We're Back At It

Time to Catch Up

Since the last time I posted on this blog, a lot of different things have occurred.  We finished the school year at the end of June and I immediately turned my full attention toward finishing preparations for the English camp.  If you weren't able to attend the team presentation during the summer, the camp was a huge success.  In my opinion, it was one of the better camps that we have had in the last several years.  We had the greatest number of campers that we have ever had in the history of Fajny English Camp and beyond the numbers, there were many wonderful relationships built and grown during the camp.

After the camp, I returned along with the team to the States in order to reconnect with my sending church and prepare the next steps for the mission in Ostrava.  The plan was to return to the Czech Republic at the end of August to get aquatinted with missionaries from Alongside Ministries International and afterwards begin attending Czech language classes.  However things didn't work out  as planned in regards to attending the language classes.  By the time it was decided which class would be best for me to take the class was full.  This was certainly a disappointment for all of us.  Since the language school was to be the focus of this year, a lot of decisions needed to be made about the plans for this year.  This is part of the reason for the delay in updating the blog.

A New Year

Each new year brings with it changes.  Some changes are small while others are much larger.  We have experienced a bit of change here in Poruba as the school year began.  We began the year without the service of Míla in Youth Revolution.  God has been calling her to serve Him in some other ways so she needed to step away after more than four years of service with our group.  Although she will no longer regularly serve with the group she has sought to remain in contact with them and will continue to be part of the weekly Bible study that meets before our regular group meetings.  The Bible study is another place of change.  Besides beginning a new study, the book of James, we have also added several new people to the Bible study this year.  Over the past several years, I have offered the Bible study as an opportunity for the youth to study the Bible in a deeper way, help them to be in God's word more consistently throughout the week and to help to give them the tools to study the Bible more effectively on their own.  Over the last couple of years it was Eliška and Kuba, with Míla joining us last year.  This year however, both Bára and Klára have decided to join us, which is great.  Another change that we have seen here is that a high school student named Maggie has started attending the church on Sundays.  This has been a great encouragement to me as we have spoken for several years about her getting connected to a local church community.  Another thing that has been a bit of a change to start the year is that I haven't yet visited any of the local schools.  With the plan being that I would attend language school, I told these schools that I would not be able to visit them this year.  But since I was not able to be enrolled in the course, it once again frees me up to be able to make these visit.  Currently, we are working on a schedule to get me into meet with the students, hopefully beginning in October.

Although some things have changed, other things have stayed the same.  We kicked off the new year of Youth Revolution in the same way that we have for the last several years, with a back to school game night.  It's a great way to ease back into the school year.  We get a chance to come together after the summer months and just have a night of some fun and conversation.  This year we had several new people join us for this event.  Táňa invited her boyfriend, Denis, to join us.  Klára, a girl, who has attended the English camp the last couple of years and who's mother I have worked with for a couple of years, also joined us for the evening along with her friend Miša.  The prayer is that we might also see these people during some of our regular meetings.  We have also started up our regular youth meetings as well.  This year we began by starting with the book of Galatians, to spend some time talking focusing on having our faith in Christ and Christ alone.  Please pray that God would impress this on the heart of each person so that they might place their faith in Christ and Christ alone for their salvation.

Here are a few pictures from our first few weeks of Youth Revolution.