Baptism
It's the Sunday after the 'Church Camp's' FirstPres'ers arrival in Letohrad the day before. The church
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| The Family |
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| The Baptised |
is full--with quite a few church members, guests and not an insignificant amount of Americans. The event is the baptism of Ondřej, Daniela and Samuel, the children of Aleš and Veronika Pomikálkovi. It was quite a significant family event and the festivities continued on after the service with an impressive dinner layout and lots of conversation interspersed with running feet. Great! The baptism itself was something I really enjoyed. I, as mentioned before,
grew up in the south as a Southern Baptist and, consequently, was baptized by full immersion at the 'age of accountability'; down the steps of the baptistry, into the water, under completely and splutteringly up and out. At First Pres I see mostly infants up front with a bit of water sprinkled conservatively on the head (cold??? I often wondered). This was somewhere in between. Jiřina, the pastor, called each child up separately and using a healthy pitcher of water (again, warm?? cold??) doused each three times with an ample amount of water... will never forget the waterfall off each child's head. However, the big smiles of each of the children, as well as their parents, said it all!
Birds
Yep, right here in Letohrad, a collection of exotic birds on public display in a quite impressive cage
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| Local Czech Speakers |
complex. The building and cage system is owned by the city of Letohrad but the birds and associated support equipment (not an insignificant amount) are privately owned. In fact, the primary person in the ownership arrangement is very involved in the highly competitive endeavor of raising white canaries. Actually, I'm told, two white canaries cannot breed so a standard yellow one is involving in the process and the manipulation of the final 'shade of white' is the governing criteria for a champion. This guy is reputedly up there in the higher echelons of the competition - we
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| Joey and Mom |
were not offered to view these as they are a bit exclusive. B.J. and I had a chance to go behind the scenes of the public cages and get a close up of the process. This was organized by Jana Faltejskova who works with a private company supporting the city. As you might suspect, its kinda cold here in the winter and these birds are all tropical varieties so precautions are taken; they are not allowed in the elements in the winter but have free reign of the outside cages otherwise. Two of the largest squawkers (yea, I got a lot of formal data, verbally, during the visit, but I've burned far too many brain cell to remember them) speak Czech and will give you the strangest head twist if you throw English at them. Of interest, we were briefed on a plan to turn an adjoining building into a aviary within the next couple years... will look forward to checking back on that later. Oh, yes, adjacent to the bird cages is the kangaroo enclosure -- what, I didn't mention the kangaroos?? There is a mother/child there with the added interesting point that the joey is an albino. Pretty cool actually... or does that expression point out the large amount of time I've had to burn up those lost brain cells mentioned earlier?!
Brandýs
OK, it's Brandýs time. When we first arrived here in March we ran into Petr Slama who is a professor in the Theology Department at Charles University in Prague. Petr has been integral in
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| Intermediate Group |
Presbyterian/ECCB partnership since the beginning and continues to be active at the Czech national level. He is also a member of the local ECCB church in Brandýs nad Labem. As such, Petr asked if we would please visit his congregation while we were in country. We, of course, agree that would be fine if we could find a good time to do so....and that optimum time turned out to be the week the First Pres Church Camp was being held in Letohrad.
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| Advanced Group |
So, B.J. and I left that Sunday immediately after the baptism events. We had previously met with the point of contact, Ivana Adámcová, in Prague to organize the visit (Petr knew already that he would not be available during that time frame and had Ivana take the lead.) We arrived late afternoon Sunday and met with a group of congregation members that evening for a presentation on Annapolis, First Pres and its volunteer activities; understanding that the group would not all have English capability the session was translated by Ivana. Ivana and family, husband and two daughters, welcomed us into their home for the stay and went beyond expectations to make us comfortable. The rest of the week, Monday through Wednesday, we held discussion sessions in the church with Ivana's English group (not all church members) on various topics we had
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| The Big Kids and the Little Kids |
generated while in Letohrad. There were two hour and half sessions each evening, the first for Intermediate and the second for Advanced English speakers. Our expectations were more than met since the attendees were interested, talkative and appreciative of our efforts. Also on Tuesday morning we met with some of the children for a couple hours fun. The rest of the time we spent in local tours of the very interesting twin city area of Brandýs nad Laben - Staré Boleslavi. The two cities were forced under the same administrative blanket during the Soviet era because Stare Boleslavi was a major Catholic center and pilgrimage point from the 11th century and the Soviets wanted to disrupt the Catholic influence by subjugating it to the adjacent municipality. One of the local brochures identified the twin cities area as "an oasis of calm located in near proximity to the capital city (Prague)". While calm may be a bit of a stretch with the main road almost constantly jammed with traffic, I will admit the four days was quite enjoyable and fulfilling.
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