Welcome to the Hotel Malenovice

After a restful sleep in the glorious cabins of H₂O and a rousing breakfast we started off the next day in our race FOR GLORY!  We started out in fourth.  Here’s a list:

•  Identifying teas – (thank goodness we had an Irish on our team
•  A JV OLYMPICS!! (diving in a pool, shotput (YESSSS), rowing and a footrace)
• Walking the same path we walked the night before
• BUSES AND TRAINS

We then made our way across the border of Poland to the Czech Republic.  In Cesky Tesin, our first Czech stop, our challenge was to watch and perform a traditional Polish dance (totally was a natural, I mean come on).  After 2 tries we perfected our dance and made our way to a Czech Train Station and missed the earliest train by a minute so had to wait for an hour for the next one.  We got pretty close to the Polish team that was headed the same way.

After two trains and switching in Fridek Mistik, we ended up in Frylandt, Czech Republic.  Once completing a word search based on the JV core values, we were on our way to our final destination, HOTEL MALENOVICE!

Fitting our 5 members into a 4 person cab (our fearless leader Josh stowed in the trunk, which did not make the driver excited…. But he needed the money apparently), we had arrived.  Coming in to a cheering squad of leaders we were ecstatic to find out what place we had come in.  We held our breaths as they read out……. 11^th…… out of 15.  But little did we care because we had finished and finally we would be some place permanently, if only for a couple days.

Getting some food in us, we loaded up with all of our luggage and went to our rooms.  My room just happened to be down a giant hill.  Loaded down I made my way to this AMAZING CABIN.

I got settled in.  (My mother would be proud)

We had an amazing meal and then met for the first night event with all of the teams together.  During worship a thought really hit me.  I was standing in a room with people from all across the world, who speak so many different languages, but all singing about CHRIST! To top it all off, the founder of JV Dave Patty came and talked to us about the original vision and story behind this amazing Organization.  It’s awesome to think that it was one man’s thoughts about Europe has turned into such a large organization and so many hearts toward spreading Christ.  After that I was worn out and went to sleep.  Here’s an added pictures of the girls in our team! From left to right Jitka, Rachel, and Bethany.

I am enjoy being able to take in the Czech atmosphere and get to know not only the people who will be joining me in Czech but all over Europe and just to hear all the stories that had led everyone to the country that has been put on their heart.