Nate Hampton In Ostrava: Giving Thanks

Serving in Different Way in Different Places

Over the last several weeks, God has kept me busy with many different things. I have continued in my regular responsibilities of leading Youth Revolution, leading English conversation groups and teaching at local schools. However, I was also invited to visit some friends in Kroměříž about a week ago and to speak at a school in a small town that I occasionally visit. These students attend a school at which Vendy, who attends and helps at the English camp, teaches. Since they are younger students and don't get a chance to see me more than two or three times a year, they are very excited whenever I visit. Because of the recent holiday, I spoke with them and other students in Ostrava schools about the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk with them about how the Thanksgiving holiday came out of a Christian tradition of giving thanks to God in times of special blessing. Vendy was also able to inform them of a similar tradition of thanksgiving to God within the Czech church. Pray that God might use these occasional visits to ignite their interest in spiritual things and that God would be merciful to them and draw them to Himself. Here are a few pictures of the students that I visited during that trip.

Another thing that I have recently been busy with that is out of the norm was a Thanksgiving meal at the church. After my first year here, when I spent Thanksgiving Day alone, I decided to share Thanksgiving with the church, youth group and members of the conversation groups. As those of you who have prepared a Thanksgiving meal know, there is a lot of work that goes into preparing the meal. And since I have come to expect between 40 and 60 people, there is a lot of food that needs to be prepared. Because of my visit to Kroměříž and a school visit in Ostrava the day before Thanksgiving, I had a very tight schedule to do all of the precooking preparations. Thankfully, Daniela Navrátilova once again took off a day of work in order to help me with cooking the meal. Petra Poláchova was also willing to help by cooking one of the turkeys in her oven. After a long day of cooking, I was able to share in the Thanksgiving meal with about 40 people. People ate, talked with each other and some caught up with my mom and met my brother via FaceTime. It was wonderful to once again share this meal with my brothers and sisters here and create an opportunity for them to invite some friends and family members to join in the celebration. Pray that God would use that to build relationships between the church members and the non-believers who attended. Here are a few pictures of the evening.

After a week of traveling, teaching and cooking I finished my preparations for our youth retreat this past weekend. On Friday night, we traveled to a cottage in Vsetin with about 10 youth. The Lord answered our prayers in bringing both those that we see week after week as well as others that live far away such as Adéla, who lives near Prague and those who we don't see very often, such as Barča. Everyone got along well during the weekend and relationships were not only grown, but new friendships were created. Robert, Míla and I shared the teaching responsibilities for the weekend and we taught about God's love for mankind, how we can love God, and what God's will is for our lives. Radim also joined us to help with the worship for the weekend as well as a young couple from Robert's church. Táňa did all the cooking for the weekend and really blessed everyone with her service. Even though the rainy weather kept us from doing some of the outdoor activities that we had planned, everyone seemed to be sad to see the time together come to an end on Sunday afternoon. Pray that the truths about which we spoke would grow in the hearts of each person who was there so that we might grow in our love and understanding of God. Pray that the weekend would help to spark the regular attendance of people like Klára, Miki, Nikča and Michal. And pray that this would give Adéla the desire to not only visit our group occasionally, but that she would seek to find a Christian group near her to meet with consistently. Here are a few pictures from the weekend.