. Now it’s about 15, which means the dollar is about 30% weaker than it was 18 months ago, which means everything costs about 30% more if you’re being paid in dollars.

Anyway, I now no longer need to write this because Sunday the Charlotte Observer beat me to it, profiling none other than my future boss Phil Davis, pastor of Faith Community Church in Prague. Read the article, and be sure to look at the pictures– the Davises are a good-looking bunch.

For those of us in the States, a few action items to think about:

• Pray (regularly!) for the dollar to regain its strength. This is affecting lots of missionaries all over the world, and they’d rather be focusing on ministry than trying to build their support back up.

• If you have missionaries you regularly support, consider trying to raise your monthly pledge to help with their added costs. Where could you trim from your budget to help them out? Think of it as a move of wartime efficiency to get the troops in the field what they need.

• If you’re not regularly supporting any missionaries, this would be a great time to start, as nearly all of them are feeling the crunch.

Our God is sovereign over all things, including currency exchange rates. Let’s pray that he will work quickly on behalf of his workers in the fields.

Video from Worship Night

Nothing fancy, but you’ll get the feel.

Worship Night

Monday night Jessica Forbes and I led a night of worship for Faith Community Church. We were joined by Ondra Riegl on fiddle, which was awesome. It was a great, extended time of worship, for us and for the crowd. Set list:

• I Exalt Thee –> Let us Love and Sing and Wonder

• Come Fall On Us

• Forever

• Praise Awaits You

• Wonderful Maker

• I Will Bow

• How Great is Our God

• O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus

• God Be Merciful to Me

• Poor Sinner, Dejected with Fear

• Here is Love

• The Love of God is Greater Far

• When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

• Hungry (Falling On My Knees)

• It Is Well With My Soul

• Before the Throne of God Above

• When I Think About the Lord –> I Exalt Thee

Back

So we’re back, and you can see how well the occasional posting went while we were in Prague. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But I’ll probably have a few things to talk about for the next couple of days.

First: a list of things I absolutely did not miss, some to my surprise.

• Blogs (really, the internet in general). No offense, everyone whose blogs I read, but I never once thought, “Man, I feel so out of the blogosphere.” When I went through my hundreds of unread posts I skipped most of them and didn’t feel like I was missing anything either. This means I’ll be cutting some subscriptions and spending less time on the constant flow of words.

• The presidential race. Good gravy. I moaned out loud when CNN was still talking about Hillary and Obama in Atlanta yesterday. How many more months of this?

• Driving. I’m now an even bigger fan of public transportation. You just get on and get off. I wish light rail came to my house.

Second, a random thought, perhaps even a theory: Most products and services you pay money for get better over time, because the suppliers want to win more customers and make more money. This is not true for air travel. Air travel has gotten progressively worse over the years, and will probably continue to do so. It used to be (I’m told) a pretty classy affair: people dressed up, there were nice dinners and drinks, etc. Now they shove as many people as possible into the smallest possible space, throw you a bag with three peanuts in it, and the prices certainly aren’t getting any better.

There are a couple of reasons for this, if you ask me, which you didn’t. First of all, the airlines are all losing money hand over fist. So they’re not looking to cut prices. Second, they know people have to fly. It’s not that much of a luxury anymore, it’s just the only way to get to places some people have to go. So you don’t really have a choice, and if it’s important enough to you to be comfortable you can pay three times as much for your ticket and go first class. They’d much rather you do that, so I’m not really expecting the coach section to improve.

I don’t say this because we had terrible flights or anything, it’s just that air travel isn’t a whole lot of fun.

An Evening With

Update: we recorded the last 2 songs. The quality’s not great, but you can hear us. Keep in mind these were the last two tunes and we were pretty delirious, so there’s a little silliness. Right-click & save as.

Saturday night Jessica Forbes and I did a set in the bar at the Czech Inn, a hostel run by one of the missionary families in Prague. To rip off my boy Duane (who I’ve recently learned is using hair product, which we’ll discuss when I get back), here’s the set list, more or less:

• Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (in the style of Susan Tedeschi)
• Old Old Woodstock (Van Morrison)
• Waiting for You (Ben Harper)
• (Jess solo) Angel From Montgomery (Susan Tedeschi)
• (Jess solo) Hush (Waterdeep)
• (Jake solo) Magic Rooster Blues (Black Crowes)
• (Jake solo) Boomer’s Story (Black Crowes)
• Don’t Think Twice (Bob Dylan)
• I Shall Be Released –> Amazing Grace –> I Shall Be Released (ripped off from the Happenin’)
• (Jess solo) Orphan Girl (Gillian Welch)
• (Jess solo) Sunday Morning
• (Jake solo) Fool for a Lonesome Train (Ben Harper)
• Falling Slowly (from the motion picture Once)
• Will the Circle Be Unbroken –> I’ll Fly Away
• Melissa (Allman Brothers)
• Me and Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin)

To Prague (but not for good)

I am very stoked to be leading a group from Uptown Church to Prague tomorrow. Faith Community Church is celebrating her first anniversary this weekend, and we’ll be there to encourage the team and help out with some of the festivities.

We’ve only been to Prague once, in November of 2006, to look into joining the team there. We love the city, we love the team, and we love their vision. We’re excited to visit them, because right now we’re kind of between two worlds as we’re still in Charlotte but preparing for the move to Prague.

We’ll post lots of pictures at Blue Sky, the family blog, and I might be able to do some stuff here too, but things will probably be lighter than usual. We’ll be back late Wednesday night. Pray for us!

As always, you can see the Prague page for more background info and lots of links.