Thanksgiving

Well I had a good Thanksgiving away from home. Every year the American Missionaries in Eastern Europe with Josiah Venture get together in the Czech Republic to celebrate Thanksgiving together. It was really a great time. I got to spend time getting to know the other missionaries better and of course have some good American food! After Thanskgiving I still had the weekend off so I decided to go with some guys from Slovakia and one guy from Czech to Berlin. It was a good trip and quite interesting to see Berlin. I was able to go to the wall, the Parliment building and the Jewish Museum. It was a good time but kind of sad also because it proceeds the last week and a half that I will be here. I am finally getting together my schedule for my good bye tour to all the towns I have been working in. Please pray that I will wrap up well here in Slovakia and travel safely home.

Last Roznava Visit

Well this weekend was my last official visit to Rožňava. It was a very good visit. On Friday I went to one of the schools to teach a couple English classes. By this I mean that I went in and talked with the students in English. This is quite fun because, while the students think they are getting out of school work the teacher knows that they are still in fact learning. On Friday night we had KECY Club. Because it was my last KECY Club Rudo asked me if I would be willing to talk. I spoke on the spiritual realm and some of the differences between what we believe as Christians and what other religions believe. We also had a video made by the American team that was here at camp this summer. The students really seemed to love and appreciate this video. On Saturday I went to one of the boys houses from camp. His name is Kris. This was a very blessed day of some really good spiritual conversation. He is another young Catholic man that is now after camp asking questions about the differences between faith and works. Please continue to keep this young team in Rožňava in your prayers! Also please pray for me as I spend the next two weeks rapping up what I have here and traveling to all the places I need to go before I leave.

Levice

Well I had quite a good weekend in Levice this week. I was able to find a good number of the files I lost on my computer using a program a friend had there. But this was not the high light :) One of the high points was the KECY club that we did. The theme was multiculturalism, so everyone dressed up in costumes as if they were from another country. It was quite funny to see people dressed up and acting like someone from a different culture. After this one of the boys from the camp was speaking with one of the leaders and decided that he wanted to start a relationship with God and to start living different. This was so amazing, it is so great to see God working in this young man's life over the last couple of months since camp. I was also able to spend a good amount of time with the guy leaders there I am really excited about some of the steps they are taking to be more intentional in their ministry. I also was able to go to three programs called stuskovas, which are basically a celebration for being in the last year of high school. The students dress up like they would for prom and invite a date. During the night the class puts on a performance about themselves and their class for their friends and family. I went with a couple of friends to see this performance. It was quite interesting. Please continue to pray for the group in Levice. Also pray for me as I am wrapping up here and getting ready to come home, that I can adjust well and that I will be protected from Satan's attempts to discourage me.

HELP!!

I have a big need. I was in the office today and went to open a document on my computer that I have been working on. When I went to open The document I found that the entire file it was in was missing. This is very bad because this file also contains ALL the work I have done since August. I have no other copies of it. Please pray that I can some how recover this file. It is almost 2 gb of documents! Also if anyone knows some way to recover files from the trash on a mac please write me at: Howiehilljack@gmail.com

Important to read!

Many of you may have received this message from me:

This December before I leave to come back to the States, we are trying to do an event we will call KECY tour. This December will be a test run but will help us with a vision of how to do it in the future. The idea of this tour is to go into all the cities we do English camp with and help their church to be known by the youth in the community. We will do this through a presentation in the school and a work project to help the community, and finally a concert and activity that all the youth from the town will be invited to. The town we have chosen to do the first KECY Tour in is Rožňava, the town where I have been traveling and serving. We are expecting the Slovak Church to pay for part of this, but we are also trying to raise some money. I need to raise about $300 for the event. I have one donor already but I need a little bit more help. If you would like to help or would like more information please email me soon at: joshua_howard_slovakia@yahoo.com! Thank you for your support!

There has been a change to this. We had a meeting last night and determined that December will be too early to do this event so it will be in January. I therefore will not be a part of the event but still have a major role in planning it. We still have financial need for this event and the following KECY tours in the other 6 towns that we are involved in. The amount we still need to raise is about $300 per city. I know some of you have expressed interest in sponsoring this. If you are still interested please email me at:

joshua_howard_slvoakia@yahoo.com

Thank you for all that you do for the Kingdom of our GOD!!

For His Renown!
Joshua Howard

Milan With Taylor

Many of you know Taylor Friesen. He is studying in Madrid, Spain right now. This last weekend I had the opportunity to meet with him in Milan, Italy (Which is between us and happened to be the cheapest place for both of us to travel to). It was a great weekend to relax and spend time with Taylor who was in my small group for quite a while. He also brought a friend with him, who is religious, but we were not sure if he understood faith. On Sunday afternoon I had the opportunity to share the gospel with him. He told us that he had not ever heard this before. It seemed to really touch him. I told him that he and Taylor should discuss it more and that if he had questions he could ask Taylor. I think that this was a real great opportunity for me to share the Gospel and disciple at the same moment. This was not all that happened! On the way to Milan a girl sat down by me in the plane. I felt that I should talk to her so I introduced myself and began to speak with her. It turned out that she was a Slovak girl from Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. We talked that whole flight and found out that we had the same flight back, so we decided to sit together. I decided that on the way back I really wanted to talk to her and tell her about Jesus. So I began to pray that God would give me an opportunity to, and that I would have the boldness to do it. Well, it just so happened that on the return flight this girl, Andrea, started to tell me about her problems with religion. I thought, wow here is the opportunity! So I began to tell her about our position and who Jesus is. Half way through she told me she didn't like this idea, she didn't want someone to die for her, it was not fair. I told her that he already did and she began to cry. She did not make a decision then but said she wanted to think about it and ask me questions later, so I gave her my contact. Hopefully I will be able to connect her to some of the Christian girls in Bratislava that I know. Please pray for these two young people, Andrea from Bratislava and Jimmy from California. Pray also that Taylor will have wisdom and strength as he lives as an example for the other students he is around at school. Also continue to pray that God will grow and use me in this last month here in Slovakia. Yes it is my last month today :(

Great Meetings!

Well I wrote in the post below that A weekend a go I had everyone I tried to meet with cancel on me. On Monday I had some great meetings with some guys. The first I met in a town on my way home from Rožňava. His name is Mišo I have written about him before. He is from Levice and is the boy who wants to be a pilot. I spoke with him about his future and uncertainty of where he should go for pilot training. I encouraged him to pray which he thought was silly because he does not believe in God. I told him this is a perfect way to find out if God exists. He said he might try it. After this I met with Filip who I have written about before and had a really good conversation about relationships. He is a really neat guy to talk to, he has a lot of wisdom for a young guy. After this my neighbor Milan came over and we were talking about music. During this time he asked me about my purity ring. It was a great opportunity to share with him about my faith and why purity is important to me. Please be in prayer for all three of these guys especially Mišo and Milan as they are not believers.

All Saints or Halloween Weekend

Well I have not written for a while because I have not had much happening. The weekend before was one of my hardest weekends here. I made a special effort to meet with some students that are only in town on the weekends; after making this effort they all canceled on me. This was very discouraging for me, but God had better plans for this last Halloween weekend. I spent the weekend in Rožňava. On the way down I stopped in another town were Maťo (the boy I was teaching guitar to) is going to school. I met with him and had a really good conversation about personal time with God and having disciplines in his life. After this I traveled on to Rožňava. While I was here I stayed with one of the guys Ivan (shown in the picture cooking). This was really a great time for me to get to know him and spend a lot of time encouraging him. During the weekend the youth group went on a mini mission trip to help repair a church in a gypsy village. This was a real bonding experience for the whole team. Saturday evening I gathered all the guys from the team that I have been encouraging and discipling and we had a small group of accountability. It was an amazing time. There were a lot of things that came out in the guys lives and I believe really allowed them to see the need to stand together against the enemy and not try to go at it alone. On Sunday I had the pleasure of having lunch with one of the elders in the church. This was a really great opportunity to share a lot about the youth in the church and to get him excited about the group. In the evening I went to the cemetery, yes the cemetery :) In Slovakia they celebrate Halloween a little different than we do. They call it All Saints Day and instead of dressing up and asking for candy they go to the graves of their family and light candles to show their respect for the saints that have died. It is a very beautiful site to behold! It was quite the experience for me! This ended my weekend in Rožňava.