The LORD Is My Strength

A Very Busy Time of Year

As we quickly approach the time of year when we take time to focus on the amazing work of the Lord Jesus Christ, when we solemnly remember his suffering and death on the cross and celebrate his powerful resurrection, many, including myself, look forward to a time of rest.  Over the last few weeks I have had to lean heavily on the Lord for strength and energy as I have had a very busy schedule.  During this time of the year, things tend to become very busy, especially when it comes to schools.  During this time of year, high schools are preparing the last few lessons that they will have with graduating students.  In the next couple of weeks those students will complete their class lessons and then be given about a month to stay home and prepare for the exit exams, which when passed, give them the opportunity to attend universities.  Teachers feel the pressure of making sure that they have prepared their students for these exams and the students feel the mounting pressure of actually taking the exams.  In elementary schools, the oldest students are preparing to take entrance examinations to the high schools that they would like to attend beginning this week.  Some of these schools have less than 100 spots available to thousands of students that might want to attend and the decisions are made on test scores alone.  They will have the opportunity to take the test a second time after the holidays, but as you can imagine, this is a lot of pressure for these students.  Please pray for these students as they prepare for and take these tests.  

These busy school schedules have affected me as well.  Over the last few weeks, I have continued my regular school visits to Gymnázium Olgy Havlové and Obchodní akademie, but I have also been asked to visit other schools outside of Ostrava.  In the last month, I have visited Táňa's high school in Bílovec twice.  The first time was because she had asked her teacher if I could visit with her class as well as other classes and the second time was by request of the one of the teachers as a means of helping the graduating students prepare for the final exams.  And just yesterday, I spent the morning speaking at the elementary school where Míla teaches.  This was tiring but fun for me because the students were really excited for the chance to get to meet me.  I have visited the school in previous years, but none of the students that I met yesterday had the opportunity to meet me during my previous visits.  News of my work at these schools has begun to spread to the point that a local company that teaches English to people asked me to interview with them last week for a possible class in the future.  Although they have offered me a job, I am unsure of whether I would take it because I wouldn't want it to interfere with my purpose in being here, but if the commitment is small it might be possible and also helpful in opening up doors and building relationships.  Please pray for wisdom for me in this.  Please also pray for energy as the seasons are changing and my allergies cause me to be a lot more tired than usual.

These are pictures from my elementary school visit yesterday

The last few weeks have also been busy when it comes to church activities.  Last week we had a meeting of the Ostrava youth groups.  Thankfully this time we were not the ones hosting, which made it much easier.  About forty young people came together to worship, learn, pray and fellowship.  The topic for the evening was fear and after the talk we broke up into small groups to pray for each other about practical needs when it comes to fear.  The evening was made extra special because Barča came to join us for the evening and we had a nice chance to talk and she was able to catch up with some of her friends from our group.  

The week before, we had one of our regular youth meetings.  I spoke about making decisions from a biblical perspective and Matouš helped me with translation for the week.  I thought it to be a very practical topic as several of the teens have difficult decisions to make about either school or career paths.  Magda joined us once again for the evening, which was great.  We spoke a bit about the English camp this summer and she was able to spend some time with Matouš and Klára, who both attend her school.

Three weeks ago, we celebrated Táňa's birthday.  I was a bit surprised to see her that evening because she told me that she thought that she would be busy that evening, but it worked out that she was able to come.  Eliška made a cake for her, which I must say was possibly that tastiest cake that I have had here.  Matouš came up with a great game for the evening and had us playing a life-sized game of Sorry.  After the game I spoke about not only our need to turn from sin right now instead of always putting it off until tomorrow, but also our need to rely of Christ to lift us up as we do so.

We have also begun working hard to prepare for the English camp as Petr and I have been meeting to discuss details on our end and I have been meeting with the rest of the CEFC team via Skype on Sundays.  I have also had the opportunity to speak with classes that I visit about the camp, invite individual people and speak with teachers about getting 20 minutes at the school to openly advertise for the camp and it seems as though it may be possible.  Both Klára and Terka have expressed their willingness to help me with this by sharing some of the reasons that they have come to the camp year after year.  Please pray that we would get the opportunity to do this and that it would bring some new people to the camp.  

I thought that I would add one last thing, I helped lead worship in Czech this past Sunday!  It was only one song that I helped with and I was afraid to use the microphone, but it went pretty well.