Beautiful!

Bratislava Christmas Market

I love Christmas. I don't think I realized until I spent a year in a warm, foreign country without my family.   Now I don't take Christmas for granted. So when we were able to go to Bratislava for the Christmas Market last weekend, we were so excited. It ended up being quite the adventure too!

Janko hosted us at his own home and also some of his friends let us stay at their flat. However, we arrived Saturday morning to go into the city and found that one of the other residents of the floor had changed the lock on the metal gate. And no one seemed to be home to let us in or the people inside out!  Thankfully one man came home from his shopping and had the new key. But the stress of wondering if  we were going to get them out is pretty crazy!

This is our group minus me with all the identical flats behind us.

The UFO Bridge in Bratislava from the castle.

 My favorite church in the world! Not quite as beautiful after they cleaned it up, but I think it is still my favourite.

 Bratislava Castle from across the river

The view of the castle from the top of the UFO bridge. That is one fancy restaurant!

Enough of just the pretty city. Now for the Christmas stuff!!

This says Christmas Market on the signs. 

 Some pretty little Christmas shops. I think they are adorable!

Nice little trees on a side street

 Lollipops for Christmas?

Cute hanging gingerbread house.

Hot Honeywine (Medovina)

It was so nice to have a Christmas adventure with a somewhat cold climate
 (even if we didn't have any snow at all). 

Banska in the Fall

Is it still fall?  It kinda feels like it, it kinda feels like we need more Christmas music and to have some snow!

We walked into the shadow of the mountain last weekend and found FROST!  It was three in the afternoon and it was cold enough that the frost has survived in the shadow of the mountain.  I thought it was very pretty and made me excited for snow to come for real! (Which began today with flurries that haven't really stuck as of yet, but hopefully will last if it keeps snowing!)

On our way up the mountain, they have a switchback path cut into the hillside (really this mountain is a big hill).  They have a rain drainage system built in. Shay is showing how he could climb inside it and hold on with no hands.

 This was Shay's find at the top of the mountain.  A "pillbox" or bunker sort of thing where a guy could sit and watch and shoot down the enemy through a little hole in the cement looking out down the mountain. I think it was really cool because we are in Europe. The world wars were fought here. People actually were in this cement box.  And it is just on the side of this hill, left as a reminder of the horrific things that have happened here.

And with the earlier time the sun is going down we got this nice lit up view of the city below us.

Hopefully my next pictures will be of us with snow!  

Healing

(BE WARNED:  This post might mess up your theology and/or the way you live)

I haven't really been updating you on what we have been learning in our lectures so far this month. But this week, I can't NOT tell you because it is so amazing!

We had a week to learn how to heal and heal on the streets.  Really the expectation is that Jesus told us to go out and heal the sick (Mark 16:18, Matthew 10:7-8, and many more times) so we should do it.  The men who were teaching really take Jesus simply at his word and it was so beautiful to watch and learn from their lifestyle.  It was all about Jesus and how much he loves people and how he has given us authority to heal.

I know of a couple amazing healing stories from Canada. One is of a woman who had brain cancer. But I had never been present when someone was miraculously healed or even prayed for someone who was healed of something major over a longer period of time.  This week we learned the basics of how to pray for nonbelievers for healing and how these men have experienced healing to work. After learning that we saw legs grow longer, spines straighten, and pain leave knees and shoulders.  I'm sure there are more things, but even that was amazing!   It takes an open mind to believe that it really happened and that there isn't some other way to explain a healing. And it also takes being there. I can imagine that two years ago I would not have believed that someone was really healed or would be really healed.  And if I saw a video like this one, I would have thought that it was a hoax.  (This man really challenges me, because you know that he just knows how much God loves people and wants to draw them to Himself. And this guy is willing to look a little crazy if someone is gonna get healed.  Because when they are healed, you don't look so crazy anymore.)

I now am left wondering how I'm going to make this information part of my normal life at home. Can I actually be brave enough to walk up to someone in Canada and ask if they would like prayer for healing? Could I even pray this way for my friends and family or will they think I'm crazy too? Obviously I would hope that people would be open, but I thought that this all was pretty crazy two years ago.  I wouldn't blame people for not being open or interested or whatever.

All Saints and All Souls Days

At the beginning of November Slovaks celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  So for a week or two before hand there was a market of flowers that people buy and put on their loved ones' graves.

The close flowers are actually plastic. Eww. 

But these are all real!  

While we were walking away, we saw this car with pretty flowers sitting outside and inside the back (yellow flowers). I figure that this was one of the vendors' car. And I like the picture because its such a nice old Slovak car!

So during the holidays of All Saints Day and All Souls Day the cemeteries are all lit up with candles. We were so busy those days that I didn't get to the cemetery at night to take a picture. So this is the day after, but some candles are still going (pretty impressive!) 

My photos are only this nice because I am using a gorillapod!  Shay was so nice to get me one and it make low lighting pictures work out so amazingly!  Long exposures are probably my new favourite thing!

Newsletter Update!

The time to leave Europe is fast approaching and I can't wait to tell you all about it!

However, information on the next three to four months of our trip will be available exclusively by email, and often using somewhat less obvious language.

So after a weekend of getting the hang of an online newsletter service,  our newsletter is born!

This is not our newsletter, it is Shay reading my hometown newspaper here in Banska.  

A picture like this got printed in The Voice a week or two ago! He's famous!

We don't want to send you emails you don't want, so we need you to subscribe to receive this newsletter. We want to get this newsletter out to as many of our friends and family as we can, but we don't want to push it into your inbox either.   So don't worry if you haven't talked to us in years or feel like a stalker, we want to share our adventure with you!

To sign up all you need to do is click on the "My Newsletter" button at the top of my blog or click on this link.  If you really want to be a nerd, you can use a QR reader on this code:

 If you sign up soon, you will get our first newsletter that will get you all caught up on the last two months of our trip. It should be good!

Cheers!
Alison

Heritage Tour: Prague

I'm finally getting to post my last pictures from our tour across Europe! Prague was BEAUTIFUL this year. Last time I was there, I remember snow and cold. The time before that, it was just dreary.  This time it was sunny with a beautiful blue sky.

 First we walked across the famous Charles Bridge. It was packed with people, but still really enjoyable. I had a guide book (courtesy Shay) that told me who all the statues were. Last time I had no idea about anyone. (although, knowing the name of the saint isn't always helpful. Knowing a name isn't interesting if you don't know the story)

This is my best photo from the bridge and maybe even the day. However, I don't know which saint this is. The balloon looked like a "historic" hot air balloon that you could pay to have rides in!

The cathedral/church downtown which is so fun inside!  The top of it looks like a fairy tale castle. 

A plaque at Bethlehem Chapel. 

Loosely translated "Here lived Mister Jan Hus (John Goose)"

Mural on Bethlehem Chapel wall:

Jan Hus actually was martyred on my birthday (July 6) in 1415. 

Makes him one of my favourite "reformers" even though he was really just a dissenter before the reformation actually happened. Someone once said that if the Catholic Church had listened to Jan Hus there would have been no need for the reformation (or it would have happened in a nicer way... something like that). 

While in Prague, Shay had the most exciting discovery of the whole tour. His name on something!  Look really close...  

That car dealership sells such high end cars as Lamborghini, Bentley, Audi, and Aston Martin. 

Shay hopes its a relative. I think finding out is a great reason to go back to Prague.

This was a beautiful little bookstore that sold English books!  (can you see that little UK flag? English section!)  I hadn't seen a bookstore like this ever...

Floor the ceiling books, with a cute little upper level that staff could walk around. I want a library, bookstore or cafe/bookstore like this one day.  I LOVE BOOKS!

The "Dancing House" in Prague.  I think it is some pretty cool architecture although it is so strange against all the really old buildings.

The Golem!  I know practically nothing about this mythical creature from Prague. Well I know a little. But I will wait until we go back to Prague before I post more about him because I hope to do much more research on him next time I'm here. I haven't even gone to the Jewish Quarter of the city yet. This is definitely still on my "Must See" list. 

We were so blessed to still see roses in a rose garden. It was really cold in the evenings, but somehow the roses were still blooming. Here is Maria enjoying how fragrant they are. 

Shay picked me a rose and took off all the thorns so I could hold it. Then he and the other boys gave one to each of the other girls in the group. Such gentlemen.

Here you can see the Eiffel tower in Prague. We didn't go up, but we went to the base. I love this picture because you can see our group enjoying the walk. I love these guys!

 St. Wenceslaus Square

We had a great opportunity in Prague to do street ministry. It was super duper cold that evening but we had an hour on the square to talk to people and pray over everything that happens there. Prague is known as the Stag Party capital of Europe. Groups of people from Holland, England, or wherever come to Prague to drink and whatever else. I don't want to go as far as to say it is the Vegas of Europe, but it definitely has an industry built on sex and drinking.  The night we were there was a Friday evening, so you can imagine there were quite a few people out. 

My group ended up standing on a side street that God led us down, with one cabaret on one side of the street and another strip joint directly across from it. And we spent our whole hour there. We prayed, and worshiped, and talked to a guy from one group of men from Holland. We weren't able to talk to anyone specifically about God, but we definitely were active in changing the spiritual atmosphere there. Shay was a champ. It was his first time on the street like this, and did great. 

Below is the Museum at the end of St. Wenceslaus Square with a huge statue of the king. We met back here and it was all foggy, which made this picture super cool.  We also were standing next to a memorial for a guy who, during communism, soaked himself in gasoline and set himself on fire in the square as a sign of resistance. If that isn't radical for freedom, I don't know what is.  Apparently, during the Velvet Revolution there were half a million people in the square. (someone told me a million, but I can't find evidence anywhere else to back that up)

The pretty metro under the museum. 

 At the end of our visit to Prague we saw a protest march going across Charles bridge and probably up towards the government buildings by the castle. It was so noisy, we could hear it all the way up this hill. We aren't exactly sure what its about, but probably connected to all the "Occupy" protests happening across the world.

Prague was such a highlight of the trip for me. I love every city we go to, but I think that this time I realized how much more there still was to see in Prague, and how affordable it is compared to places that use Euro.  And having Starbucks coffee probably helped my mood. 

I saw this picture in the Starbucks in Prague. I hope that on outreach I'll be able to take a few absolutely beautiful pictures of people. Ones like this that I can blow up and put on a wall. 

PS: I still love comments. It lets me know someone out there is reading!

Heritage Tour: Germany

Germany was three days on our tour.   We were at Hurlach and Herrnhut YWAM bases. Both are amazing bases although very different from ours. Hurlach has been owned by YWAM since the Munich Olympics (did I say this last year?) and Herrnhut has over 100 students in their DTS. Can you imagine that many people eating supper? I couldn't either.

We spent an hour in downtown Augsburg one evening. I saw it in daylight last time. More stores were open... but I kinda like that night walking and photography.

Herrnhut is the birth place of the modern Moravian church. This is the cemetery.

These are some of the head stones. They were from the 1700's. Isn't that amazing?!?!

Next: Prague!

Heritage Tour: Switzerland

We have returned home from our tour!  Safe and sound in Slovakia, although VERY tired.

But I want to continue to tell you about our trip!  In Switzerland we stayed with YWAM families who showed so much hospitality to us. They actually had a wood pizza oven and we had a make your own pizza night!  That was AMAZING!

We spent time in Lausanne and Geneva. For many more pictures of those cities, look at last year's post. This was my favourite picture from both cities this year. (Its's from Lausanne)

And as always, I fell in love with the vineyards all over the mountainsides. 

And we were lucky enough to drive into Switzerland during the sunset. The Alps are just AMAZING!

I have at least two more posts, but more pictures than I will ever fit in two posts. The few I do put up will have to suffice.