Prayer

Please pray for the teams of Presov, Levice, and Roznava! Pray for the students that will come to these camps that God will touch their hearts and that the Slovak youth groups can make good connections with the students. Pray for the American teams coming over that they will be prepared to serve and not be focused on themselves. Pray for our intern team as we put final details together for camps. Pray for energy for all! And for God's blessing!!!

Roznava visit

Well our visit to Roznava was just as amazing as our visit to Levice. I really enjoyed being with the team and getting to know them. Rudo their leader is a really neat guy. I had a number of conversations with him that were really great! As most of you know I have been very passionate about discipling young guys. It was so great to talk to Rudo and find that he had almost the same passion as me when it comes to young guys. Rudo is married to Lenka and they have a daughter named Emma. While we were in Roznava we stayed in their flat (apartment). They are such a neat family. Both Rudo and Lenka have jobs, but they still take the time to lead the youth group and be involved in the students lives. While we were there we did class visits to schools to promote the camp. Last year they had 12 students at camp. This year after three days they have 40 students signed up and more that want to come! God is really blessing this ministry, it is so neat to be a part of it. Right now I am in Zilina at Kompas (the national organization we are working with). We are here preparing for camp that will start next week.

Team in Levice

Here are some pictures from Levice our second town:

Castle, Knights and Hide and seek

Well this week we have been getting to know the team here in Levice. And let me tell you they are amazing. They are so involved. This last weekend we went to an event called castle days in their town. It was a lot of fun. There was the town castle and then below there was a show that a troop put on. It was a reenactment of medieval knights fighting in competitions like jousting and sword fighting (It was similar to Medievil times in the U.S. but more real :). It was quite interesting. This Monday we decided to treat the team by cooking them a meal. We managed to gather enough things to make a taco dinner complete with tacos, chips and salsa, and a desert of Ice cream Sundays. Later in the evening we played hide and seek in the church. We are having so much fun with the team here that I am really not looking forward to leaving friday. This team is also very encouraging spiritually. It seems that they are very interested in singing worship together, they seem to do this alot. There is a real spiritual emphasis in all of their lives. I am also very impressed with the leader of their group. Her name in Zuzi. She is quite a fine person and a great leader for the group. I can tell that they really respect her as their leader. This week we are doing school promotions in Levice. So far they are going well, but we could use prayer still. The team is trying to have twice as many students this year. We have had a lot of interest so far. Tonight we are having an evening program that we have invited the students at the schools to. Pray for our health we are still trying to get over whatever it is we have!

School visits and sickness

Well we started doing city visits this last week. I have been sick so it has been pretty hard for me. The first city I went to was Presov. This was so great because I have a lot of friends there that I made last year. It was so good to see them and spend time with them again. I was there only for a short while and then moved on to the town of Bardejov. In this town we got to know the team from the church that we will be working with. During the week we went into the schools and promoted the camp. This is one of my favorite things to do. It is a real taste of the culture here. The school systems are a lot different and it is real neat the freedom we have to be able to go in and talk about Christian things and to talk about our camp. I had been sick at the beggining of the week but it has been getting worse. I finally went to the doctor and am now on antibiotics and was told to stay away from people. This is not good for me. I feel like I am useless now and I so want to be out with the students working. Please pray for my health and for the health of my team. Also we have arrived in another town and are preparing to work with the team and go into more schools. Pray for this week that are interactions will go well and that we will be able to really help out the team! Pray also for protection spiritually for the team!

Training

Well tomorrow We leave from training to go out to the countries we are serving in. The Training in Malenovice in the Czech Republic has been amazing. We have had a lot of general training, but have also had some intense spiritual learning. Dave Patty the President of Josiah Venture spoke. As usual his messages have been very convicting. I am amazed at how freely God's Words flow through him. One of the major things he talked about was faith. He discussed how many times in the gospels Jesus reprimanded the disciples for having too little faith. He talked about how having fears, doubts, and insecurities result from a lack of faith. These are all things that I struggle with in my life. I realized through this not only how little my faith is but that my faith is so little because just like his disciples I do not daily put it into practice. Often I do not feel like I need to have trust or faith in God's power in even the small things in life. This is something I want to start putting more of my effort is. I am excited to see how God grows my faith this summer through the simple task of me having faith in his power.