Gaal Wedding

Yesterday, two of my very good friends, Boris and Janka Gaal tied the knot. It was such a nice wedding. Janka was stunningly gorgeous of course, and Boris was looking very sharp and dashing as well. You can see for yourselves!


This is a Slovak tradition of breaking a plate. They break the plate, and it is said that the more peices it breaks into, the more luck/happiness they'll have. They also have to sweep it up together as the first chore they do as a couple. It was also fun to watch the guy with the box (used as the dust tray) open up the bottom a couple times so they had to do it over again!











Oh, good dancing fun! And yes, I did dance. Quite a bit actually! It was very funny indeed to watch me cut the rug, but it was all in good fun! In this video, in the centre is the bride with her new mother in law.


This is another fun tradition of making the bride and groom drink a small glass of wine while being held up on chairs by relatives. Quite a lot of finesse, I would imagine, involved in order to not fall off the chair!



It was quite the night! A lot of food (four meals!), good friends, fun dancing, a moment in history witnessed. I love weddings!

Vandals!

Yes, I have been the object of vandalism! Last night I went out with a bunch of friends, and when I came back I noticed glass on the ground in my living room. Upon opening the drapes, i noticed a big gaping hole in the glass, and an empty bottle of vodka. If I haven't mentioned it before, my house it dead centre in town and there is one of the most frequented bars here is 5m from my door. There is also a little store that's open late where a lot of students will buy cheap booze and drink it on the street where I live. There are other windows around that they could have broken, but their object of choice was the home where a church is starting. Coincidence? Hmm... Please pray for us, this could have been a lot more serious.

Crisco

No, I am not doing any baking. This is the name of my cat! I have had him for just over a week, and I have tortured the poor thing since I got him! He's been bathed twice, has had his nails trimmed, and today, was castrated. Poor thing. Oh well. I got him at the local animal shelter, and I think he had been neglected because I have never seen a more cuddly cat. If I pick him up, never wants to be put down. I named him Crisco because my other cat, long departed, was named Butter. I thought this was a good name to follow into the Chaput household!

Easter

I managed to survive today without getting whipped or soaked. This may not seem so strange for you, but i considered myself lucky! In Slovakia, aside from eating traditional food like ham and potato salad (which I LOVE!) they have some... interesting habits. It is customary for a woman's male relatives to whip her legs with willow branches woven together, and to splash water or cheap perfume on her. In return for this blessing to her fertility, she rewards them with decorated eggs, chocolate, money or alcohol. Last year I got splashed by my roommate's nephew. He was cute... but this year i managed to avoid being whipped or soaked!

Well, for the Easter weeked I decided to take on home renovation! The walls of my apartment are all white. Even the tiles in the bathroom and kitchen are white. I have been feeling like i am living in a hospital! And it finally got to me. I went out, bought about 25 litres of paint, and away i went. But the reason I miss drywall is because I had to scrape off a lot of the old paint, sanding, plastering on stuff on top... and then sanding after. All this before actually even opening the paint can! I can't recall ever doing that with drywall.. unless you had a hole... Anyway, I got to learn some new skills... although with my mudding job... I don't think I'll be getting any job offers any time soon!

I have been doing my painting alone so far, but i got a call this evening from a friend who said she'll come over to help me out! Yeah! Maybe that means I'll actually finish it before I go back to work on Wed! The house is in such a state right now, i'm anxious for it to go back to normal. Normal in a much more colourful apartment! :) Well, at least the hallway and the living room!





Today we also took the youth on a trip up the "mountain" of Zobor. It was a nice little hike, and we had a weenie roast on the way back down. It was a lot of fun! But then it was back to the painting!

I know it has been a little while since I have blogged. I guess that's the downfall of blogging often, people begin to expect it from you! Just Kidding. I am glad that I have readers, and that you all have a way of being connected to me, even though we are so very far away from each other.

It's been an interesting bit of time this past week or two. Just on Friday I was told that my TESOL certificate wasn't worth the paper it was written on, and that all I needed was my self-declaration that I lived in Canada more than 10 yrs. So silly, but whatever. I mean, I will have this paperwork approved, but the only reason I took TESOL is because I thought I needed certification to get a trade license to teach english. I guess that is not the case at all! So it makes me feel a bit foolish, and that all that work was for naught. But then, the side of me that knows better knows that any education and training is worth it! Which is very true.

Speaking of education and training, this is an area I need to grow more in. Especially when it comes to areas such as accounting, business, leadership and the art of coffee making! This cafe idea is really taking hold in our leadership team, and is something that we are definitely pursuing. Right now we have office space that we are renting, which has two rooms. One, the church office, the second, a multi-purpose room, which is right now housing the empty IKEA boxes from the office furniture! We want to transform that room into a mock cafe, type thing. We will not be able to be an official cafe or actually sell anything, but we can ask for donations! The idea behind this is building up to the big cafe. Starting small, work towards the big picture and learn everything we can along the way! The reality of the big cafe is that even if we started working towards it today (which we can't because this project hasn't been approved yet!), it would probably be close to two years before opening day. Just due to the legal reality as well as the fact that the place I have been eyeing is not actually for sale, nor has it been lived in for quite some time. The ultimate fixer upper! So, if we can obtain that place,a) I would be as happy as a pig in the mud and b) It will take a lot of elbow grease to bring it up to code. Everytime I walk by it I pray over it, and I can't help but imagine what we could turn it into. It would be perfect. The perfect location, just off the centre, right on a highly trafficked road by students. It honestly couldn't get better. But, the Lord knows. Anyway, all that to say that we don't want to miss out on 2 yrs or so of ministry potential! So this first phase will be like our mini-cafe, hang out, program running multi functional room! We want to run an Alpha-like course called H2O, conversational English,.... and so on! It's quite exciting. And all the stuff we buy for our mini-cafe can be used when we go to the BIG cafe! So, the expenses are spread out a bit and might not be so impossible. Please pray for us, if we step forward into this, we're looking at about half a million dollars in one time expenses (the purchase of the building is 90% of that sum!) But the cafe would be self supporting in one month if all the one time expenses are supplied for supernaturally. So this is a whole new area of faith for me,.. and to be honest, scares me out of my wits! But I am so confident that this is from God.

I have been talking to my colleagues and other friends here that I have made, and every single person (not saved) are SO excited to have a coffee house that has a heart. That offers more than coffee, but love. Oh, what opportunities we would have to share Jesus in a real and natural way. And to also have more structured activities for Christians, and not-yet Christians, for businesses, for students, for everyone.... I could totally write for an hour on this, so I will stop now! But you'll be hearing more about it in the near future. So, if you, or anyone you know has a heart for students and would be willing to invest into this... Come on down! :)