I suppose this has been on the to-do list, it has been a week since I got back from last weekend in Prague, Czech Republic. I got to go with the Chapel-on-post from the 16th-20th. A couple of things I wanted to rant/notate before I told you all (y'all is not an English word). First thing that has come to my mind is the idea and strange reference we make to missions as mission trips. This is probably an issue of semantics but let's see where it goes.
Something the Army has indoctrinated into me is what a mission is. Everything has a mission, no matter where it is or what it is, the objective is to complete the mission. I really do mean a mission can be any and everything, it defined from everywhere from "Take that hill!" the infantry would be more likely to hear but it also includes such orders as "clean the latrine" or " rake those leaves". So in my atmosphere and experience of mission being an active noun I find it odd that so often the church speaks of mission trips. Common vernacular tends to see trip as some form of vacation that includes traveling to an unfamiliar area for a hopefully good time. When I hear "trip" in my mind (in the context of travel, not one's impact upon a hard surface) it is something of leisure and relaxation.
As you might see where this is going the term "mission trip" is a rather incompatible mix if the goal is evangelism. I am not saying that a mission should not contain some fun and enjoyment but the tone of leisure or relaxation should be far from the goals or highlights that are associated with a trip. In addition, from the many missions trips that I have seen return from and report the activities it seems much more fitting that the goals and activities accomplished were on the eternal level than that of R&R. I suppose the only reason it is deemed appropriate to include "trip" in the title of the event is to establish that traveling had occurred.
Okay, so the mission, first of all I am convinced that it was by divine intervention that I got to go due to my PT performance earlier in the week. In addition to the not-so-good status that was bestowed upon me, my permission slip (known as a DA 31) which clears me to go had been approved in less than 24 hours. For normal activities to be cleared by a DA 31 of that magnitude it is expected to be turned in 2 weeks prior to the departure. So by the time I got the green light I stuffed my bag and was already pumped for the journey I was to embark.
I carpooled with the Chaplain and his family, it was about 4.5 hours, I don't remember that much of it because I slept the last half of it. Gotta love those choir tours buses. If you can sleep on Bus 3 you can sleep anywhere. Anyways we arrived with very little of an idea of what we would be doing. I had no idea what kind of accommodations we would have; I was expecting a small hostel or something of that sort. We were working with a family of long term missionaries that have been working in Praha (how it is pronounced in Czech) for the last 6 years. We arrived at a rather nice hotel; I believe the brochure said it was 4-star.
I roomed with the chaplain's assistant, the only other enlisted person on the mission. The room was spacious enough and quite comfy. We ate breakfast and dinner at the hotel for simplicity. Aside from the Chaplain, all the others were service member wives and children. Enough of the children were at the picky phase that going out for food was deemed too taxing for the group.
Anyways, the first night we just settled in and hit the mall for dinner, we arrived around 2000. I got some Thai fast food that was pretty decent, better than any German attempts of Asian cuisine so far. After dinner we headed back to the hotel to get to bed and be ready for the first day. I woke up early to do some PT in the gym at the hotel (it was small but I managed), I figured if I kept up with PT it couldn't hurt. The typical European breakfast is a cold cut sandwich. Oh yea, Europeans don't really use condiments on their sandwiches. You might find mayo and ketchup but as a whole it is bread, veggies, meat and cheese. The pastries are much less sweet than American pastries. I like it, there is less guilt.
First we got travel passes; they were 3-day passes for any form of public transport (bus, tram, train, taxi). From there we traveled to the current area that the missionaries were praying for. They have been progressively praying for every street in the city, and it is a big city. Bryan and I (the chaplain's assistant) teamed up for one area while the others also broke up and covered designated areas. As we walked through the residential complexes I was reminded of pictures from the Romania missions I have seen, the housing complexes were very simple and depressing to look at. Some of them were painted in very bright colors for some form of color. The stamp of communism is still very much on the city. We walked throughout the area; I'd say covered 6-8 blocks and stopped to pray at every complex. For the most part there were not many people around. At one building an older lady attempted to talk to us. She asked what we were doing and being that we didn't know any Czech we tried the best we could. She spoke a little English and we told her we were praying. I think she asked if we were afraid. We weren't sure if she asked that because we were praying out in the open or if we were scared in that neighborhood. We continued through the neighborhood until the rendezvous time at the cafe. From there we went to the park where the children were occupied. We shared the prayer walk experiences then went back to the cafe for lunch. I had my first pepperoni and tuna pizza, it was... interesting. We all headed back to the hotel; once we got there Bryan and I were released for the day until dinner, which gave us roughly four hours. Everyone else stayed back for nap time.
We took the public transport to the main tourist square area, and walked about the area to scope out some of the sites. At the head was a museum; along the main street were statues and pieces of art. At some point we stopped at a store so Bryan could get some new shoes. We spent all our time that day scoping out the area and just taking pictures of architecture and exhibits. We made a big loop in our walking path until our time was up. I scoped out the museum hours and prices for future reference. We got back a little early for dinner. After dinner everyone headed out to one of the other notable tourist areas. From a distance we could see Prague Castle and a magnificent gothic cathedral. We walked along the river to the Charles Bridge (bridge used in Mission Impossible and the same river as seen in XXX, oh yea those racks that he held onto at the end of the movie, those are for night lights on the bridge). It was definitely a place we had to return to during the day for some more pictures. I took a little more than 100+ pictures each day.
The second day began rather similar to the first, after all the walking I was much more in favor of extending my hours of hibernation, no PT for day 2. We took a short bus to a small shopping center nearby the missionaries house. Our objective was to give away New Testaments in Czech, we were taught simple phrases to attempt to communicate with the people. It was limited to "Good Day", "For you", and "free". We were all in about a 1/4 mile area at different access points throughout the shopping center to offer. It was very difficult to give away the bibles. For me it seemed especially difficult being that I was not as Caucasian in skin tone as the others. Aside from being a foreigner, being non-white or European I consistently had a clear sense of being watched more carefully. Often I would walk near people and they would do the "shift the eyes and walk to the right or left" as I approached. In the duration I did get a bit of a small sit down conversation with a man that was on a bench drinking. He spoke a little English; I was able to give him a bible. We tried to talk but my Czech and his English were so limited it wasn't really possible. He told me where his grandfather lived; I think he was staying with him. It took us around 2.5 hours to pass out I think 35 or so bibles between the 5 of us that were out there. For lunch we went to McDonald's (I am certain I have been to more McDonald's in Europe than I have in the US in the recent 5 years), I think we did it for the simplicity of the kids.
From there Bryan and I were released, we got directions from Steve, one of the missionaries, on which tram to take to get to the cathedral. Once we got on we were riding the tram for probably close to an hour. Once we got to the castle we did the tourist thing of walking around, seeing the sights and taking a picture of everything in sight. We toured the Cathedral, caught the changing of the guards. It is interesting to watch military drills now. Bryan and I were noting how much it would not be fun to have to stand at attention like they do in the dress uniform. After we toured the castle, which happened to be one of the world's largest castles, we realized that we did not get directions on how to get back. We got back on the tram and got off on what I thought was familiar to where we were the night before for the train stop. We wandered around for a little while and quickly found the train stop. Once we got oriented we rushed back to Charles Bridge to get some daylight photos of the sights from the night before. We got back to dinner right on time. The public transport is very easy to learn and use.
I was rather glad we had relaxed the night before cause little to my knowledge Saturday was a tiring day. I didn't know what we were doing that morning so I did do some PT. The objective for Saturday was to meet some teenagers that attended a camp the missionaries put on and play with them. Not a difficult thing to do, I wish I had packed some athletic wear. The others for the most part picnicked in the park; the underlying objective was to get the residents comfortable with our presence. I got in on 3 basketball games. After the first one I was very tired. We played with Roman; I want to say he was around 12. Steve was teaching him how to play as we went along. After a short breather a couple more teenagers showed up. Thomas and Martin looked to be in the 17-18 range. By the end of the second game, I was exhausted. We weren't really keeping track of time we just kept playing till we were all too tired or thirsty that a 10-second break couldn't recharge us. We had lunch in the park, after a good hour of rest and rehydration we played another game. It was a bit shorter than the last one, but I was still exhausted. My team lost every game, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on purpose.
We headed back to the hotel after another stop at McDonald's. Once released Bryan and I hurried to get to the museum. We both expected it to be a museum about Czech history or Praha. It turned out to be a natural history museum. It was still cool I got lots of pictures of fossils and the sort. I kind of chuckled cause in the main lobby area there were a couple displays of trilobites, so I carefully took pictures of each one. As we toured the other section they had an entire room it seemed devoted to trilobite fossils. I got a picture of a stuffed Dodo too. When we got to the mineral displays I was a rock nerd in paradise. I tried to take a picture of every display area but the time crunch made me hurry through it a bit more. We cleared the museum and got back for dinner fashionably late, the one time that everyone else was on time. Being that it was the last night, the last objectives I wanted to see was the torture museum and I wanted to get a souvenir.
We did manage to get to the torture museum, it was rather unimpressive. I was really bummed that no cameras were allowed. At the museum and cathedral there was a sticker you needed to buy to take pictures. There were a couple of interesting exhibits but as a whole it was rather tame things like chastity belts, stocks. Granted there were a couple of interesting stretching and spiky chairs to encourage people to confess their transgressions. I found it rather pitiful that the sense of justice at the time was to accuse and torture until they confess, then execute. With the methods and apparatuses that they used it seemed that their "interrogation" methods could prompt someone to confess to anything. Below the torture museum we found a long walkway of souvenir shops. I got a figurine of the cathedral to use up the rest of my Czech currency. Then I saw a small shop with some knights. A goal I inadvertently made is that with every country I visit to find a knight figurine with a sword. Well, so far so good, but I was rather reluctant to get the one in Czech because compared to the ones I got in Venice it was a simple casting. It does look cool though.
Sunday morning we went to a Baptist Church, the service was in Czech so I dove into some scripture. The hymns were very difficult to try to sing to because there are so many symbols on their alphabet that the pronunciation was difficult to guess. I caught some tidbits of the translator but he was speaking so quietly as to not disturb those around us that it was very difficult to hear. One of the church members returned from a conference in Texas and had words of encouragement for the congregation. When we got back on the road I was DJing with Cody (the chaplain). He had some complications the night before that lead to little sleep. I can't remember if I did sleep on the way back, chances are pretty good that I did. I was disappointed that I didn't get a customs stamp or anything on my passport. Venice didn't have me pass through customs either. After getting back to base and unloading the gear I quickly tossed my stuff in my room and rushed to the movie theater for Pirates 2. I was up late that night doing laundry from Monday. I suppose it is rather normal but it seemed like EVERYONE was doing their laundry that night... I ended up kinda drying my uniform and waking up in the middle of the night to hang it up. Despite whatever weekend stresses I had the experience it was easily worth it. It has been since summer 02 since I got to be part of a foreign mission. I look forward to the next one.
Epilogue: At present, I have lost the pictures from this adventure. :(
