I'm in Prague! :)

I'm here!!! Hooray!

Early this morning I caught the tram to the Amsterdam Centraal Station which brought me to the Amsterdam airport for my flight to Prague. Thankfully I made it there with all of my heavy luggage and found the SkyEurope desk. :) Checked in and received no extra charges for my bags, wow, wow! Excellent. (It is a good thing that I was flying with that company today because Mr. Potma informed me that they have just gone bankrupt!) I was able to board the place at 9:10am from an outdoor entrance staircase. Announcements were in English, Dutch and Czech, hooray!! The long-awaited day of going to the Czech-speaking land has arrived! (...How wonderful it will be when I will be able to understand the fast-speaking announcements in the Czech language.) The flight was smooth and I was able to go over my copy of "the Four Spiritual Laws" in Czech. There were many tourists from a variety of backgrounds on the flight, including a family from Brasil...

In Prague!! My bags came through just fine, I changed money to Czech Crowns and Mr. Potma was there to meet me (even though the plane arrived early.) I was thankful that he came with his van because the neighborhood that we are living in is on the opposite side of Prague from the airport-over half an hour away. We drove past a lot of residences built during the communist era. Mr. Potma said that the majority of the population of the country lives in that type of apartment building now and each distrit is like it's own community with all types of services including grocery stores, pharmacies and all other necessities...except churches. The Skalka neighborhood is one of the very least evangelized districts in the country. With over 15,000 people that means that at least 15 more churches would be needed to meet the ratio of 1/1000 at which an area of a country is considered "reached" with the gospel message that God made us, that we sinned against God, that God loves us and sent His son to die for us and that those who believe in Jesus will not perish but will have eternal life! ...So it is a good thing that we are blessed with the opportunity to do ministry here.

The Potma home is on a nice residential street in a quieter part of the city. But, Mr. Potma showed me that across the highway bridge there is a very modern mall, wow! I was not expecting to have such a nearby location to purchase items such as groceries, medicine and cell-phone products.

I met each of the members of the Potma family as they arrived home from school. (This week is the last week of school for the kids for the year.) We had a plesant lunch of soup, homemade Czech potato salad and tasty bread with cheese and meat, mmm. The family is so very welcoming and I received a nice tour of the Potma home (including their backyard with fruit trees, tree-swings and a tree fort) and then was able to play some games with Elise. Also went over the TEAM handbook/procedures/guidelines with Mark and Gretchen and learned about the schedule for the summer and fall. Yay! It is good to know what the tentative plan might be. :)

I am looking forward to a wonderful adventure this year!