{"id":703,"date":"2018-07-23T17:43:33","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T22:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/?p=703"},"modified":"2018-07-23T18:34:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T23:34:56","slug":"a-week-full-of-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/?p=703","title":{"rendered":"A Week Full of Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Hello, it’s me. I was wondering what to write to this weekly update, but first of all let’s see what to start with. The watch hands go very fast, time flies, days go and three weeks passed already since I arrived to this lovely town.\u00a0 As the name of this blog says, this week was full of surprises – I have only selected three topics of which I will write about this time. As I was surprised, I did not have the time to sit down for a laptop and write as I had. Not all of this week’s events were positive. What’s worst, the week behind us has begun with a terrible event.<\/p>\n

After the Sunday service when we had baptism at Lebanon Lutheran (check-out my last blog) I had spare time afternoon so I prepared myself \u00a0a sermon for the \u00a09th<\/sup> Sunday after Pentecost. After I was done, me and Kathy went for a \u201crefreshing\u201d walk to the lake with one of her friend. Monday, July 16th<\/sup> \u2013 I woke up, surprisingly isn\u2019t it? New week in front of me. Sitting on a terrace after the lunch, just made myself a fresh cup of coffee when a message popped up on my phone. It \u00a0was from my mom, notifying me that my uncle, her brother, had passed away. I felt really down that I’m this far away from home and that I couldn’t be there with my family at these moments. I didn’t tell anyone about recent events in my family \u2013 I just told that to pastor Doug; no one else knew that.\u00a0I told this to my hosting congregation during yesterday’s sermon – it was my first sermon in English. In my sermon, I focused on the text of Luke’s Gospel (15th chapter) the parable of a lost sheep and I tried (based on the knowledge of the “American preaching”) to tell this story of sheep with comparing it with life of my uncle (the lost one = found one).<\/p>\n

Let’s head to other, more suiting events of the week.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday pastor Doug and I were visiting several of our members in the retirement home. I was never too fond of hospitals, retirement homes, and similar institutions, because they bring me fear, pain and overall I feel the helplessness inside. The man sees every kind of suffering of others there, and although he wants to help them, he does not know how. My mom works at similar institution back in Serbia. We met a lady who has Alzheimer’s on Tuesday, and I introduced myself to her around 5 to 6 times in about 10 minutes \u2013 What to say about that? I’m glad that pastor took me to these visits. People that pastor is visiting are our old members of church. Pastor Dough regularly visit them. Also on Tuesday I went with Scott and some of Lebanon Lutheran members to concert of Tommy Foster in\u00a0Montague, MI. (Tommy Foster\u00a0is son of The Rev. Larry Foster, the former pastor of Lebanon Lutheran Church in Whitehall, MI).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On Friday, during early hours, Kathy and Meg (member of Church council) took me to trip to Chicago, IL. It was a really great time and I’m grateful that I could been there with them. Chicago is very big city and so we chose only few places we want to see\/visit: Bah\u00e1’\u00ed House of Worship, several museums and galleries. On Friday (late evening) we went to Willis Tower \u2013 to look at the beauty of night Chicago. I thought I was the only one who is disappointed with this view. When we were near this tall building sky was clear … but when we went up we saw only the clouds and the minimum of the city. Then I found out that not only me but the ladies who were with me were disappointed too. However, it was only we who was disappointed about this, because everyone was doing these “crazy” photos on skydeck<\/em> and don’t care about clouds. On Saturday we met up with David Hendrixon. David is from Whitehall. He is a very nice and hard-working guy and I’m glad that I had a chance to get to know him. Together we were at lunch and we had (what else should a tourist in Chicago try?!) Stuffed<\/em> pizza<\/em> from Giordano’s. OMG. It was the best, most delicious, most charming pizza I ever had! Yummy!<\/p>\n

However, there was another surprise for me … but a surprise just because it came quickly \u2013 otherwise it is a routine. Yesterday, I moved to a new family.<\/p>\n

This week began Day camp at Lebanon Lutheran. I won\u2019t write about this. I need to save some space for next blog, haha.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Catch you later. Bye.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, it’s me. I was wondering what to write to this weekly update, but first of all let’s see what to start with. The watch hands go very fast, time flies, days go and three weeks passed already since I arrived to this lovely town.\u00a0 As the name of this blog says, this week was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americantime","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":710,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}