You guys, I don't know if I can keep you interested for a whole week.  Today was marked by our children's sickness and Mark and me meeting with a couple different people.  Try not to fall asleep before you get to the bottom, because the coolest part of my day happened just a couple minutes ago.  

Abigail didn’t want to be excluded from all the fun so she woke up sick too.  All the girls stayed home and watched movies in Czech all day.  I’m still trying to figure out the Czech cultural norms for sick days--from what we have observed, it is generally frowned upon to send your child to school with any sniffles at all.  Additionally, we see that typically children and adults alike stay home all week when they are sick.  This has been a massive adjustment for Mark and me, as like all good American parents, our parents sent us to school everyday no matter what--strep throat, chicken pox, whatever.

While the girls sang along to Ledové Království (Frozen) I ran out to meet with my friend Blaža for a quick hour.  She and her husband Honza lead our church’s youth group and she has a new baby son.  We get together every couple weeks to talk ministry and motherhood. She’s so encouraging to me that I forgot to take a picture while at her house.  

Meanwhile, Mark met on Skype with one of his language partners named Milan.  Mark initially met Milan through italki.com--a free language exchange website where you can find native speakers of most languages who are also learning a second language.  Every week Mark and Milan meet for several hours so that Mark can practice Czech and Milan can practice English.  Milan is retired and lives a few hours from Brno.  He is passionate about learning English and studies it relentlessly!  He and Mark have formed a good friendship and regularly speak about spiritual things during their time on Skype.   

In addition to language study, Mark worked on his preparations for preaching at Koza when we visit Okinawa next month.  Here he’s reading “Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ” by John Piper.  Notice in Mark’s office that he has both John Calvin and John Elway looking down on him. I feel like these two wall hangings, along with the Hello Kitty coloring by Hannah, exemplify Mark’s values well. 

This afternoon I discovered that our dog Piper had taken my bag from last night’s Bible study off of the piano bench, busted out the leftover zucchini paleo mush, and ate it!  At first I was  irritated by her obvious breech in boundaries.  But as you can see, she was very repentant.  And actually, better for her to eat it than anyone else.  Blegh. (PS: yes, those are slippers in my bag!  It's important to be prepared, as Czechs are very strict about not bringing outdoor shoes inside--even more strict than Japan.)

Before dinner, Mark had his weekly meeting with Tomáš, a friend from church.  The men meet at a nearby coffee shop for language practice and mutual encouragement. 

This evening I was blessed by two things.  The first was Facetiming with Rebekah.   Just seeing her face for a quick catchup was so nice. Isn’t she cute?

The second blessing was that I got a sneak peek at the brochure for the conference at which I am speaking in June.  There’s my mug with all the other speakers!  So that’s fun.  Mark hadn’t realized until just now that the main speaker is Steven J. Lawson.  He totally flipped out and informed me of what an excellent reformed author and gospel-centered speaker Lawson is.  Wow.  I feel really humbled to share a venue with Lawson and all these other great men!

Tomorrow, we'll see what we can do to spice things up around here.  Like I said on Day #1--nothing fancy--just a very normal week in the life of Oshmanovi!