Blast Off: T minus 15 hours

Oh, how incredible that after months of waiting I am finally to be flying overseas tomorrow afternoon! That it is true, and finally to come about defies my imagination. The flight plans are as follows: Depart Lincoln 1:03PM central. Arrive Denver 1:28PM mountain. Depart Denver 2:05PM mountain. Arrive Munich 7:55AM local.Depart Munich 8:35AM local. Arrive Vienna 9:45 local.

Please pray for safe travel. Also pray that Pastor Klus will find me quickly, as I have no idea what he looks like.

At last!

Praise the Lord!

This morning at 11:58 I received a phone call from Travis Torblaa, the guy in charge of insurance and travel stuff, and visas, at World Mission, telling me that my visa and passport are in the World Mission office as we speak and that he is going to over-night them to me by FedEx and that I should receive them tomorrow morning!

So, now the plans to go to the Czech Republic can really get underway. I am so excited. Actually, I can barely believe it. It had gotten to be for me as though it would never happen, as though I would end up sitting around my parents' house and waiting for my papers until the Second Coming. Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad, but the news DID come as a huge shock. That I am actually going to be leaving and SOON! We didn't make any travel plans yet on the phone because I wanted to be able to tell my family and talk it over with them. However, Travis had already requested a sample travel itinerary for this coming Monday. I will NOT be leaving already in 5 days. I told him I thought that I would need at least a week to be fully prepared.

This wonderful news comes on the heels of the first good news about graduate school that my brother has received after waiting, just like me, for months to hear anything from anyone. He has been accepted to the University of Nebraska- Lincoln, and he just found out yesterday that he is in the top few choices of an academic advisor at Oklahoma State.

There is SO much good news all around in my immediate family right now. My brother, dad, and I have all been in a sort of limbo for a while, and finally Chris and I are hearing something. Hopefully Dad will figure something out for after this summer very shortly as well.

What a wonderful thing it is to know that all that waiting wasn't for nothing, that I am actually going to get to go serve the Lord in the Czech Republic as a missionary and English teacher.

Please pray for me that I will have safe travel and that I will be a useful and effective tool in the hands of the Lord.

Happy Easter!

Yesterday Christians around the world celebrated the single most important day in the Christian calendar: the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God. His death on the cross on Good Friday served as the payment for the sins of the whole world who would believe in Him, and His return to life the following Sunday, Easter, grants eternal life to those same believers. Since this day was THE pivotal day in human history, I am more passionately against the commercialization of this holy day than I am against the commercialization of the birth of this same Lord, which is celebrated on Christmas. Christmas is a very important day to Christians, to be sure, but it's rightful place is #2, not number one. So why do we treat Christmas with so much more... joy and preparation? Granted, Advent is a much more fun season of preparation than Lent is, to be sure. But it is still a travesty that the world thinks that Easter is about celebrating the return of warm weather and of spring, that it's about bunnies and chicks and jelly beans, malted milk balls and pastel colors. Jesus is the reason for this season, too.

Exciting adventures in the past week:
Tuesday I went to the Joslyn Art Museum and to the Old Market in Omaha with friend Liz Makowski. That was a good time. I got to see some really neat art and spend some time having a wonderful, map-less adventure in downtown Omaha with Liz. It was a delight.

Wednesday, my brother, sister-in-law, and I went to the Husker baseball game against Arkansas. The Huskers lost, but it was a great day out, and a great evening in. We spent part of the evening hanging out with friends of theirs from Concordia who had just returned to Seward after their spring break choir tour.

Saturday I went shopping with my sister-in-law, Stephanie. We found almost nothing that we really had to have, that we had to spend our money on. But, again, we got to spend some good, quality time together.

Sunday I played my trumpet with the hymns at church, just as I have every year for the past 9 years (with the exception of Easter 2006 when I was in Mexico). I really enjoy playing for church, but I think that the people at church enjoy it more than I do. That might be the last time that I ever play for the Easter service at St. John's- Cordova. That is a sad thought. One of the church ladies thanked me for playing, and said that she thought that I didn't have my visa yet so that I could play for Easter. I made a joke that on Monday I would receive my visa in the mail. Well, I didn't get my visa in the mail today, so I'm still around for now.

Desert Trial

I would like to take the time to be honest with you about how I'm doing. I won't be brutally honest, because I think it would be immensely foolish of me to put that much of myself out for the entire universe to read.

Many people have been asking me how I'm doing. My answer has generally been "alright" or "okay." But really, my spirits, on a scale from one to ten, are at about one and a half. There is something about sitting around with nothing to do for three months that really saps a person. I really tried, really, to be productive and to teach myself Czech and to practice my trumpet and to steep myself in Lutheran and Reformed theology. I really did. But there comes a point, after being delayed time and again, when there is no accountability, no sense of purpose, no motivation, no one to talk to, nothing to talk to my parents about... One can only read so much, one can only go jogging so much, one can only watch so much tv or play so much spider solitaire or play with the cat so much, one can only sleep so much. It begins to really erode one's stamina.

I have been characterizing my lack of productive activity to the inquirers as laziness. This is not true. I am not lazy. I simply have no desire, no motivation, no reason to do all the things that I so meant to do.

Today I had a wonderful opportunity to escape the house for a reason today, and had the chance to speak with a friend of mine. He expressed his deep sympathy and called this period in my life a "desert trial." I took this to be an allusion to Christ's 40 days in the desert following His baptism (appropriate, since we are in the season of Lent). Something about that really resonated with me. I experience long stretches of this dry, dusty, cracked style of living that I am going through, and then occasional oasis pops up-- a weekend away with my family, a visit to a friend, the rare "beautiful day"-- and I drink deeply at it, but I must press on.

So, please pray for me. Please give me words of encouragement. If you see me and I tell you that I'm fine, don't believe me; I'm probably actually miserable. Please pray that my visa comes soon and that I can go fulfill the plans God has been preparing me for. Be an oasis.

On Hold

Another five weeks have passed since I spent any time blogging. I suppose that I would prefer to only write on the blog when I have something noteworthy, something that people would actually like to read, something that speaks about actual mission work or about some sort of spiritual progress or epiphany on my part, occurs. I have decided that I should abandon the hope of only writing about thrilling or inspiring subjects because my life isn't all that exciting right now, and I don't want this to be a stagnant, neglected blog, no matter how boring. After all, I don't want you to give up reading now while my life is steeped in ennui and end up missing out on all of the things I will write about God's amazing work while I'm in the Czech Republic.

The most noteworthy things in my life lately: I've read some C.S. Lewis. That maybe doesn't sound too noteworthy, but for me, Lewis has a refreshing way of writing about God that reminds me of just how Big and Wonderful He is. It was good for me to read The Great Divorce. I highly recommend it. It was only about 150 pages and I read it in about three hours.
I have been getting fairly regular exercise, something I find vital to my sanity. It is so wonderful to go running through town, jogging to TobyMac, and just burning off all my pent-up energy. I also have spent time traveling on the weekends: a weekend in Ames, IA with my best friend Sandi, last weekend in Kearney with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law watching the cranes, and this coming weekend a trip to St. Paul, MN for the wedding of my dear, dear friend Elise.

I finally sent out my first missionary newsletter last week. Most of the information contained therein can also be found in this blog. However, if you would like to receive my newsletter, please email me at ashley.effken@lcms.org indicating as much.

Still Waiting; Happy Birthday

Alright, it's been almost a month and a half since my last blog post. I'm going to have to get better about posting or no one will ever read this. Forty-five days ago I was bemoaning the fact that I was going to have to enter a holding pattern on my mission plans. That still hasn't changed: I am still in a holding pattern, but I'm doing more than waiting.

For a while after graduation and my brother's wedding, and all of the insanity that was the month of December, I simply sat around the house: reading, sleeping, and practicing the piano. I made the occasional trip to Lincoln to visit some friends. Now, however, I've started to "hustle while I wait." This means that I've begun to try to use my time efficiently and effectively. I want to use this "free time" to equip myself to be a better servant of the Lord, a better steward of what He's given me to do in the Czech Republic. So I've begun to spend my afternoons at Friend High School, sitting in on the 8th, 9th, and 10th grade English classrooms to accomplish several things: to brush up on my grammar skills, to rediscover what middle-schoolers are like (they are NOTHING like the college students around whom I've spend the last four and a half years of my life), and to pick up some handy teaching techniques from Friend's two very experienced English teachers.

Another way in which I'm attempting to make the most of my waiting time is to try to teach myself at least a little Czech. I've only been working on this earnestly for about 3 days. For that reason, I have no idea what kind of progress I'm making. I'm hopeful that I will at least have a working vocabulary by the time I leave. I need to make sure I know how to say: I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm sick, Where's the bathroom, How are you?, What's your name?, Nice to meet you, etc. That is the bare minimum of what I'd like to be able to communicate.

The third and final way that I consider important to my preparation for being a missionary in the Czech Republic is in brushing up on my Jesus Skills. This means working to be able to communicate the Truth of the Gospel as simply as possible. It also means brushing up on my theology and trying to examine my life as honestly as possible to see any areas where I am living contrary to the Word of God and surrendering control of those areas to Him (note: if any of you has any suggestions for me in this area, please do not hesitate to share them with me and it would help me immensely to know what I cannot see about myself).

And so I wait. I don't know how much longer I'm going to wait, I will just have to see. So many people in the community, the school, and at my church have been asking me all kinds of questions about when I will leave and what I will be doing and what things will be like for me while I'm there. I still don't really know any of that, so I wait. The Lord's got it planned and figured out, and it is apparent to me that this time of relaxation and preparation is also part of His plan. Sweet. When my visa is completed and arrives, then I will be able to make the next step of planning my travel and packing. Until then, I'll learn about grammar, about how to handle 14 year-olds, and about how to wait on the Lord for His timing.

*****

The second part of this post's title says "Happy Birthday." That's because MY birthday is on Sunday, in two days. Twenty-three. It sounds so old, but then it's taken my whole life to get to be this age, so I guess it's not strange that I feel like 23 is old. I'm older than I've ever been. This is all neither here nor there, just the sort of musing that I have done since I turned 20.

Till next time:
Blessings in Christ

And let the waiting begin...

God has showed me that He is more amazing than I thought. I apparently didn't have very high expectations. Of course He can do a little thing like raise $11,000 for His work when He owns the whole universe. Of course He can do a little thing like provide me with amazing Christian brothers who want to provide for me in my time of need: He provided for us all in our own most dire time of need as He gave His Son to die for us on the cross. So now I am left with nothing to do but trust Him in His wisdom and timing when it looks as though my much anticipated Czech Visa, paperwork I must have before I can leave for the Czech Republic, isn't going to be ready until the beginning of March. I am praying for several things at this time. I'm praying that He will make it so that I get the visa in January in spite of the 90-day wait period that usually accompanies the preparation of one of these visas, so that I can get to Cesky Tesin soon. My plan B in prayer is that He will work a miracle so the visa doesn't come through until the middle of March so I can go to my dear friend Elise's wedding on March 8th.

Am I really telling the God of the universe that I don't like His timing? It's ridiculous for me to try to tell Him that I know better than He does. But I find myself doing that all the time. I think that I want to be in control because God isn't doing things the way that I would have them done. But I don't really want them done in human fashion. If God did things the way humans wanted, we would be stuck here trying to earn our salvation. Man always tries to work that out on his own, but God knows that man can't fulfill the righteous requirements of the law. And so, even though whether or not my visa gets here when I want doesn't determine my salvation, I have decided to still prefer God's way. Yes, I want to go as soon as possible. Yes, I would also like to wait and go to my friend's wedding. But I want God to do what He wants. After all, I am going to the Czech Republic in the first place because its what God wants. I don't want to abandon His perfect plan just so that I can have things my way. My way is tainted with sin and my desires are wrong, falling so far short of God's perfection.

This wasn't meant to be a sermon, just a way to confess my frustration at being shown yet again that I am not in control. God is good and He has a good plan for my life because of His Son's sacrifice. Since He figured out salvation, I guess I'll leave the visa to Him, too.