Hello everyone! How are you? It has been more than a week since i posted an update. I’ve decided to update you on Thursdays, since I have arrived on a Thursday. I hope it is not too confusing.

This week and half I have started to serve at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Little Falls. Past Monday, we started the week with morning prayers at church. A few people showed up but it was good. In our church, we would pray more spontaneus prayers, maybe in a circle. Here, in Little Falls, we read from a bulletin, so it was very different. After that, we were in the nursing home to serve the elderly and ill. We had a mass there. It was short, but nice. I got to read the Gospel reading. Pastor Joe played a few songs everyone knew. It was very nice to see the people smiling and happy. We chatted a bit and then went back home.

On Wednesday, I did my first sermon here. I did a few sermons back home, so I know how to prepare a how I like to do my stuff. The text spoke about Jesus’ threefold question to Peter (“Peter, do you love me?”). It is a wonderful text especially because we can see, that even when Peter messed up, Jesus forgives him a sends him to be a shepheard of His sheep. Even if we sin, fail or mess up, God forgives and calls us to serve Him. He is the great God! After mass, we went home and around 6PM, we had our evening prayers.

Thursday also started with prayers at our church. Again a few people showed up. But after that, we started to prepare for Vacation Bible School. We got the materials and talked abou some ideas. I’ll be preparing some free time activities, help with story telling and music as well. From my experience, the planing here is way different than ours back home. We come together more as a team to check on everyone and discuss ideas.

In the rest of the week, we practised a little bit for Sunday. Since the organist left for two weeks, we were in charge of music. It is nice to practice and play with pastor Joe, his wife and our deacon Kit. All of them are interested in music in some way. Joe and his wife have a band called “Bar Room Neon Project” and Kit has a YouTube channel called Kit’s Rock Review. When Joe found out I play the guitar, he told me: “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” He now tells everyone how great of a guitarist I am, but I think he is exeggerating a lot.

Sunday came and I played the guitar with the guys. That went well. I read the readings for Sunday and had little problems. But it was fine. It was more funny to see my confusion during the service, since I still don’t know all the things around liturgy here. So there were some funny moments. But we made it and that counts.

Somewhere during the week, I found a book in the church which had an Czech name on it “Písně duchovní” – in english “Spiritual songs”. It is actually a hymnal, that was used widelly in Slovakia from the 17th century until the last century. Even to this day, it is used in some congregations. It was written by an author from the region I’m from (Silesia) Jiří Třanovský (Georgius Tranoscius). That was a huge catch. It is an important part of Slovak lutheran herritage. I was very surprised and happy to see this book right here and I told the people from the congregation to bring their books if they wanna know what they are.

I asked pastor Joe about the youth and they weren’t able to start it after covid. So I decided to help them. In my congregation in Czechia, I lead our youth group and have some experience with youth. We shall start meeting up from August. We need to find a good leader, since I will leave in September. Please, pray for that.

This week is 4th July week, so nothing is really going on at church, but on Tuesday, we had a small party, with burgers, hot dogs, cake, good beer etc. It was nice to meet some new people. The food was very tasty and I played badminton the whole day, so I was quite tired in the evening.

This week, there were again many blessings. I am glad that God lead me through all these things. Glory be to Him! Be thankfull for His guidance, His word, redemption and everything he gives to us. We are sinners, but God still dind’t reject us. He didn’t reject Peter even if he said he does not know Jesus. He calls us to repentace, forgiveness and service every day. And even I have sinned many times since I’ve come here, yet he didn’t give up. Praise be to God!

Thank you very much for reading my post. You can share it or comment on it. I hope to see you next time! God bless.