A Prayer Update

Dear friends,

Let me start with some GOOD NEWS: My brother Greg was moved out of intensive care and into a regular ward this weekend. The ventilator was turned off; the tracheotomy was removed; and on Saturday I spoke with my brother and heard his precious voice, a little rough but perfectly recognizable, after two months of silence. We are so thrilled with these huge steps! The last hurdle is regulating his blood-thinning medication, and then he will be ready to move to a rehabilitation hospital for a few weeks. Praise God for His goodness in bringing Greg and all of us through this! (For those of you who weren't getting the email updates about Greg, the backstory is: My brother Greg had to have a failing heart valve replaced in November. He contracted pneumonia shortly after surgery, and then had a stroke in the hospital. The recovery from all this, as you can imagine, has been long and difficult, which is why so many successes in such a short time are such a huge relief and cause for rejoicing!)

Backing up a bit, now that the good news is told... A break in my schedule and the help of friends and colleagues made it possible for me to be in Oklahoma with Greg through the holidays. It was good to be with him after so many weeks of uncertainty, of waiting over and over for news of his condition, and of feeling powerless to help my hurting family in any tangible way while I was so far away. My parents, younger sister, and I spent Christmas Day with Greg, then my mom--who has been staying in Oklahoma City (3 hours from home) 4-5 days a week since all this began--went home for a few days while I took her place at Greg's side. Over and over, my thoughts were drawn to the 23rd Psalm, to the "valley of the shadow of death," as I found myself daily walking through what was almost literally that very valley; Greg's cubicle was at the end of the unit, and every time I walked to or from the door, I passed a dozen other cubicles where life and death hung in the balance. It was sobering and surreal. But the wonder of Christmas, the glory of the Incarnation, lies in that very verse of the psalm I was meditating on: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me." (Emphasis mine.) In a hospital, with death on every side, with the memory of my brother's repeated brushes with death during the previous weeks fresh in my mind, here was my strength: God with us, IMMANUEL. I would not have chosen to spend Christmas in ICU, but I would not trade the sweetness of this truth that broke in on me and Greg during the Christmas holiday for anything.

I came back to Prague January 1 (my first anniversary in Prague, incidentally). And it hasn't taken much time to be back in nearly full swing. By February, the schedule will be "fully loaded" for the semester, with Teen Challenge, English Club, activities and outreach with the Rajska Zahrada church plant, Bible studies, and CZECH CZECH CZECH (12 45-minute lessons a week, plus meetings with conversation partners).

How can you be praying this month?
Praise the Lord with me for:

• Greg's improvements
• Time with family over Christmas
• A good year of ministry and the great opportunities of the coming year

Please intercede with me for:

• Open hearts in the Rajska Zahrada and Cerny Most neighborhoods as we continue outreach there
• Growth and encouragement at the RZ church plant
• Barbora, Iveta, and other girls from English Club, for their willingness to continue the relationship we have in a Bible study
• Energy and vision for the development of Roma ministry opportunities

Thank you for your ongoing encouragement and blessing to me in this ministry. Your prayers are such a valuable part of this work!

Grace and peace to you in our Immanuel,
Renee

Patrin, November 2008

Dear friends,

It has been a long time since I have formally sent anything out, and for that I apologize. Time gets away from me very easily these days, but being settled now in my new apartment I hope will help me settle into a less chaotic routine. This has been a busy fall, and looks like staying busy for a while. Of course, it is that very fact that makes it so important that you all know and can pray about what is going on!

Summer, with one camp after another for a couple of months, was great—but rather than going into a lot of details here, I am going to refer you to the summaries of some of these different outreaches on my blog. The result has been some good follow-up with the campers, but my desire for the rest of the fall and into the winter is WAY MORE follow-up. At the last camp, many students expressed an interest in continuing to study the Bible. Now that I live “in the ‘hood” (more on this below), I am trying to develop some studies for continuing the work from the summer with some of the kids from camp.

One result of the summer camp season was a growing conviction that I needed to live in Prague (I have been in a suburb about half an hour away by train). So in September I began an apartment search in the city. In order to be more accessible to the students who were at camp and to the church plant I am part of, I limited my search to one district, Prague 9. After several weeks, I found a wonderful place within easy distance of everything. The bonus: It is in a new housing development that is very densely packed and full of young families and single professionals. There are so many possibilities! I have learned of a Christian family who lives here, and the wife has expressed interest in starting a community Bible study. What a great opportunity!

I am back in language class, and enjoying it very much. The little language victories continue. Indeed, the whole apartment search and move provided more language practice than I had counted on! From browsing advertisements to translating the lease contract to returning a defective storage basket to the store (all in Czech!), I had a lot of “firsts.” It was hard, but confidence-building.

So, looking ahead… So much is going on, and I greatly covet your partnership through prayer! This is getting long, so I will summarize the big things. For more detail, please see the blog or just ask me.

FAMILY CONCERNS

My brother Greg (who turned 33 today!) will undergo major surgery this Tuesday to repair a seriously leaking valve in his heart. Please pray for his peace, comfort, and healing.

My grandmother, who likewise suffering from congestive heart failure, has spent a lot of time in the hospital in recent weeks due to a serious but inoperable blockage near her heart.

Praise the Lord! My little sister Kelley has continued cancer-free since a surgery to remove a melanoma and affected lymph nodes one year ago.

MINISTRY

“Compass”: Our field has its annual planning retreat next weekend (Thursday p.m. to Monday a.m.). We will spend time in prayer and worship as well as discussion. Please pray for us to hear clearly what the Lord wants us to focus on in the coming year and to draw closer together in our relationships with one another as we prepare for another year of ministry side by side in this place.

Church plant in Rajska Zahrada/Cerny Most neighborhood of Prague: For the next few weeks, the church’s Wednesday evening small group meeting is being replaced with “Tea Nights” with special speakers on topics such as the purpose of prayer and why a good God allows suffering. Thousands of invitations have gone out into the neighborhood. Would you please pray with us that this outreach would bring many people to consider spiritual truths and to desire a deeper knowledge of God? We are also making available copies of the Jesus film, recordings of Scripture, and New Testaments. May we be overwhelmed by the response!

English Club (one of the primary outreaches of our church plant in the Rajska Zahrada) is continuing strong. Please pray for our effective communication of the Gospel to the young people who come.

Teen Challenge: This program, which began (obviously) with teenagers, now has programs for younger children as well, many of them from Roma families in an impoverished neighborhood in Prague. I am trying to be with the preschool group twice each week. These children are severely disadvantaged and desperately in need of love. Please pray that, even without perfect language skills, I will understand their needs and they will know they are safe and loved with me.

Camp follow-up:

Girls Bible study—I am hoping to get this study going soon. We will begin with a series on “How and Why to Study the Bible” as an overview and then study a book of the Bible together. Most of the girls who are invited, if they are not professedly atheist, are nominally Catholic but unchurched. Still, the interest has been there… God knows their hearts, and I suspect He is tugging at several of them.

“Sunday Philosophy Club”—This is a new idea still forming in my mind. I would love to do this like a book club I was in in Chicago. I would choose an excerpt from a Christian writer on different topics, then the participants would read and come ready to discuss the excerpt (in English). This is a very intellectual approach, yet it is very Czech too.

Visits to children’s home—For two summers I have been able to develop a relationship with several children from a home in Frydlant, a couple of hours away by train. I would like to continue those relationships more regularly, but have not managed to do this very consistently. Please pray that I would have wisdom about whether and how to do this.

Holiday outreach: Two big holidays approaching…what a great way to share with students, friends, and neighbors! I am looking forward to putting my new home to good use. Please pray for all the details involved in this!

Church Planting Institute: Many missionaries in Europe met for church planting training in Hungary last month. That was exciting enough. But we had several of our Czech partners with us, and it was SO ENCOURAGING to be with them and talk and dream and plan about church planting in the Czech Republic. Thank God for the opportunity to learn alongside these partners!

LANGUAGE LEARNING

Praise the Lord for progress and small victories in language

Pray for some new language partners to help develop my speaking skills

ALL THE REST

Praise God with me for a wonderful new home and great opportunities for outreach.

Praise God also for an improved dollar (how did that happen?) just at the time when my expenses increased due to the move. However long it lasts, this has been a remarkable blessing.

Please pray for healing from chronic hives for the last several months. Some days are worse than others, but not a day passes without some itchy welts forming.

Please stay in touch. I really do love to hear from you!

E-mail:

jrmclean123@yahoo.com

renee.mclean@efca.org

Mailing Address:

Renee McLean

Pod Harfou 938/58

190 00 Praha

Czech Republic

If you would like to contribute to this work, gifts can be sent with a note designating them for account 1276 to

EFCA

Attn: Donor Services

901 East 78th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55420-1300

Thank you for your prayers and support. They are a valuable part of all that I do here!

Seeking the Kingdom,

Renee

Camp Season, Part 4: What Now?

No matter how great the relationships are during the week we are together at camp, no matter how moved people were by what they learned, camps in themselves are not enough. Follow-up is a significant part of our camp ministries.

Some of that follow-up, especially for the short-term teams, comes in the form of e-mail, Facebook, and other online interaction. (By the way, this last camp inspired me to get on Facebook...a new era has dawned!) But most is personal...face time. So right off the bat, we made sure the students had some post-camp get-togethers to look forward to. We invited them all to church the Sunday after camp ended, to be followed by lunch out and sightseeing. Almost 20 campers showed up for church, and once again got to hear the Gospel clearly taught. Then we were off to downtown Prague for the day.

The next day, another 20 or so went to Karlstejn Castle--one of Czech's most famous and important castles. Things on this trip didn't work out quite as expected, and yet relationships continued to blossom.

Now follow-up begins in earnest! Tomorrow will be the first meeting for the fall of the English Club at Rajska Zahrada. The program is developed around a Christian-themed television program for youth called Exit 316. Each week, we cover a different topic through games, songs, and discussion. At the end of last spring, some significant things were happening with some students. Camp continued that work. Now, what opportunities are ahead! Please pray for this English Club--for students to be excited about coming and about bringing their friends, for the messages of the program to take root and bear eternal fruit in the lives of these young people, and for more Christian adults to come to help.

In addition, please pray for me and the other adults at the club to be sensitive to the needs of these kids and to know how to reach out to them beyond club time. I have a great desire to start a girls Bible study to continue the conversations I had with several of the girls in my classes at camp. Would you please join me in praying for this and other opportunities to meet the spiritual and emotional needs of the young people God brings into my path?

TWO BIG WELCOMES

My team was thrilled to welcome our newest members to the field August 27. Curt and Vicki Mobley will both be teaching--Curt at the Evangelical Theological Seminary, Vicki at Christian International School of Prague--when they have a little Czech under their belt. I'm so glad they're here! (Means I'm not the newbie anymore!)

In addition, my dear friends Melissa and Caleb welcomed a precious baby girl--Kaitlyn Joy--into the world one month ago today. Kaitlyn is my first niece (yes, I get to claim her), which is delightful after 4 much-loved, rough-and-tumble, rambunctious nephews. Caps the whole wonderful experience of aunthood to finally get a little girl to dote on, too!

Camp Season, Part 3: Krkonose Mountains

One week later, I was meeting another American team for another camp. When I volunteered for this camp, I told them to use me where they need me. So I arrived without being really sure what was about to come my way. All part of the adventure, after all.

This camp was hosted by the church plant I attend in the Rajska Zahrada neighborhood in Prague. At the beginning of the summer, we had only about a dozen students signed up. We were counting on about 20. By the time camp rolled around, the number was in the 30s, and between campers and staff we managed to max out our facility. Praise God both for His abundant provision of campers and for His miraculous working out of space and resources!

Camp was at a chata ("cottage"...in this case, an inn with dormitory style rooms) in the Krkonose Mountains of northern Czech. These are stunning mountains (which I learned on the "medium" hike of 13 km a couple of days into camp). The team from Story City, Iowa, was a blast to work with and brought much experience and a good bit of fun with them. Like my previous camp, this camp had themes in the first part of the morning, followed by reading and conversation (in this case from the book "The Little Prince"), followed by lunch and afternoon activities (often games or different workshops), followed by dinner, and then fantastic evening programs that featured great music and really GREAT straightforward gospel teaching. And the kids were listening. (You'll have to wait for the next post for more on that!)

I co-taught with a couple of the Iowa City teachers. When I got switched from one class to another part-way through the week, at first I was really sad because I was so enjoying the relationships I was forming with students in that first class. But what ended up happening is that I "kept" my old students and gained some of the new ones! I am so excited that I will get to see so many of these students at English Club during the new school year, and also for some of the follow-up possibilities. Please pray for these kids! Many sound seeds were planted. There was some absolutely amazing stuff happening in some hearts, some of which was verbalized and some of which came out in other ways. Pray for good soil where the seeds fell! We have some watering and tending to do now, but the increase is the Lord's to plan and to bring about.

Up next...What's next?

Camp Season, Part 2: Frydlant

So camp was over, and follow-up begins. As I mentioned before, one thing that I love about this camp is the emphasis placed on loving and ministering to the children from the children's home. Let me emphasize: The children's home in Frydlant serves these children to the best of their ability. The children live in "family" units with tetas--"aunts," or what we might call a dorm mom. The children in each family are of a mix of ages. They eat several meals each week together as a family rather than in the home's dining hall. The older kids help look after the younger ones. They share chores, much as they would at home. The kids physical needs are provided for, which is better than what might have happened in the homes of their natural families. However, this is an institution, and these children are desperate for love and attention that their tetas simply don't have the time or resources to give.

Camp helped us develop relationships with these children that I would so love to preserve. So when Ben and Helena Middleton, who organize the American team, asked me to join them for follow-up at the children's home during the week following camp, I was so excited to be able to join them. The first day, Friday, we went to the home and picked up our students. We then proceeded first to an ice cream shop, then to the only really decent restaurant in this tiny town, where the kids got another round of ice cream. It wasn't the most nutritionally sound ministry opportunity, but those kids felt so special sitting in a grown-up restaurant with grown-ups (well, sort of) who had eyes and ears only for them. It was so fun to spend that special time with them.

The Monday following that, we brought board games and card games to the home and played games with not just our students but with about a dozen other kids in the home. There was more energy and enthusiasm and liveliness in that room than I ever get to see in my sedate little suburban home here in Ricany!

So the challenge begins now. Frydlant is 2-1/2 hours away from Prague, but I want to continue these relationships. Would you join me in praying for wisdom about shaping this relationship? How often do I go? When? What do I do with the kids when I'm there? How do I form a good relationship with the staff there? And--very importantly--how do I draw some Czechs into this scheme of mine? Pray for the churches in Liberec (20 minutes away) and Jablonec (30-35 minutes away) to become more involved in reaching out to these children and this community.

Up next..."Ain't no mountain high enough...."

Family Notes

An update on my sister Kelley: So far, all her scans indicate she is still free of cancer. The doctors are continuing to investigate what is causing the pain, but we are thankful for their assessment that the cancer has not returned.

My brother Greg is due to have an EKG soon to check on a heart valve that seems to be failing. In the meantime, he has been traveling the country this summer and getting on with his life, which is great. Please continue to pray for his health.

My grandfather has been hospitalized this week with something that seems to be worse than angina and not quite a heart attack. They are still running tests to figure out what is happening with him.

Thanks for remembering my family in your prayers.