The past four weeks of my summer has been an incredible time of growth in my life, and again I apologize for not keeping you all updated enough. When I last posted here I had just arrived in Vienna for a 10 day stay working with the WHM team there. I'll begin now telling the events of that trip and my thoughts from it.

When we first arrived in Vienna, the team took us outside of the city to this beautiful vineyard/town in which Beethoven spent a large portion of his life. The scenery there was beautiful and we enjoyed getting to know the team and drinking some amazing wine. The next couple of days (Saturday and Sunday) were spent exploring the first district of the city and seeing the main sights, as well as making a trip to Schönbrunn Palace. This massive palace and garden was used as a hunting lode and retreat for the Hapsburg royalty and was also the sight where the 6 year old Mozart gave his first performance for the Queen. It was amazing to see so much History in one place and to stand in the place that Mozart performed. Early Sunday morning we arrived at the church plant, named New City Wien, and prepared everything for our church service. However, it was sobering to see that after we had spent so much time in preparation, not one person outside of our team showed up for service. I realized that everything we did was necessary but was frustrated with God for not bringing anyone. Yet after spending some time feuding, I realized that this was very typical of missions work in Central Europe, and that it often takes years to establish even a few relationships that produce fruit. Since that Sunday the Lord has really taught me about patience while I'm over here with Austrians, Czechs, and even with my teammates. Also, that Sunday happened to be July 4th so we all had a big American 4th of July party at the Hunter's apartment.

On Monday morning, our English camp began. The program ran from about 8 in the morning to 5 p.m. and we had around 35 kids from ages 4 to 12. We spend time doing games, crafts, music, and lessons with them in the mornings until noon when we would serve them lunch. All of our songs and lessons were centered around teaching them about Jesus and it was neat to hear some of the questions the children had. It was also a very interesting week considering none of the younger children, and only a few of the older kids, could speak English. So, basically, we had 35 German speaking kids running around our little church while only 2 of the leaders knew German and could tell them to stop. An interesting week to say the least. In the afternoons we would walk to a nearby park so the kids could run around for a couple hours, then we would return to the Church and watch a movie. In spite of the kids not knowing much English, it was still so much fun being around them and knowing they were enjoying being with the "cool new Americans" and some said. To be honest, I was not exciting about having to spend a large portion of my summer away from half my team and outside of Prague. I knew it would be fun to travel to another country, but the idea of running an English camp for a bunch of kids who didn't speak English seemed pointless to me. However, at the end of the camp Laura, Drew, and I were talking about what we could take from the camp and how we could apply stuff we learned there to our mission in Prague, and I was amazed about how much I would miss those kids and how attached I had grown to them. Being in Vienna was an exhausting experience but still it was an incredible time.

Since returning to Prague our team has had a lot of time to spend in areas where we have gifts and passions and to use them for the mission field. My roommate, Houston, and I along with the rest of the team have really done a good job of being intentional with our free time in the city and making every minute count. One of our passions and main areas which we have used in our work this summer is photography. Our team is blessed to have two freelance photographers already on it, Mark Stewart and Talitha Brauer, so it has been an amazing experience learning from and working with them. Houston and I assisted Mark with two photo shoots he has done in the past few weeks. One was for a marketing campaign at a huge gym called Holmes Place, and the other was for an football team (American Football) called the Prague Lions. The purpose of the second photo shoot was to help them get a sponsorship by Nike. Also, our team has been working on our own photography exhibit over the past month. In late June, we went out on the streets and asked a bunch of random people from all over the world this question: "Do you think true freedom is more likely to be found in singleness or in a relationship?" The answers we received were all extremely interesting and opened up opportunities for us to have conversations beyond the original question. After we talked with them, we had Talitha get them to express themselves for a photo we took of them that we would use during our exhibit. So over the past month we have been working on finalizing the photos and picking the ones with the best quotes and pictures. Finally, this past Thursday night, we had our opening exhibit at a coffee shop in downtown Prague where people could come and see the people and their responses and have their own opportunity to talk with us or answer the question. We had a good turn out and it was fun to hear everyone's reaction.

Another ministry I have worked with consistently is a group of ex-pats who play soccer every Monday night at a huge stadium. It is an incredible experience to be able to play while surrounded by stadium seats on all sides. It has been a lot of fun getting to know all the people out there and I have met a couple guys that I am hoping to have an opportunity to meet with outside of our games.

This past Monday the guys, along with two sisters from California who we met here, had an opportunity to visit Terezin Concentration Camp which is about 45 minutes outside of the city. This was not a death camp in the sense that Auschwitz or Dachau were, but instead it was used as an intense work camp for political prisoners, communists, artists, and of course, Jews. Of course this place was still filled with sobering atrocities around every corner, and 40,000 prisoners died in this camp alone. It was filled with tiny living areas, solitary confinement rooms, showers that got used once a year during the war, execution areas, and was all around just a miserable place to be. I have spent so much time studying history and specifically World War II so i definitely knew a lot of the Nazi tactics with these camps but it was still so unbelievably sobering to see the places where people were imprisoned and killed.