Days 39, 40 and 41

Bike Camp ended on Friday night with a musical/drama program given by the camp participants.  For a bunch of sports camp participants, these kids and adults broke out into some beautiful song!  There is definitely some musical talent around here.  The best part was some of the musical instruments that came out to accompany the singing.  Sure, you had the standards - the guitar, the keyboard... and then you had the violin, the flute and the bassoon!  It was really stunning.  We're not sure we would have thought to bring a bassoon to an intensive week of biking, but we were glad someone did.

On Friday we also spent some time helping to set up the church to become a "Tea Room".  This was an event that was held on Saturday as part of the annual town historical festival.  The tea room is an evangelism project of the church, where the congregation members offer tea and pastries at no charge to anyone who would like to escape the hustle and bustle of the town festival for a few minutes.  The tea room will be followed on Sunday morning with a special worship service to introduce those who are not familiar with Christianity to the church.  This year was the first attempt to offer the tea room and special worship service, so hopes are high that it will be successful.

First a little bit about the town historical festival - then we can get back to the tea room.   The "Historické Slavnosti v Tachově" (Historical Celebration in Tachov) has been held each year for the past 148 years, one of the firemen told us.  It involves a main stage in the town square with bands and performances, lots and lots of vendors, carnival rides, a parade, and a short fireworks display at the end.  Think of it as Sterlingfest on a grander scale.

One of the highlights was that the fire department brought their trucks to the old firehouse downtown, where they also pulled out their large ladder truck.  They invited Phil and Daniel to step onto the platform at the top of the ladder, and they were raised 32 meters into the air (today the number we were given was 32 meters), for a bird's-eye view of the town.  It was every bit of 32 meters from that perspective!  It was a beautiful day of sunshine and white puffy clouds.  (Of course, there are always white puffy clouds here - it's just that they are usually laden with rain.)  We've attached some photos below.

On stage we saw a performance by Anna K., one of the pop stars of the Czech Republic.  We hadn't heard of her either, but then, we don't spend all that much time listening to Czech radio stations in Sterling.   Maybe we should.  She was pretty good.  We even caught a word or two here and there to know when she was singing a love song.

We think the tea room went well.  There seemed to be interest, particularly in the afternoon.  To our surprise the Czechs were not interested in drinking tea at 10:00 AM.  We thought they always drink tea, but alas, that turned out to be a myth.  There were some new faces that were clearly not from our congregation, as well as some of the firemen and other English students who stopped by.  Phil opted out of tea and ordered a warm pineapple juice instead.  If you've never had pineapple juice warm, you should try it sometime.  It was nice to see how the church here has outreach into the community as part of its DNA. 

Some pictures:

Some of the youth musicians at bike camp, playing flawlessly after riding 30+ miles that morning.

 One of the skits from the bike camp participants on the closing night.

 A unique view of Tachov from the top of the fully extended fire truck ladder.

 

 A unique view of Phil and Daniel at the top of the fully extended fire truck ladder.

 Bird's eye view of Tachov.

 The tea room in what is usually the church sanctuary (tree added for effect).

Next time we'll post pictures from the festival and parade.