Hi! I am back with another post about my stay in the USA.

This week was interesting because we did many hospital visits, we celebrated the 4th of July and my birthday and I also had my first sermon here in Brooklyn. Let me walk you through everything that happened.

Monday was a crazy and funny day. We started pretty early. Pastor Eric picked me up at 6:30 AM because Janey (I wrote about her in a previous post) was having surgery. We thought that the surgery is happening at Parma Hospital, as she told us. But when we arrived nobody knew about Janey having surgery there. They checked multiple times but still couldn’t find Janey on a surgery list. Pastor called a few other hospitals and finally, we found out that the surgery is taking place at MetroHealth Hospital. So we rushed to the car and drove to Metro to be there in time to pray with Janey before the surgery. When we arrived we didn’t know where to park. They are rebuilding the whole hospital and the parking spaces that pastor always parked in were gone. We parked in a parking building but the entrance to the hospital was nowhere near. So we went back to the car and we drove around the whole complex trying to find a better parking spot. We didn’t find anything and ended up back in the parking building where we parked at the beginning. Then the start for finding the entrance began. We went to the main entrance but it was closed. There were directions to go to a different door but that door was only for employees. So pastor Eric thought that we can get into the building through the emergency that was located on the other side of the hospital. We walked all the way there and made our way through the emergency room to the hospital. We were lost and the hospital was empty. We asked one guy for directions to the main desk and he was really confused but we somehow found the main desk. Guess what! It was empty! We found one woman and asked her for help. Guess what! It was her first day at the job! But she successfully navigated us to a place where we should go but we needed to go around the whole hospital once again. We walked 2,5km (1,5 miles) just to get to the right place. Another problem was spelling my name to get a visitor badge. I spelled it two times and the woman still got it incorrectly. I am used to people writing my name differently but I have never seen something like that. 😀 We went to see Janey but guess what. 😀 She was already in surgery. So we left. Got breakfast and went to visit Millie instead. We visited Millie also last week. Last week she was doing good in the hospital we talked a lot. This week everything has changed. I have never visited someone so many times in the hospital as we visited Millie this week. It was interesting and hard for me to see the differences between every visit. After we visited Millie, we tried to visit Janey once again. Guess what. She was still in the recovery room and we couldn’t visit her. So we went as planned to visit Ruth at her house. Ruth was a very active church member but has health issues now. We talked with Ruth about a lot of things for about 2 hours. It was a nice time. On Monday evening Skipp smoked a bison. I have never had bison meat but it was very delicious.

Tuesday was the 4th of July! America independence day. I went with Donna and her mom Ellen to visit Donna´s brother, Ellen´s son Kenny and his wife Kim (who are also members of the church). There were a few other people and we have lunch together. After lunch, we went on a walk to the lake. It was so beautiful! In the evening when we arrived back home we watched fireworks.

On Wednesday morning we went with pastor Eric to Duck Rabbit (coffee shop) to do our sermon preparation. It was my turn to preach this week. The main reading was from Matthew 11:16-19,25-30. After we finished thinking about readings for the upcoming Sunday we went to visit Millie and Janey again. This time Millie was moved to ICU (Intensive care unit – for my Czech friends – JIP). Janey on the other hand was doing great. She is always smiling! The surgery went well and she was out of the hospital on Thursday.

Thursday was the day that we went to Redeemer to do the kid´s program for the first time this summer. There were multiple places with different games or crafts. Pastor Eric and I had a music place. I played guitar and we sang with kids songs like This little light of mine, Jesus loves me or I have a joy, joy, joy. I think the kid´s liked that. Overall it was a good time but it was really, really hot outside.

Friday was the 7th of July which means…my birthday!!! And it was my 21st birthday which is a big deal in the US because you are allowed to drink alcohol. But the day started early. At 6 AM pastor picked me up and we went to see Linda before surgery in Lutheran Hospital. This time we went to the right hospital and we were there on time to pray with Linda before her surgery and then also to talk for a bit with her husband. After that, we went to get breakfast. Since it was my birthday I got a big breakfast including 3 cinnamon french toast, eggs, and bacon. Pastor was surprised that I didn’t put butter or maple syrup on my French toast. The reason is that maple syrup is just too sweet and has too many calories and all butters in the US are salted and I wanted to taste the cinnamon, not salt. 😀 If it was normal, unsalted butter, I would use that. Before lunch, we went to see Millie. She wasn’t doing good at all. It was hard seeing her like that. My mood was uplifted by our lunch. Last Sunday we made an announcement that people can join us for lunch or dinner to celebrate my birthday. At lunch there were 11 of us and at dinner 16! We did lunch at Brew Garden and dinner at Brew Kettle. It was a great time and I am so grateful to everybody that came! Some people even brought me presents! I mentioned to some people that while I am here I want to buy a LeBron James jersey from the time that he was playing here in Cleveland. To my surprise, I got it for my birthday! (The beer that I have in my hand in this photo is our Czech beer that I found in Giant Eagle and I was extremely happy because I think that the Czech beer is the best!)

We normally don’t work on Saturday but this time we did. We went to do some things in the office and to see Millie again and as always pray with her. It was the last time that I saw her. She passed away on Sunday afternoon. Rest of the day I spend finishing my sermon for Sunday.

On Sunday we went to church where before the church I sang a new hymn. This time it was Let us build a house. I and organist Jeff really enjoyed this song. I also did the liturgy as well but mainly I did my first sermon here in Brooklyn. I believe that God was using me for his work. After the church, we had great snacks and social time! Sunday afternoon I went with Skipp and Donna to the cemetery. We went to the Slovak Lutheran section and it was very interesting to me how people from Czechoslovakia who came here changed their names. Mostly it seems like they were changing it to pronunciation. For example Čuvaj to Chuvay. It was really interesting to me. I like going to cemeteries and reading all of the names. By the way, this cemetery didn’t look like I am used to. It looked more like a park but I loved it. After that, we went car shopping because Donna needs a new car. I love watching cars and was excited to find some non-American cars. I don’t like too much all the huge American SUVs and pickups. I found this amazing Subaru WRX STI 2021 that I instantly fell in love with.

The thought that was in my mind all week was something that I talked about in my sermon. We, people, have a lot of expectations about our lives. We want to control everything. So a lot of times we ignore God´s will for us. We can´t control everything. We need to trust God! I am glad that when I was deciding where to go to university in the end I didn’t ignore God’s calling. I also talked about it in the sermon that you can find on DML´s Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064638791769

Have a blessed week and try to seek God´s will for your life! I will be back with my update next week.