20 May 2018

Nádherný den! (Beautiful day!).  Yes, we awoke to a beautiful sunny morning, with the birds singing… and the dogs barking!  The flowers are in colorful bloom the trees and grass have on their spring green. Amazing what a few hours of much needed sleep does to one’s perspective!

We arrived in front of the church in time to greet Katka & Michal Valčová with Marek and Maggie, Adrian & Natália, sending Timo to soccer with Grandpa, and Juraj Borcovan.  We will see more of our friends this evening at the Welcome Dinner. (Adrian’s cooking this afternoon).

During the worship service the congregation had a ‘meeting’ whereby they voted to keep Pastor Milán Kubik.  He has been the senior pastor for 10 years. There must be a rule that the congregation has to vote on their pastor every 10 years.  Adrian is the Elder President as he presided over these proceedings. The voting was with a secret paper ballot. (Recall that voting with a secret ballot is a fairly new concept here!).  Voting members of the congregation had to sign in before entering the church. There was a small problem between the number of ballots counted and the number of people signed in. Due to the overwhelming number of YES votes, Adrian suggesting throwing out 5 YES votes to align the number of ballots to the number of people signed in.  We Americans found this ‘in worship meeting process’ somewhat odd, but on the other hand, it’s a captive audience in taking an important church-wide vote. Pastor Kubik has been a good fit for this church and for the relationship with the Lutheran Academy.

After lunch (at the MartInn) we took a stroll through the CCE campus for the newbies and shared stories of when many projects were done by various Builders Group over the years.  Even got in a stop at the ‘Zmrzlina’ (ice cream) kiosk on the pedestrian (aka ‘Nicollet’) Mall. Much to our surprise the building with the Billa (a grocery chain) store at the south end of the mall has had a complete renovation!   Now it’s called Galleria Martin. Amazing transformation! We did a little snack shopping while we were wandering through Billa!

The Welcome Party on the Dormitory patio was once a delight.  Bohdan, Adrian & Natália with the 3 kids, Tomáš & Slavka, Juraj, Janka & Román with the twins, and even Pastor Milan and Zuzana.  The goulash was super delicious as were the desserts! Once again the Slovak hospitality is over the top!

Tomorrow will bring us to our work projects...after we attend a highschoolers worship service and check out the kindergarten classes, too.  Building relationships is more important and much longer lasting that the buildings we renovate!!

BTW....tonight’s Farkle game was won by Rich W.