Hi! My name is Tomasz Przeczek (nobody here in the US can pronounce my surname correctly :D). Today I will try to introduce myself a little bit for you who don’t know me.

I am 20 years old guy from the Czech Republic. I live in a village on the east side of my country called Horní Suchá. I am studying theology at the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. I just finished the second year of my five years of study. After my studies, I will hopefully become a pastor.  I am a member of the Silesian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (SCEAV) and my congregation is in Albrechtice. To list some of my hobbies… I am a big sports fan! I love watching and playing all kinds of sports. My favorite is probably soccer. I also love music. I enjoy playing guitar and singing. I also play the clarinet. The last thing I want to list is that I love serving in my church. I am a youth leader at my congregation and I am also a part of a youth department of our church. So I work with youth but I love serving my congregation and my church in a lot different ways.

 

When I first heard of the opportunity to go to the US through the Student Immersion Program, I thought that it is a great opportunity for me to learn new things, improve my English skills and just travel and explore a new culture. At the end of April, I was accepted to this program and I learned that my host church will be in Brooklyn, Ohio.

I started my journey on the 22nd of June in Vienna, Austria. My dad, sister,  brother, and I went to Vienna a few days earlier to visit the city and enjoy the last moments together before I am leaving. My mom sadly couldn’t go with us because of work. We enjoyed our stay in Viena. It is a beautiful city!

My flight left at 10:40 (CET). The flight from Vienna to New York was 9 hours long but it was very enjoyable because we got a lot of food and I watched a few really good movies.  When I arrived in New York I had just a little time to catch my second flight to Cleveland so I was running through the whole airport to make the boarding. In the end, the flight to Cleveland was delayed by an hour so I made it. I arrived at the Cleveland airport at around 5 PM (local time). My journey was in total 12 hours long. At the airport, I was greeted by pastor Eric. He is the pastor of the congregation in Brooklyn, Ohio. We then went to a Mexican restaurant for my first meal in the United States.

For these first few days, I am staying at the pastor’s house but tomorrow is my first move. For the next month, I will be living with Donna (the church secretary) and her husband Skip. I am looking forward to it even though I will need to put myself a little bit out of my comfort zone. They have a dog and a cat. The thing is…I am afraid of animals but I wanted to overcome this fear for some time so this will be a good opportunity to do so. Today we went to Skip’s and Donna’s house to meet the dog and it was better than I expected.

My first interaction with some church members was on Friday. The church held a rummage sale (which was huge by the way) in the church gym. So there were plenty of people helping out with it. In the evening pastor Eric took me to a dinner at Winking Lizard.

Saturday morning was all about the rummage sale again. It ended at 1 PM and we packed all the things that didn’t sell to boxes and bags. The things will be then distributed to people in need. On Friday and Saturday, Garth made delicious food for all the people that were helping with the rummage sale. It is called Živánská and apparently, it is a Slovak traditional food that they make here although I didn’t hear about it before I got here. I also helped Garth bake homemade Kielbasi for Sunday lunch.

This weekend there is a Jazz festival happening in Cleveland and since I am a music fan, Katie and Andrew took me there. We had a great evening listening to quality jazz music and walking nearby Lake Erie. I enjoyed it very much! Also, I got to see a little bit of downtown Cleveland.

Today was my first Sunday at the church. For the first Sunday, I just sat and listen but as the pastor said, all of the next Sundays a will be somehow involved in the service. After the church, we had lunch together. It was a great time and I enjoyed getting to know all of these wonderful people in this church. They told me about all the exciting activities that they had prepared for me while I am here.

Every week in my blog I will write some thought or something that someone said that was stuck in my head for the whole week. For this week I will say two things. The first thing was said by many people in the church. “Whatever we are doing together at the church, we always have fun!” I really like this mindset. For me, the church is just such a wonderful community of people that love Christ and we should really enjoy spending time together in the presence of our Lord and Savior! The second thought came from Skip when we were at their house. Pastor Eric’s sermon today was about trust and he mentioned the story about Jesus healing Lepra even though it is contagious if you touched it. Afterwards, Skip commented on it and said that Jesus didn’t get lepra by touching this guy but this guy was healed by Jesus’s touch. Jesus is powerful but we must let him “touch us” and trust him to be healed. It got me thinking about this for the rest of the day.

 

This is everything from me today. I hope you enjoyed my first post about my summer in the US. Have a blessed week and see you next Sunday!