This week entailed returning to school, visiting youth groups and outreach ministries, and the unique experience of a Czech wedding. This week I was again able to experience the international body of Christ, and see God move powerfully in Czech schools. Last Thursday, we visited a Fusion group in Ostrava. Fusion is a Josiah Venture ministry that connects students to a local church through music. Essentially, anyone can come and learn how to play an instrument and have the opportunity to play in concerts throughout the year. This provides the opportunity for non-believing students to come and see how Jesus followers love one another and love others. This experience opens the way for the students to hear the gospel after experiencing how it has changed their friends in Fusion. I got to have a picnic and play frisbee with these kids and it was a great time.
Czech camps team meeting in Ostrava.
The next day, we had our first school visit where we advertised the camp my home church and I will be serving at this summer. Many students were interested according to our leaders and students at the school who we were working with, people were much more interested than normal. So, that is a huge praise to God that students are interested to come and see. This night, I got to visit the youth group of a missionary my home church supports in Ostrava. I was able to have many great conversations and encourage the believers there who are on fire for Jesus already.
Me working with high school students at a business school in Český Těšín.
On Saturday Aidan and I had the opportunity to experience a Czech wedding. The youth group leader of our sister church in Český Těšín was getting married and we were able to attend both the ceremony and the reception. The ceremony was fairly typical except that it was in the morning, and I have only ever been to weddings in the afternoon and night. Something more different however was that the reception was about six hours after the ceremony and went from 5pm to 4am! The reception venue was a ski resort on top of a mountain in Poland. It was beautiful. The night progressed slowly with many talks in Czech which I didn’t understand but the experience was great. We got to waltz for a little bit before the more typical party dancing began later in the evening. I ended up leaving around 2am and got to stay with one of my closer friends I knew from the church. I attended CB Tesin in the morning and spent lunch time with the family that I stayed with in the winter. It was a great time to catch up and love them.
The youth group sang a song for the youth group leader at the wedding ceremony.
Since the wedding, our team has attended a worship night for a local church in Ostrava and done another school visit where we spent the entire school day in classes promoting English camp, sharing about ourselves, and running English activities. This school was a little less receptive than the last, but God still did a good thing, and many students were interested even though they didn’t seem engaged in class time. Our team split up for most of the day, so I had to learn to depend on God when I didn’t have a high energy extrovert (i.e. Aidan) to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of group engagement. I was able to bond with another team member, Samuel, through the experience and God gave us the energy and love to get through the day.
This week we have more school visits planned, a counting “party” to organize all the shirts and supplies for different English camps throughout the Czech Republic, an Edge practice (another Josiah Venture ministry), and a Fusion rehearsal.
Here are some more random pictures from the past week:
Prayer Requests:
- God would bring the student He wants to the English camps
- Continued personal spiritual growth to follow God’s calling
- Flexibility when there is a lack of structure in my days