Happy Thanksgiving!!

 

November – the month of falling leaves

Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving!! I know that many of you have already gotten snow (in fact quite a bit of snow!) but in Czech, the month of November is called “listopad”, which literally translates to “leaves falling”. It is normal here to still have some color on the trees as the last of the leaves fall. We have had snow though! Just this weekend we had a couple dustings, but they didn’t stick around for long.

The Cook family invited Miriam and I to celebrate Thanksgiving a week early because we had a holiday here. We had a wonderful time with them, and since we’ve met the “requirement” to wait for Christmas things until after Thanksgiving, we have already started listening to Christmas music and planning our decorations!

The last couple of months have been restful, with not a lot going on, which is certainly a welcome relief after all we’ve done this year! But there have been a few important things, and a couple things coming up.

Vision Trip

In the middle of October, a group of eight Americans came to visit a few countries here in Europe for what is known as a Vision Trip. These are individuals with some connection to Word of Life in the US - current or former board members, donors, etc. – who are interested in investing in Word of Life’s ministry outside of the US as well. They were with us in Czech for four days, during which we showed them the property, gave them a taste of typical Czech food, and shared our visions for the ministry here. Many of them expressed interest in supporting our ministry here, including the sauna project.

Sauna Project

The sauna building, which was in fact a sauna when it was first built, is undergoing a big reconstruction over the next year. We normally use this building only in the summer to house the female volunteers, it’s not insulated and only has one small bathroom. Last winter we redid the small apartment in the front, and now we want to fix some foundation issues and redo the back part, as well as add another bathroom. There have been some bumps along the way, as is the case with most legal and permit things – extra paperwork and inspections we didn’t know we needed, and even original paperwork that needed to be corrected before we could apply for new permits. Through it all, David, our maintenance guy, has worked steadily to make it happen! We are so excited to have most of the funds for this project and plan to start the actual work in March 2023.

Christmas – the season we are really waiting for!

Fall is my favorite season, but I love Christmas so much! We are planning a Christmas party for the Ukrainians that still live in this area, complete with some traditional Ukrainian dishes and desserts. I am looking forward to trying some new recipes and the ones I found so far look delicious! For example, these are called “khrustyky” and are just fried cookie dough sprinkled with powdered sugar! One of the local pastors will be sharing a message, and we will have a time of worship as well.

 

A little personal news

One of the things I have missed most being here is not having animals surround me all the time. I am still dreaming of having sheep someday, but for now, I think a puppy will suffice! This little bundle of crazy is Ruben, he is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and right now he is four months old, teething, and just generally causing lots of trouble. We forgive him for all the trouble though because he truly is a sweetheart and such a cuddle bug! So far, his favorite things to do are playing tug, cuddling with one of us while watching TV, watching the birds out our big window, and trying to convince the Cooks’ rabbit to play with him (running laps around the cage counts as an invitation, right?).

 

 

Thank you all so much for your support and prayers, they truly mean so much to me. May God bless you all abundantly as this year draws to a close and the next one begins.

 

Love in Christ,

Adele