Welcome to my blog!

You probably don’t know me, if you do, you may just skip the first few paragraphs. Or you can just read them and evaluate if I’m telling the truth! However, if you don’t, I’ll introduce myself a bit. My name is Samuel Pecka. Everybody pronounces my last name wrongly here, they seem to be forgetting the “c” part. But that’s alright, I don’t blame them, as it happens to be a thing in English to read the “ck” combination just as a “k”. We read “c” as you would read “tz” in “waltz”. Then it’s followed by “k”. However, that’s not what matters to me, I’m fine with the English pronunciation, just wanted to give you some insight into our beautiful language.

So back to the introduction part. I’m 23 years old and I live in this tiny village called Lubina in the north-western part of Slovakia. Our family is kind of enormous, as I have six younger siblings. Five of them are brothers, we have just one sister. When I think about this, I have to ask my dad if, by any chance, Psalm 127 doesn’t happen to be his favorite.

I’m studying Lutheran Theology at the Commenius University in Bratislava. You know, the thing about Slovakia is that we don’t exactly have what you call a “seminary”. We just do five years of college, we even skip the Bachelors Degree straight to the Masters. However, I must mention that we have our own little dorm where we do devotions every morning and evening and also a Service two times a week, so there’s also that “seminary” part, kind of. By the way, I just finished my fourth year there.

Now, this is the part which you should return to if you know me and you just skipped the previous ones. I decided to apply to this program runned by the Slovak Zion Synod, which is a part of the ELCA, that is Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Soon after an interview with Bishop Wilma Kucharek I got a positive response, for what I am very grateful to the Synod and, most importantly, to God.

So I packed my suitcase and left Slovakia on June 30th early in the morning. The plane took off from an airport in Vienna, straight to the Newark airport in New York. I got a bit spooked when my boarding pass didn’t work at the scanner and I was called to the counter where the airline employees were seated, but they just told me that I got an emergency exit seat and if anything happened, I’ll have to help the crew with evacuation. You know, I’m not afraid of flying even though this was, technically, my first time (I was on a plane when I was two years old and I don’t quite remeber any of it, then I had this recreational flight when I was about twelve, but it took only fifteen minutes), but at that moment I just prayed that I will be useless to the crew.

Thankfully, the whole anxiety lasted for about a minute. Takeoff felt really good, sort of like a roller-coaster. I decided not to sleep during the flight, as the arrival to Pittsburgh (I’ll get to that part) was scheduled to something after 6pm and I didn’t want the jet lag to hit me. During the flight, I read one and a half of the seven Narnia books. The landing was even more amazing feeling than the takeoff, I feel like I need to fly more often. Then I cleared the passport control and headed for the customs. I waited for the officer to call my name while all the people in the waiting room, including some of the officers, watched the World Cup match between Uruguay and Portugal. I’m not much of a football (or as you call it here, soccer) guy, so I just continued reading. Finally, the officer called my name, asked some questions, put a stamp in my passport and said “Welcome to the United States”.

Then I got to the gate for my connecting flight to Pittsburgh. It was a few minutes late, but the pilot somehow managed to land even earlier than scheduled. I’m not sure, but the speed limits probably don’t apply eight kilometers (five miles or twenty-six thousand feet, I’m not going for inches) above the ground, so that may be the explanation.

After landing in Pittsburgh, I went to take my suitcase and look for Pastor David Jones from the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in East Pittsburgh, who was waiting for me at the airport. Unfortunately, Pastor Dave was looking for me too, and we somehow crossed each other for almost an hour. Thankfully, he found me and introduced me to his neighbor Tony, who went with him to the airport.

Our first stop was at Joe’s house. Joe is an elderly military veteran who has breathing problems. The weather was extremely hot, so the church provided him with a portable air conditioner, which stopped working after a few hours, so we went to try to repair it. The tiny screen on the unit said “tf”, which I somehow quickly understood as “tank full”. You know, every air conditioning unit seems to get a lot of moisture condensation on the heat pump and most of the portable ones store the water in a tank, which needs to be emptied once in a few hours. So we fixed that and went directly to a high school graduation party held for Sydney, also a Pastor’s neighbor. Then we went to the Pastor’s house, where I met his wife Ella. I didn’t get to meet their daughter because she was sick, but we’ll meet in August when I go back to Pittsburgh.

So that was a short version of my Saturday. Don’t worry, I won’t write that much about the other days, at least I hope so. In the Sunday morning the Pastor showed me around the church, then we had two services and I met a few people from the church. I immediately became friends with Pierce, who promised to show me some of the Mexican restaurants in the area. Then, after the lunch, I packed my bags and Pastor Dave drove me halfway to Cleveland. In a big firework store we mer Pastor Eric, who took me to his church for a few weeks.

Pastor Eric Markovich serves at the Dr Martin Luther Church in Brooklyn, Ohio. Brooklyn is kind of a suburb to Cleveland, it’s not even half an hour from the downtown. For now I live at his house, but I’ll spend time with two other families in the church. During the Sunday evening we just talked about our churches, ourselves, my studies and similar things, then I went to bed. In the morning we went to the office at the church and Pastor Eric showed me the whole building, which is kind of enormous. They even got their own gym! However, then Pastor got a call. One of the members of the church, Bill, passed away. So we went directly to the hospital where he died and we met his son Bob there. Bill had a problem with his kidneys, but he wanted to meet me, since he was one of the very few members of the church that spoke Slovak. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to that, but at least he’s already with the Heavenly Father.

Right from the hospital we went to visit Bill’s elderly sister Viola, who is 92 and lives with her mentally challenged son. Fortunately, they both accepted the sad news quite well.

During the week I met many people from the church. We had a dinner with Donna, the church secretary, her daughter Anna and Donna’s husband Skip, who is the congregation president. On Tuesday we had a three hour long visit at the funeral home with Bob and his brother Bill Jr. to arrange everything for their father’s funeral. Then I went to the dinner and a movie theater with Kim and Kenny, a couple with whom I will be staying for a few weeks. On Wednesday we had a dinner at Bob’s house. He cooks pretty well, I have to say that. He showed us some old photo albums of his father, one of them was from their trip in Slovakia in the 90s. Then, Wednesday beig the 4th of July a.k.a. the Independence Day, we went to see some fireworks with Pastor Eric. The fireworks we went to were at the Bay Village, one of the suburbs, but since it’s on the coast of the Lake Erie, we even got tonsee the downtown ones. Just from a distance, but still.

On Thursday we had another lunch with Skip and Donna, then one very happy event – a wedding rehearsal.

Friday was kind of a “mixed feelings day”. We were at Bill’s memorial in the funeral home, where I met some people from his family and I listened to their stories about the man, how he enlisted to the Air Force during the Korean war, so he didn’t get drafted to the Army. But then the happy part came, a wedding of Pat and Katlyn. I don’t know them very well, actually we just got introduced at the rehearsal the day before, but I wish them a lots of blessings, love and mutual understanding. At their wedding, I met two elderly gentleman who spoke Slovak, so we talked a bit about their origins and the current situation in our country. And I actually git IDd for the first time when getting a beer at the wedding, so I just thanked the lady behind the bar for being the first server that didn’t make me feel old.

Today (Saturday) was a hard day, as Bill’s funeral took place. Which I forgot to mention, I had just a few days to learn the ELCA liturgy, because I was helping out at the funeral service. Then we went to the cemetery and since Bill was a military veteran, I got to see the flag-folding for the first time. I’d rather have a chance to talk to Bill than see his flag being folded, but I believe that we will meet one day in the place where the eternal light shines.

One more think I got to do today was that I got an opportunity to attend the Coffee Roasters Club meeting here in Cleveland, where I made a few friends.

My start here has been a bit rough with going throug fixing the AC, lots of travels, meetings, a funeral and a wedding in just one week. But I was kind of ready for that, I didn’t come to relax, but to get to know people and the church here in America and also to get some experience.

I’m glad that I can be here and I want to thank the Slovak Zion Synod, Dr Martin Luther Church in Brooklyn, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in East Pittsburgh, all their members and the Almighty God for this opportunity.

Now as I’m finishing this article just before the midnight I remembered that I should introduce myself tomorrow at the service, so I’ll probably prepare a few lines for that.

So I wish you a good night, or a day full of blessings!*

*depends on the time of day you’re reading this article at, of course