In the Bleak Midwinter...

Goodness--it's been a month--no, five weeks--since the last post. Sorry! A lot has gone on since December 11, so forgive us. We were in the U.S. from December 20 to January 5, and we took Europe's snow with us, first to Virginia and North Carolina, where we woke up to five inches on the Outer Banks on December 26. More than 14 inches fell on Virginia Beach, so needless to say we did not get to St. Paul's, Hampton for that Sunday's service. Enough was plowed that we got off to Denver on December 28, where we brought eight inches of the white stuff. They are better equipped than the Mid-Atlantic for handling a snowfall, so we got around just fine. We had no problems returning and getting back into the school swing of things. The Lyceum came to life again on January 10, and the first semester ends this week.

Meanwhile, we thought you might like to see a bit of the International Church of Bratislava, where we hang out. The International Church is a ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but draws English speakers from many countries--the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, several African countries, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, France, Ireland, Mexico and (of course) Slovakia are the ones that come to mind now.

A quick history--the Evangelical church in Austria-Hungary took off quickly after the Protestant Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, and nearly eighty percent of all residents in what is now Slovakia became Protestant. The Counter Reformation at the end of the century and the beginning of the Seventeenth Century forced recantation or pushed the Protestants out of cities and towns. In Pressburg, now Bratislava, Evangelicals could only meet outside the city walls, or palisades, so now the oldest part of the church is in residence beyond a street called Palisady, which runs along where the walls once stood. It took until the end of the Eighteenth Century for any tolerance to creep back into Austria-Hungary; Maria Theresa and her son Joseph signed the Declaration of Tolerance in 1781 which allowed the building of Protestant churches so long as they were erected without nails and with no steeples. In Bratislava, the Evangelical church built the Velky Kostol and the Maly Kostol, the big and little churches, of rock. The International Church now meets in the Maly Kostol at 9:30 A.M. between the services of the German speakers at eight and the Hungarians at eleven. The church bears witness to its past; inscriptions inside and out thank Maria Theresa and Joseph for their willingness to let the Evangelicals build a place to worship.

You can find the building by the map at the website (http://www.bratislavainternationalchurch.org/Home), or by listening for organ music, or by asking. The door to the courtyard is usually open, leading to a foyer and thence to the nave. The organ dates, the organist figures, from the early Nineteenth Century. Even though the appointments such as the altar and pulpit, seem to be marble, they are actually made of wood. The church's official website has better pictures of the interior than we have, with a few exceptions posted here, and we commend it to you even though Arden and Anna have not posted their sermons! After the service we walk past the Big Church down to the Backpacker's Hostel for fellowship. For choir practice and other events, you must go in the back of the church through the Next Apache Coffee House/Bar/Used English Bookstore run by a Canadian; the name comes from how our ears, tuned to English, hear "nech sa paci," which the Slovaks use for anything from "next in line" to "after you" to "at your pleasure" to "come in" to "may I help you?" Paula's Slovak students, of course, say that the two phrases sound nothing alike. Hmmm.... Well, we'll try to do better next time at getting posted.