An Adventure to Prague?

Finishing things up

Tomorrow evening will be the final regular Youth Revolution meeting of the year.  Robert will speak with the group about the importance of evangelism as a call to all believers.  This will bring to an end our series called, Practical Essentials for the Christian Life.  We began the series with a question, Am I a Christian?  The group was walked through the basic things that each person must understand, believe and do to truly consider themselves a Christian.  The goal in this was to have each person in the group consider in their own hearts whether they truly understand, believe and do the things that were mentioned or if they are just assuming that they are Christians because they have been brought up as Christians.  This can often be a problem among youth who grow up in the church.  This seems to be a particular danger here in the Czech Republic, because it is not within the cultural norm to attend church.  So, if a young person attends church with their family on a regular basis they can begin to think that they are Christians even without making their parent's faith their own.  Parents can also make this assumption if their teens don't give them too much of a problem when it comes to attending the Sunday service or youth activities.  But once again, this does not mean that those teens have made their parent's faith their own.  

We followed the first lesson with two lessons about the importance of growing in your personal relationship with God.  One lesson was focused on the importance of prayer and the other on knowing God better through His word.  The fourth lesson was on the need to do what the word says and grow in obedience to God, following the leading of the Holy Spirit instead of giving into the desires of the sinful nature.  The fifth lesson was focused on the need to have Christian community, in particular, becoming a member of a local body of believers as a means of support and accountability.  The sixth lesson was on the subject of spiritual gifts and the importance of each spiritual gift within the life of the church.  Each person was asked which spiritual gift they believed that they had and I, along with the other leaders shared with the youth which gifts we saw in them.  And last week we covered the seventh topic, which was service.  The youth were encouraged to use the spiritual gifts that they have to serve God's kingdom and to actively search for opportunities to serve in increasing ways and developing their spiritual gifts as well as their natural talents.

During this time period we also sprinkled in something new to our youth meetings, occasional discussion nights.  The first one I mentioned a month or so ago.  We had several young women share about becoming Christians in China and the struggles that they had because of it.  This was less of a discussion and more of an interview, but it allowed the youth to hear about Christian experiences that were different than their own.  The second discussion night was held about three weeks ago.  I led a discussion on Christian persecution around the world, including in the Czech Republic.  We considered an Australian rugby player, who recently lost his place on their national team because of his response on Twitter to a question about homosexuality.  He quoted what the Bible says about it and he was kicked off the team, labeled a bigot, and lost millions of dollars in salary and endorsement money.  Then we considered how we should respond to questions like these in an era "tolerance."

Please pray for the youth as they finish out the school year and begin their summer vacation.  Pray that they would continue to grow in their personal relationships with God, even though there will be no regular youth meetings during the summer months, as families usually go away on vacations.  Pray also for them as we prepare for the English camp, which will begin exactly one month from today.  All of the youth from our group will be in attendance.  Pray that they would not only enjoy the camp, but grow in their relationships with God and with others.

Below are a few pictures from our recent youth meetings

A Day Trip to Prague

Several months ago, we spoke with the youth group about taking a day trip to Prague.  In doing this I had several goals in mind.  One was to use the trip as an opportunity to just have some fun together as a group.  We've spent a lot of time this year studying the Bible and talking about spiritual things, so I thought that we would spend time together just doing something fun.  Another goal was to use this trip as an opportunity to not only build the community within our group, but also offer something a little different which might be cause to invite some new people to join us.  The third and final goal was to use this trip as a way of connecting with Adela, the cousin of Matouš and Julian, who has attended the English camp during the last two years, but because she lives near Prague and often travels different places with her mom finds it difficult to join us for some of our more regular activities.  With the busyness of school responsibilities and exams for some of the youth as well as other planned youth activities, it took a while to actually make the trip happen, but several weeks ago we agreed on a date and purchased tickets.  Pretty much all of the regular attenders of Youth Revolution signed up to go and Míla invited one of her students named Daniel, who recently became a believer.  Daniel invited his friend and classmate, Tony, as well.  We also reached out to Ondra, a 15 year old boy, who has grown up attending the CB church in Poruba.

The plan was to meet at the train station in Poruba at 4:40 in the morning and arrive in Prague by 9:00.  We would meet up with Adela, visit the national museum, enjoy the city together and then return to Ostrava by 9:00 PM.  This was our plan, but this was not God's plan.  After having our regular youth meeting on Friday night, we returned to our homes and tried to get as much sleep as possible before waking up early to catch the train.  Everyone made it to the train station on time, having gotten varying amounts of sleep.  When we arrived at the train station we saw that the train had been delayed about fifteen minutes, which is pretty normal here, but we soon found out that the delay would be much longer.  Kuba in his impatience and frustration called the train company to see what was causing the delay and he found out that sadly someone had taken their life by jumping in front of the train several stations before ours.  Sadly, this is not so abnormal of an occurrence here.  The train company was unsure how long the delay would be to deal with this situation, so we were left waiting to see.  During this time we sat together in the lobby of the train station trying to find ways to pass the time together.  Some people just rested, as it was only 5:30 or so in the morning.  Others spent the time talking together or playing guessing games similar to 20 questions.  Even in the midst of this sad situation and frustration I could see that everyone seemed to be getting along quite well.  Hour after hour passed by as we waited and we watched as the delay time for our train changed from 15 to 60 to 90 to 120 to 160 all the way to 280 minutes.  We discussed several times whether we wanted to just cancel the trip and do something else, but the vast majority of the group still hoped to make the trip, even if our time there would be shorter than we had hoped.  Eventually however, after getting our money refunded because of the length of the delay, we decided to call the trip a lost cause and attempt to make it to the local McDonald's before they stopped serving their breakfast menu.  So we all hopped on a tram and headed to McDonald's.  We spent about an hour or so in McDonald's, enjoying the air conditioning on an extremely hot day and laughing and talking with one another.  After we left McDonald's, some people headed home while the rest of the group decided to hangout a bit more before grabbing some Japanese food for lunch.  We walked to a nearby grassy area to relax and we played a card game together and talked.  Afterward we went to a newly opened Japanese restaurant that none of us had been to and we enjoyed a nice lunch together.  Afterwards, pretty much everyone returned home, while Míla and Eliška decided to go to the zoo.  

Even though the day turned out to be nothing like what we had planned, we all felt as though it was time well spent together.  Several of the youth invited our three visitors to our End of the School Year Celebration, which will be held next Friday evening and all three of the boys said that they would like to join us for it if they can.  Ondra also agreed to receive our group's Facebook updates so that he can know what we are up to and maybe join us for other things including our regular meetings in the future.  Please pray that Ondra would desire to get more and more involved within our group.  He is the oldest child in a family with four children (a rarity in the Czech Republic) and there are not many people close to his age that he comes in contact with during the Sunday services.  Please pray also for the family of the person who chose to take their own life and for the people of Czech Republic in general, who often live without any real hope in their lives.  Pray that the gospel of Christ would continue to spread here and that people would receive this gift of hope with joy and thanksgiving.

Below are some pictures from our "Prague trip"