Hello, my friends! It’s me again with another update from my time in Ohio!

We started Monday going to church, same as every day. We had some packages to open! Pastor ordered soccer darts that we can use for carnival and church picnic. So we unpacked it, inflated it, and tried it. It was really great! I love it! Looking forward to playing it with someone! We went for lunch to the Chinese restaurant Dragon Gate. The honey garlic chicken was really good. I love Chinese! After that, we went to visit Ema. I bet you can’t guess her age! She is 107 years old! That is the oldest person that I ever met! She has problems hearing so we needed to talk really loud but unless that she was doing great. She even remembered Lord’s Prayer in Slovak. It was a really nice visit. In the afternoon Skip, pastor, Garth, and I went to The Brew Kettle to bottle the beer that we made a few weeks ago. It actually turned out really good. I like it! And if you look closer you can see that there is a photo of me and Joeline on the beer!

On Tuesday we went to get coffee at Duck Rabbit and talk about lessons for next Sunday. Pastor and I had really interesting conversations about some theological concepts. I enjoy discussing these things. We also had a burial for Millie. We did the funeral service on Sunday but the burial was on Tuesday, so we did a little service in the cemetery. It was interesting for me to see the differences between funerals and burials in the Czech Republic and here in the US. The evening was devoted to book reading. It was the last day before the book study so I needed to finish reading the book.

We started Wednesday preparing things for the carnival. We went through the prizes for games and raffle and saw what we got and what we need to buy. We started doing Wednesday lunch in Applebees every week. So we get one of the waitresses every week. We always talk to her a lot. It was weird for me at first because we don’t speak to waitresses that much. And she even remembered that I want my drink without ice! 😀 We visited Marge in the afternoon. She is a nice lady. She is looking very much for next Sunday’s Slovak Sokol farm picnic that she wants to attend. She promises me that she will take me dancing polka on the picnic. 😀 The funny thing is that she is 90-something and has a problem walking. I am wondering how she will dance. 😀 The evening was all about book study. As I promised you last week, I will tell you something about the book at the end. There were 8 people who read the book and we all discussed it together. After the book study, I got to watch Arsenal’s (my favorite soccer team) first preseason

On Thursday we were at the Redeemer again doing a program for kids. I got to do music with the kids again. It was a wonderful time again. This is me playing kid’s baseball before the kids came. It was fun! But it was reaaaaally hot outside. In the evening we went to a minor league baseball game in Akron with Andersons family! Ray, one of the church members was invited to sing the national anthem before the game. I really did enjoy it! It was my first time at a baseball game. It is a slower game than other sports but it is nice. Sadly we were caught in a really big storm so the game ended in the 6th inning (normally a baseball game has 9 innings). The ride back with pastor Eric was scary because we drove directly through the storm. The photo on the left is me and Liam with the Akron Rubber Ducks mascot!

On Friday we did some work in the office and then we visited Gayle. I don’t remember that much of what happened on Friday, to be honest. But I did go for a nice walk in the neighborhood. It was 6,5km (4 miles). I enjoyed it!

On Saturday we had a premarital session with Zach and his fiance. Zach is a guy from pastor Eric’s last church and he asked him to do the wedding. It was a nice meeting.

Sunday was church. I did a song before the beginning of the service (this week I did Christ Is Made A Sure Foundation), liturgy, and prayers. In the afternoon I went to a winery with Dave and Sue Grlicky, Cindy, Vlad (he is one of the people here that can actually speak Czech, so we speak Czech a lot), pastor Eric, and his daughter Leah. It was a great time! We had wine slushies. I am not the biggest of them but I tried. 😀

So the book that we read this month was Have a little faith by Mitch Albon. There were two stories in the book that were combined at the end. It was a true story. There was an old Rabbi and charismatic pastor Henry. I did enjoy the book. You should read it! I liked one of the thoughts that we talked about on the book study. Why our prayers are so formal? Because we are always polite to strangers. We should be honest with God in our prayers. He should not be a stranger to us!

Have a great week! God be with you!