Late Night at Youth Revolution

English Conversation 

On the way back from the retreat last Sunday, I was invited by Patrik to come to his school and be a part of their English conversation time.  So, on Tuesday afternoon I traveled to a part of Ostrava that I have never been to and spent a couple hours with a class of 17 and 18 year olds.  It was a good experience getting the chance to see Patrik's school and meet some of his classmates.  We spoke a bit about why we thought that there were so many atheists in the country.  They were also interested in my thoughts on Czech politics and race relations in the city among other things.

Friday Night

Since it was the week after the retreat I thought that it might be a good idea to do something different.  Last week they heard me speak four times so I thought that maybe they would like to hear from someone different.  When I met with some of the teens at the beginning of the year some had suggested hearing some other people's stories so I thought that it might be a good time for an interview.  Bára, in the last month has been baptized and became a member of the church so I thought that it might be good for these teens to hear about how the Lord has worked in the life of someone that they know.  Bára and I went over the interview questions earlier in the week so that she would have sometime to think about it a little bit more and she could also just answer in Czech on Friday night to save us some time.  I setup the room so that it looked a little bit like a late night talk show with a guest's couch and a host's table.  We even had some applause sound effects.  It was pretty fun.  Bára explained how she came to Christ and the difference that He has made in her life.  After the interview we played a game that you might see on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  We had a lip-syncing contest.  It was pretty funny and it got people out of their comfort zones.

The interview with Bára

Anička lip-syncing

Kuba lip-syncing to "Let It Go" from Frozen

Klara lip-syncing to "Baby" by Justin Beiber.  She was our winner for the evening.

Bára lip-syncing to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off"

Terka lip-syncing to Beyoncè's "Single Ladies"

Watching Christmas Movies and Meeting Patrik's Mom

I invited people from the youth group to come over and watch some Christmas movies with me.  The only people that could make it were Patrik and Tána but we still had fun.  It is a tradition that I have been a part of back home for the last 15 years or so.  Even though we didn't watch "A Muppet Christmas Carol," which is a must see, we watched "A Christmas Story."  They had never heard about the movie and we couldn't find it with Czech subtitles so we just watched it without.  I had forgotten about the difficulty in the vocabulary used in the narration but we they were able to understand what was going on in the movie, but I am sure that this missed out on some of the really funny lines.  I also watched a Czech classic called the "Elementary School."  It was not a Christmas movie but they said that I needed to see it.  It was a fun afternoon together.  On Sunday afternoon, I got a surprise when my doorbell rang and Patrik was at my apartment and he had brought his mother.  They were going to go to the church service.  In my four years of knowing Patrik, I have never met his mother, Stanislava, so I wanted to make sure that I got the opportunity to take a picture of the two of them.

This coming Friday will be the last youth group meeting of the year before the holidays.  Pray for our time together and that the new year would bring closer relationships within the group and maybe even a new believer.