I know... been a while!

It's been a bit longer than usual since the last post.
The transition into the holiday months of July and August has come with some changes which have thrown us off our rhythm. The primary factor has been the move from our apartment on Náměstí Svobody to the guest quarters in the home of Aleš and Veronika Pomikálkovi; also conveniently located downtown Letohrad. When we rented our apartment, the landlady (also a local real estate agent), said the property had been up for sale for over a year and there always was the possibility we might have to leave.  However, it was a good gamble since the property had been available for a while and even if sold, it would take a couple months to clear the loan processes here.  We did not anticipate the probable establishment of a more 'acceptable' price and a cash deal. But a cash sell it was and we needed to vacate prior to the end of June. We are ever so grateful to Aleš and Veronika in opening their home even in the midst of their ongoing renovations ... they deserve a medal for rescuing the vagabonds.

The 'eviction' also came in the midst of the most intensive programming so far; we had nine days straight committed to lectures, moving, and discussion preparation.  But alas, our program schedule has since altered a bit with the holiday reality of our attendees taking time away from Letohrad.  We condensed our Tuesday and Wednesday obligations into a single evening, Tuesday.  However, as a counterbalance, we have obligated to present discussions for four consecutive nights at the ECCB church in Brandýs nad Labem - Stará Boleslav during the week of English to the Church (ETTC) when the FirstPres group is here in Letohrad.  Otherwise we have obligations to ECCB related camps and other commitments for July.

The Setup

The Process

We have been fortunate to have had another couple national holidays in a row and were treated to a wonderful trip into Poland; I will share some of the highlights very soon but thought a quick look at a highlight right here would be good.  We popped into the church one morning to drop off some things and ran into a 'sweet' process.  Radek, Jiřina and some friends were systematically robbing some bees of their hard fought efforts.  Radek has several commercial bee hives located just outside of Letohrad, one of which is on the upstairs landing of the church. The group had recently removed the honey-ladened combs from all the hives and were systematically extracting the honey by an adapted centrifugal force apparatus (that means it spins very fast). There was a quite large bucket of pure honey sitting there in the church kitchen as the process was nearing completion.  We had a chance to enjoy the final extraction efforts but managed to extract ourselves before the awesome task of cleaning up began!

Thanks Guys!!

Bucket of Good Goo