building altars

"Yes, God, your God, dried up the Jordan's waters for you until you had crossed, just as God, your God, did at the Red Sea, which had dried up before us until we had crossed. This was so that everybody on earth would recognize how strong God's rescuing hand is and so that you would hold God in solemn reverence always."

Joshua 4:23-24

building altars stone by stone

10 Things work differently here in the Czech Republic than they do in the States. Things that you take for granted as normal, such as a monthly utility bill, are done in an opposite way seemingly just to confuse and irritate. Many of you have heard of our "surprise" that we received early this summer in the form of an overdue by 3 years utility bill spanning said 3 years, to the tune of tens of thousands of Czech crowns. 

We pay a flat amount for utilities to our landlord each month. Within our rental agreement is written that utilities overages will be presented to us at the end of each year within 10 days of receipt of the account and that we will then have 5 days to settle the account. This should happen each year without question. Until this point, we had never received a utility bill from our landlord so we assumed (our first mistake) that we were using just the right amount of utilities and had no overages. Had we known that there were gross overages we would have made changes, tried to conserve more, or moved to a tiny apartment.

We were, quite literally, in shock when we received a bill pretty much adding up to over 100,000 crowns after 4 years of silence. We prayed. A lot. How on earth could we possibly repay this debt? Seeking advice from friends here, we were told to talk to a lawyer and see if this was classified as breech of contract because they waited 4 years instead of the 10 day term written. The lawyer said that, while it is technically breech of contract, we would never win in court as the landlord holds all the cards and the law typically enforced is the 4 year statute of limitations for collecting back payment which they are fully within their rights to demand. We even began wondering if this was God's way of pushing us out of CZ and back home. We started looking at flights (found some excellent ones...totally cheap) and continued to pray.

As we are foreign, there often is a sentiment that we are rich. Nothing could be further from the truth as we make Czech wages but pay higher rent and fees etc... because we are foreigners. We explained this to our landlords in the hopes that they would not demand payment in full immediately. We explained that we wanted to do what was right, pay back what we owed, but we wish they had informed us on time according to the terms of our contract as then we may have avoided accruing such a large debt. Dan even wrote about our ministry here and that we are not your typical foreigners working for large foreign corporations, but here doing service for God and with churches. Not as an artifice in a sad attempt to gain their pity, but merely making clear to them our situation. Our landlord met with us soon after and offered for us to make payments instead of paying one lump sum. We were very excited that they would let us make payments, but the payments proposed were in the neighbourhood of 30,000 crowns a month. We started looking for cheaper housing so we could pay off this debt. After finding a cheaper (and incredibly tiny) apartment, we wrote to our landlord telling him we would gladly make the payments but in order to do so we would be moving out to save money so we could afford to pay down our debt. (Please remember as you read this that if they had held to the contract this debt would not have built up). We then received an email from our landlord saying what wonderful renters we are and that he didn't want to lose us and couldn't we stay and they would erase part of the debt as they were partly to blame for it. Dan did some quick math and the deduction they were offering helped balance it oput so that we could stay in our house and still pay off the debt same as if we had moved. They were so relieved to hear that we were staying and we were so relieved not to have to move and that they gave us a break on the debt. 

This process took about 5 weeks and challenged us greatly because of the stress, uncertainty of our future here and ambiguity of the law. What it also did was bring us to our knees seeking after God and His will for us. Wanting to glorify Him in all that we do and follow Him wherever...back home if that is His will, we prayed and asked for His wisdom to light our path. Every day there was a new bump in the road making the path difficult and forcing us to wonder if we were on the wrong path. Our faith was increased a hundredfold and we were certain that, though it be an arduous process paying down the debt, God made it clear our home and work are still here in CZ, for now. Once that decision had been made we really saw a miracle happen in the form of an anonymous donor sending us a large sum of money nearly covering the entire debt. It was as if God said, "Do you trust me?" and we took His hand and he did the work. In the end, it was a beautiful experience, seeing God work, feeling His leading and telling everyone who would listen about the Jordan River being parted so we could cross on dry land.