We are HERE!!

After over 24 hours of travel on cars, buses, trams, and three planes we made it safely to Malenovice, Czech Republic.  We began our journey at North Coast at 5:45am and traveled to San Diego airport. 

For many people on our team it was their first time out of the country or going oversees. It was Steve's very first time on an airplane and to top all the fun off it was Mary's birthday!! We were very excited to get on the first plane and then had some time as we waited for our next plane to London. As we waited some of us moved around and worked out before the long flight and everyone was looking for a plug to charge their phone. This year James had the genius idea to bring a power strip so everyone could charge their phones at the same time.

It resulted in a hilarious picture that I just had to share. Haha!! Oh us and our technology! We then boarded our second plane to London. After we landed, everyone was really starting to feel tired and drained, but we were only halfway. When we landed in Heathrow we had to take a couple buses to finally get on our last plane to Prague. Once we landed in Prague we got on a bus with two other American teams one from Kentucky and the other from Colorado. 

Many of us slept because we were so tired but some of us were up and chatting with others. It was a long 6 hour bus ride and then we were at the beautiful Hotel Malenovice!! We put on our backpacks and headed up the hill to check in and have our first Czech meal together!! 

Once we got our rooms some of us played soccer and others of us walked around this beautiful place to stay up until it was time to go to bed. After showers and watching the World Cup we all headed to bed. We will have our first day of training tomorrow!  Praying for great sleep for everyone!! 

Fully funded and ready to go!!

Tomorrow is the day and we just turned in our last bit of support in! Our trip is now fully funded and we are ready to go and serve the students in Czech through English Camp. 

We leave tomorrow!!! Please pray for safe travels!! We will update you tomorrow as we travel to The Czech Republic.

Our Send-Off Dinner

We had a wonderful evening tonight as we all gathered together with our team and their families at Kadri's parents house. (Thanks again Mr. And Mrs. Williams) We all had amazing food and fellowship together right before we leave on Monday!! It was a wonderful time for friends and family to come together before we leave.

Our team is ready to go and serve the Czech Rebulic!! We will be posting as we go and will also have a running hashtag #thejczech14 

We would love to have your continued prayers for our trip!! Thanks again for all your support! 

We are in the home stretch!!!

We can count how many days are left before we leave on one hand!! 4 days!! We had out last meeting tonight after the Jordan and did some team building, camp games and the much loved camp dance. 

Yes...it's an action shot so you can see just how much fun we are having. :) As we prepare to go we ask for your prayers for travel, health, unity and for our camp. We are doing a send off dinner with our families and then we will be on our way to the Czech Republic to serve. 

"Check" it out, I think our team is ready!!! 

Benefit Concert!!

Wow!! We had an amazing benefit concert to raise money for Czech and it went so well. Thank you to The Hoffman's for donating chickfila and a huge thank you to those that played: Kadri, Mainsail, and Anton Jon!!!

It was such a fun night and we also had some amazing raffle prizes. This was a successful benefit concert and we made over $1500 in support to our missions trip. Thank you to everyone who came out!!

Last Day of our Retreat!

We had a wonderful weekend together and finished our weekend with a yummy breakfast by Kelsey and Julia. We then spent a little more time together and topped off our weekend with a review of the camp dance and then a Czech Retreat tradition, Manzanas Tenedores.

It was a successful team building game!! :)

Another Amazing Night!!

This was such an incredible day with jammed pack fun!! We started off the day with some incredible breakfast brought to us by James and Kadri. We then learned our camp dance that is always a favorite part of camp. 

We can't wait to teach it to everyone at English Camp!! After jumping all around and dancing we headed to the pool. Lauren and Denia made us some lunch as we continued to rock out to the camp dance and some camp songs. We then were able to spend some much needed time with our English teaching partners as we prepared our English lessons we will be teaching at camp. Alyssa and Sam made a yummy dinner and Julia and Mary made us another exceptional dessert. We were able to finish off the night with an unforgettable night around the bonfire where we all shared the amazing grace that The Lord has shown us through our lives and how He has worked and how He is continuing to work in our lives. It was a wonderful time for us to bond as a team. We were sad to miss Steve but he was here in spirit. :)

This weekend has made us all that much more excited for this incredible journey we are about to take so soon!!