God Weaves Us Together

This last eight days has been incredible in the ways God has brought people in our lives to help us.

Thursday night, 19 August, Gary and Jeannine decide to go somewhere on the train (in Slovakia), get reservations for a pension (hotel) and return. We select Poprad, a town east of here by 1 ½ hours by car, just under 2 hours by train. We get to the train station in time to buy our tickets. Buying the tickets was relatively easy because we had printed out the train schedule and just showed which one we wanted.

As we wait for the train, Jeannine notices a student of hers from last year, Helena. We begin talking and it turns out that she is going to Prague, in the Czech Republic, to visit her daughter. So we get on the train with her and get off to change trains after a 7 minute ride. We changed trains; the train from went onto Prague with no changes.

In Vrutky we change trains and find a very nice car with tables between the seats. When the person who checks the tickets comes by, she points to our tickets and says, “Nie, nie, nie.” Oh dear, are we on the wrong train? She finally gets us to understand that we are on the correct train, just the wrong car. She keeps pointing to the number 2 on our ticket. So we go looking for car #2. The next is numbered 2, but it’s a dining car. We are directed to keep going in the same direction. We finally found a car with seats for us, and discovered that the 2 was for second class.

We are asked if we are Americans by a woman in the cabin with us. She is a naturalized American citizen with a little four year old boy who was born in the states. We have only a short time to visit with her because she is getting off at the next stop.

Another passenger in the same cabin begins to speak with us. He lives in Bratislava, and is a philosophy professor at the university in Bratislava. We chat with him until we get to Poprod. He is on his way back to the home village of his family for a wedding. He will get off at the stop after Poprod and ride his bike to that village. Before we depart, He gives us his phone number and invites us to his place in Bratislava and perhaps he will take us to Italy.

We saw many wonderful things in and around Poprod which I will describe on another blog. We did want to go to a rather large castle at the town of Spissky. It costs us less than five Euros for both of us to ride the bus to Spissky. We are watching the map and road signs naming the villages as we pass through, so we will know when to get off. After we get through the last town before Spissky, the bus stops and lets someone out. Jeannine panics and asks if this is the stop to get to the Hrad (castle). She is assured that this is not the stop.

When we get to Spissky, we are told to get off and a couple of people insist that we follow them. They are going to show us the way to the castle. We walked for about a ½ mile as they show us where to go to get to the path towards the castle. These people went out of their way to keep us from getting lost.


Back in Martin, Jeannine received a letter that says the work on her VISA is being delayed until the background clearance comes, but there is less than 60 days to get everything done. (For those who do not know, Jeannine’s fingerprints have been taken twice and rejected twice as not having characteristics with the necessary quality as determined by the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System.) She cannot get somebody to speak to on the phone numbers given, just recordings. Yet she does see on the FBI’s Website that she can send in more than one set of prints at a time (w/$18 per set.)

Lubos has helped Gary and Jeannine every step of the process. He calls up early today (7:30 AM) and says he can take her to the local police station. A father of a student at the Elementary School works on the police department and has arranged for their fingerprint expert will do this for us. Lubos explains the problem and that expert spends a good forty minutes taking my fingerprints. One of the things that is different is that after the hands are washed, she is given grease out of a tube to rub on them for several minutes before she wipes them off. Those were the best prints taken. The question now is, “How can we get them to the FBI in WV the fastest way.

They get back to the Bible School to see a small group from Pennsylvania, packing the car to go to Vienna before they fly home on Sunday. We ask if they would take the prints and put them in the mail when they get home. Sally says she will do that. Yes, we believe they were here this week for this reason (besides painting the two classrooms.)

We keep being amazed at the angels that God puts along our walk in this beautiful country.


Tomorrow Gary and Jeannine will board the train to Prague, that they know about from their encounter with Helena. Bohdon’s uncle lives outside Prague and has invited them to spend some time in that beautiful city. I suspect that will be another story.