Month: January 2014 (Page 7 of 11)

You may remember that we organize a country-wide youth workers conference each year. It was the biggest event of the year.

More than 650 youth workers came to Zilina to learn and be inspired. I feel like we managed to share clearly the concept of the discipleship and the need to pass what we have been given to another. The President of Josiah Venture Dave Patty was the main speaker. He did great job. The Lord used him greatly. Somebody said: “It is an irony that the main commission of Jesus can hardly be found in the current church.” How many of us have been involved in an intentional discipleship process with another person? If we want to see the growth of the church, it will not be possible without discipleship.

We organized the English conversation camps for the high school students in cooperation with 4 local churches this summer. More than 200 students heard the Gospel.
We would like to see more evangelistic camps next summer. Maybe the opportunity for your church…?

English Evangelism Summer Camps are knocking on our doors. After organizing so many camps, we understood that this ministry produces a lot of fruits in the local churches and among the non-church students.

We submitted to God’s will to multiply our camps three times this summer (considering last one). The miracle happened, the dream joined nine Slovak and eight American local churches. We will have a privilege to serve with the Gospel more than 400 students. We need your prayers to accomplish the task.

Five interns arrived to Slovakia at the end of May. This summer we are supposed to organize eight English evangelism camps in cooperation with nine Slovak local churches.

I am supposed to lead our church camp (the first week of July) and take part at a camp with the Kosice church. It is a joy to watch my Michaela and Daniela recruiting their classmates and non-church friends. We are all looking forward for the event. There is no bigger joy than to see our children in His ministry. The topic of the camps will be “Redeem”.

Changes in Kompas Café and TCK At the end of last year we decided to close the Café service including the public catering. We wrestled for a long time with the issue how to get out of red numbers. The Café took too much work, time and the attention. For it did not support our ministry we did a very tough decision and released five employees. Good news is that all of them have got new jobs as well as the decision making process was filled with His presence and peace. Later a miracle happened and a member of the local Christian community rented the Café as the Korean non-smoking, no hard alcohol serving restaurant.

Last month we lost our colleague Paige, the former director of the summer projects, it was a big lost. She had to leave Slovakia to take care for her sick mother. We have got new administrative staff Katka. Maruska (one of the best student of Presov College) decided to join us from June as full time staff worker. She will serve in eastern region of Slovakia as the trainer.

Our American colleague Laura Troutman left Slovakia last month. She served here for more than three years. I am very grateful for her ministry.

Well done Laura, well done. In the same month, we learned that our friend Josh Howard would like to join our team from next year. Our Slovak friend Eva Kohutova should join us after she graduates college after February 2011. She will replace Janka Hrivniakova who will continue her education to gain the masters degree. We would like to open a Kompas internship program from September 2010. Slovak interns, Feri Kozlej and Denisa Gallova will serve with us mainly in the School of leaders program as well as KPM 2011.

Often I wonder how it was possible for the first church after three centuries, to grow almost to 20 million committed followers of Christ. It was similar in China. How did they manage it?

After the Cultural Revolution, it was discovered that the church grew from 2 million to about 50 million. In both cases, it happened during persecution, without paid Christian workers, without church buildings and without printed Scriptures. How did they manage it? We pondered about this question during our Josiah Venture annual conference themed “Forgotten ways” with Australian author and speaker Allan Hirsh.

Moreover, I got a special opportunity to think about this topic during my 10 day trip to the Philippines. The Global Youth Initiative conference took place there. 30 youth workers and missionaries from different “corners” of the world gathered there to learn from each other. My conviction about a great future for the church in our country was renewed. It gave me optimism and joy. For sure, His church will survive.

Our family is enjoying the ministry as well. During the Christmas season we had a good time, and enough rest. Three weeks ago, Eva and I participated in the Josiah Venture’s Marriage Retreat for all the married JV missionaries in Krakow Poland.

It was the best conference about the marriage we have ever experienced. There was great and very practical teaching, not too much theory, enough time for discussion and opportunities to touch weak places in our marriage as well.

Recently I had to stop playing ice hockey due to a knee injury. I am currently trying to get it healed by taking medicine and riding on a stationary bike for 45 minutes each day. The exercise should last for two more months. If it does not help, I will need surgery. It is an unbelievable long and boring process.

We have started our regular family gatherings as we realized our teenage daughters are too busy with their own activities. We felt like we are loosing our influence in their decisions. We are using the family time to share, discuss, read Scripture, pray, talk about the life issues and play games as well. So far it has been great fun.

I am very thankful to our God for you and your partnership in our life and ministry.

In the beginning of the year we met and have prayed about the next three year TCK Vision. What does He want us to do? What needs to be changed? How does He want us to be used?

We are still seeking His direction, and would ask that you join us in praying for clarity as we create the next steps. We want to see His plans be accomplished and not ours.

Thanks to Him, pretty well. I tried to play ice hockey again in April, after the conservative way of healing my knee injury (the pills) and a daily exercise routine on a bicycle for almost 3 months.

Now, everything feels fine. The knee works well.

The children work hard to achieve their grades, but unfortunately the warm weather does not help them in their efforts. Eva is doing well in spite of 6 weeks of rain that prevented her from collecting needed dried flowers for her greeting card business.