Category: Blog (Page 5 of 13)

Our Michaela (15) is in secondary school student now, although I call her “vysokoskolacka”, the college student, for she enjoys working late in the evenings pretty often. She is also now the tallest person in our family. Michaela brings a lot of joy to us and we are very grateful…

to our God for her activity in our church’s junior high ministry. Daniela (13) is the organizational kind of person, so if you would need to arrange anything, she is the right person to ask. She also loves to be around people. In September Eva and I celebrated the 16th anniversary of our marriage, and it is hard to believe that those 16 years flew so fast. And we’ve been blessed to have a very meaningful and enriching time together. Eva is a great help to me and to our ministry. Currently she is helping with the TCK bookkeeping, as well as finishing her biggest hand made calendar order to date. I am now enjoying the new ice hockey season, which gives me the possibility to be totally physically exhausted. I’ve also been learning to listen to the Lord’s voice and understand Him better, which is a welcomed and exciting lesson.

Thanks to all of you who pray for us and our ministry, as well as to those who support us financially. It is an honor to be part of the work He is doing here in Slovakia. And to hear more about our ministry, please read the TCK 2007 annual report. You can find it at www.tckompas.sk/annual.

The National Youth Leaders Conference (KPM) knocks on our door. This year’s conference will be from April 23rd to the 26th (pretty soon).

The topic of the conference is “Restart” (Recovery, Renewal, Restoration). Our team is working hard on the preparation. A big change this year is that we gave freedom to the main speakers to choose their topic and to share freely from the word the Lord put in their hearts. The second big change is that I gave a lot of space to our young colleagues to develop and create the conference program. We were also blessed this year by the Minister of the Scholl and the city of Zilina by getting additional financial grants from them. It looks like it will help us to organize the conference without so much financial stress. Please pray for us that the conference would inspire and encourage the youth leaders (almost all of them are the volunteers) in Slovakia. We believe that KPM is more than a conference!

I wake up with an idea about the summer pretty often. I pray mainly for the English camps I will participate in. I will be a counselor in the first one (with youth from Kosice) and I will lead the second one.

We will do the camp with my own local church after 6 years again. My daughter Michaela (15) will serve with me in the church team. I am looking forward to that a lot. To serve her classmates and many other high school students will be a great honor for me. This summer in our camping program, we will have to use a lot of improvisation. Three U.S. churches cancelled their participation in the summer camp program and the fourth one cannot come for the work project we planned to do in May to support the English camp recruitment campaign. Please pray for us that we would not need to cancel any camp of the 7 planned ones. We feel like it would not be good if the Slovak non-churched students would fail to hear and see the Gospel this summer.

The college student’s ministry clubs we organize at Zilina’s dorm is attended regularly by more than 15 students. The program is focused mainly on non-church students.

We formed a new team of leaders this school year (Mato, Ivka, Evka and Tana) and it looks like we will have to divide the group soon. But this will be the task for the next semester probably.

I have just finished with my seasonal hobby, ice hockey.

I enjoy the new people I meet there and the relationships with my non-church team members. It is great sport and it helps me to relax a lot…

The all story originally was that like follows. We wanted to go to the Pust (desert) cabin for our local church/TCK English camp. Unfortunately it was reserved. Then we tried to find other good place for the camp. We visited few cabins and did a lot of phone calls. The result was that after 3 weeks we found the place, named Ostre cabin. It was not the totally best one, but the price was good and it was close to our city.

In May, two months before the camp (after we spread out all our camp advertisement /web, posters, applications…) we got a phone call that the Ostre cabin bankrupted and they cannot provide their services any more (accommodation neither the food) for our camp.

It was pretty strong input for us to pray for the new location (it is not easy to find good cabin for the camp with good price in the middle of May if the event is in July). After many brothers and sisters prayed, Eva M. (our camp teammate) have got a phone call from Pust cabin, that looked somehow like this:

“We assume that you do not need a cabin now- in May, any more… But still we felt like it is good to call you and to ask. For our customer cancelled the order for the week you were interested…”

What a surprise, the original plan came back to us.

“Actually, it is a good news, we need a cabin, for the owner of one we booked, bankrupted”, Eva answered. “But there is a problem, our price has been already agreed for certain amount…”

“No problem, we agree with your price…” the Pust cabin owner answered.

Well, He has His own plans and the ways, He provided good price and He tested our faith. But the story continues…

Gen. 40:8b
First week of May, we took place at the annual JV Spring Family Conference, where our 2nd and 3rd culture staff came together to focus on living out our God-given dreams through the story of Joseph. This conference provided great time to ponder and to spend time in His presence.

In April 2009, the TCK team held the 16th Annual KPM- Youth Leadership Conference. Almost 600 leaders and their teams participated. I was encouraged to see the next generation of youth leaders organize this conference in a relevant and inspiring way. It was a joy to be part of the program as well as to lead “From the boy – the man” – “How to” seminar for the boys…

Here is one message from a youth leader:
“Thank you for everything… mainly for your interest and care for our spiritual growth. Basically, it is obvious that you mind what ordinary youth leaders from the small villages are living. A want to add that you ministry to us is meaningful.

On May 27, 60 interns landed and began their three-day JV Amazing Race from Vienna, Austria, via Bratislava, Slovakia, via Budapest, Hungary, via Hotel Malenovice, Czech Republic. From there they spent a week in training for their summer preparations. In the morning, we reviewed the talk series, God Story, spent mid-day preparing them in their various roles, rested in the afternoon, and in the evening, dived into scriptures to prepare their hearts, minds and souls.

They are now in their perspective countries with 10 of them serving with us in Slovakia! We are very thankful to God for providing us with these amazing, talented and gifted college students who have given up their summer to serve alongside our ministry.

In June they were in their host cities walking alongside the Slovak youth groups, and promoting camps in high schools.
Will you join us in praying for:
Their health- we are all fighting colds and would ask that you please pray for strength and good health.
Overcoming fears and obstacles – Satan does not want us to be doing this, and is attacking our minds with fears, doubts and insecurities. Please pray for protection and that we will walk boldly in Christ wearing our armor to fight off the spiritual warfare.
Slovak students – pray that after interns visit in the classrooms, student’s hearts would be soften and that they would sign up to participate in KECY this summer.
Youth Groups – pray for the Slovak youth groups as they prepare for the upcoming camps.

I cannot thank you enough for standing with us during this summer with your thoughts, prayers and encouragement!