It's Been A Busy Month

Continuing to Grow Together

It has been almost a month since I have had the time to put together a new blog post.  One of the things I have been busy with has been the youth group.  For the last month and a half we have been spending most of our Friday nights with another small youth group from another church that is located about a 10 minute walk away.  Some weeks they have met at our place, other weeks we have gone to ours.  This has been great for both groups because now there are a few more people to get to know and a few more people to play games with.  I have done the teaching on most evenings but the leader of the other group, Robert, has also taught a lesson.  A few weeks ago, the Elders of the two churches met to speak about ways that they can work together and help each other.  Petr asked me to attend the meeting as well and give my take on how the meetings together were going.  Robert also spoke about what he thought as well.  I was really encouraged to hear that he was really encouraged to see that each one of my lessons was Christ-centered.  He said that he liked it so much that he would try to do that also when he leads the youth or preaches a sermon.  One of the things that we have been looking to do during our Friday evenings is to encourage the teens from each group to get more and more comfortable with each other so that it seems like it is just one group instead of two.

There are several things that would be great to have you pray for.  The first thing would be to pray that the groups would continue to grow more and more comfortable with each other.  Each group has some very close friendships but they should also be reaching out to one another.  The second thing would be to pray that the Holy Spirit would speak into the hearts of each person that comes.  Both groups have a mix of teens that are believers and teens that are not.  My hope is that each person would be taking steps closer to God.  That God would be calling those that don't know Him and that God would challenge and encourage believers to be more like Christ.  Please also pray that God would open up good opportunities to have real, quality, one on one conversations with teens about where they are with Jesus.

The balloon stomp game didn't work outside in the grass so we had to move inside.

Katka and Michal preparing for the balloon stomp game

Klára and Terka leading the games

Šarka, Robert's wife, leading worship

Some more games

Surprisingly, I was the last one standing

Klára and I took a crazy picture together because it was her 16th birthday a few weeks ago.

Enjoying some refreshments

CB Ostrava - Poruba Hosts an Ostrava Youth Gathering

Two Fridays ago, we hosted several youth groups from Ostrava at the church.  Although I didn't teach that night, it was still a lot of preparation to make sure that everything went well.  We had about 65 teenagers from all over Ostrava and from churches of different denominations come together for some worship, teaching and fellowship.  Our group had a pretty solid turnout with nine teens from our group attending.  This was great because the last time the Ostrava youth groups met, we only had about four teens from our group attend.  The teens from our group also helped by helping me setup our photo booth backdrop, turn the lights on and off to set the mood during worship, pick up the pizza and help clean up afterward.  The CB Poruba church body also helped by providing some desserts for the evening as well.  The speaker was a man who sets up worship festivals and spoke with the teens about vocational ministry.  After the worship, games, and lesson people enjoyed lots and lots of pizza and got to know each other a little better.  It was a great evening.  Pray for the young believers in Ostrava as they seek to follow the Lord and grow in the knowledge and love of Him.

The worship team

A few games and icebreakers

Our speaker, Petr Húšť

School Visits

Over the past few weeks, I have been visiting between 2-3 schools each week.  It has kept me very busy with preparing different presentations for the different classes as well as the time that it takes to actually visit the schools.  It has been tiring but great.  I finally got the opportunity to visit Klára and Terka's class last week.  They have been trying to convince their teacher to have me visit their class for the last two years and this was the first time that I was asked to come.  Their teacher really seemed to enjoy my presentation so I expect to return to their class in the near future, especially since I have a deal with their school to visit each Thursday.  During my visits, I have spoken with classes about things like US holidays, the upcoming election, a general lesson on US culture, and an introduction to who I am and why I am here in the Czech Republic.  The students get a chance at the end to ask me all types of questions and I get to invite them to the teen conversation group that I lead.  I actually spoke to and with an entire school as part of their Day of Languages this morning.  Below are a couple of pictures from a some of my visits.  Pray that some of these students would join our now small teen conversation group and that some might join us on Friday nights for Youth Revolution.

This is Ingrid.  I spoke at her school in Zborovice, three times last year, but this year she was my helper as she has moved on to high school.

These are 1st year students in the small town of Zborovice.  They are all about 6 years old.  It was really fun to help them learn colors in English.

These are some first year high school students in Ostrava.  They were really excited and wanted to take some selfies with me and follow me on Instagram.