Yep, I'm a quarter of a century old...

Throughout high school and college, my friends and I have been big birthday people. So I've had all kinds of things happen for me on my birthday. A few of my favorites include a surprise party when I turned 17 (I seriously had NO idea), a birthday WEEK when I turned 19 (which included a scavenger hunt all around Columbia, many celebratory dinners, and 4 of my friends from out of town coming to spend a weekend with me), and being kidnapped (literally blind folded and shoved into a car) and taken to Atlanta for my 21st. Since moving to Slovakia, I've had to readjust my expectations for this day, knowing I'm not going to be surrounded by my best friends or family. And last year was pretty miserable to be honest. It included my friend's dog leaving a big pile of crap for me to clean up on the kitchen floor, a morning of staff meetings in Zilina, me missing lunch because I had to rush to catch my train back to Bratislava, subsequently starving through small group, and then pretty much going to bed hungry because I was too tired to bother with going to the store for food. It was a little depressing.

This year I was planning to take it easy on my birthday, which was this past Thursday. I was going to finish Christmas shopping, hang up some more pictures around my flat, meet with a few friends... really just enjoy doing whatever I wanted. But then Tuesday evening I received an email about our staff meetings in Zilina on Thursday... WHAT!? I had no idea this was coming, and was super frustrated at the idea of reliving the horrid experience of last year. The reason I didn't know I was expected there was a classic case of miscommunication between my boss and I, so I put on my best happy face and got on my train to Zilina Thursday morning.

The day started out rocky with the crap weather I stepped out into. It was that nasty mix of snow and rain, and it was not only coming down hard, but it was coming down pretty sideways thanks to the constant windiness of BA. So you can imagine what help my umbrella was to me. None. But once arriving in Zilina, my sweet teammates Maruska, Anka, and Janka really tried their best to make the day great for me throughout our day of meetings. Unfortunately for them, my poor attitude was pretty fixed all day, but I really appreciated their effort and need to apologize for my grumpiness. Part of the reason I couldn't shake it was the fact that in the evening we were having a Christmas party with the architecture firm that works below us. The idea of being the only foreigner (Zac and his wife, Kim, couldn't come) in a sea of alcohol and older Slovak men was not what I had planned for the evening of my birthday. Thankfully I was able to side up next to my friend Miska during most of the party, and ended up having a really great conversation with her that made being there worth it. Then I went to bed early, and thus was my the end of the day of my birth.

Last night, my dear friend Noemi threw me and her brother, Jakub, a birthday party. Their mom, Ester, made lots of amazing food, including a sacher tort and tiramisu for desert, which was fabulous because I hadn't eaten all day. The thing is though, I was turning 25, and Jakub was turning 18. So, next to Ester, their MOM might I remind you, I was by far the oldest person at my party. At one point they were playing a Dave Matthews song, and I just laughed and said, "This song came out when I was 11!" One of the girls then said, "that means I was 2!" Oh my.

This post may seem a little bitter to the untrained eye, but really I'm laughing at myself. I know how blessed I am. Especially at how much my life here has transformed over the past year. I'm touched by how many people wanted my day to be great and feel very well loved. However, I must admit that I still have the desire to do something selfish for myself. So, in honor of turning 25 and the desire to celebrate like an adult, tomorrow I'm treating myself to a trip to Czech to visit my close friend Katka for a few days. And I'm desperately looking forward to it!

The Team Comes to BA

On Monday, my team and I had meetings in Zilina all day long. We started at 10am and finally finished at 10:30pm. I do not lie. Yes, we had breaks in there, but regardless I was a little brain dead by the end of the day. Thankfully, for Tuesday we decided to have a fun day!! So the next morning we all loaded into our van and headed to Bratislava. Woohoo!! It was the first time for my whole team to come and visit where I live, and I have to say it was quite the pleasant day. After visiting my flat, and of course fitting in a quick meeting, we grabbed lunch at one of my favorite places and then headed to the open-air Christmas Market on the main square. Later we came back to my flat, relaxed, ate some ice cream, and then they were off for Zilina!

Peto H. just bought a new camera, so we got some great shots during the day.

Here we are meeting in my flat before lunch...




A cool pic of Maruska taken at the restaurant. This was just one of many taken during the day though... homegirl LOVES to get her picture taken!



A team photo in the empty fountain outside the Presidential Palace... I don't think we were supposed to be there:



We all stared as we saw this little man carrying this HUGE instrument just outside my flat. This photo doesn't do it justice:



Janka caught me taking a photo with my own camera. And you can see one of the many sculptures placed throughout the old town in BA. During the summer there is some stupid street performer trying to mimic the sculpture. He paints his face gold and has this cardboard box that he's made into a manhole... I'm glad it's winter and I won't have to see him for a while.



Here are some of the pics I took...

This is the picture I was taking when Janka caught me:



Michalska Brana/Michael's Gate:



A tram passing by:



Some shots of the Christmas Market:

US Trip: High/Low Time!!

In college, my roommates and I would incessantly play the game High/Low. It’s incredibly simple really. All you do is select your best and worst moment(s) from the past month, week, day, hour, or any other time period you feel like. So often in life we just live and keep on living without ever reviewing what we’ve lived through. When we don’t stop we miss out on valuable lessons, themes, blessings, etc. that God may be trying to communicate to us. This activity is a way to stop and reflect. Of course journaling is another way to do this, which I also highly encourage you to do, but High/Low involves others, which is always more fun. So, here is my US trip in High/Low form:

HIGHS:
1) Family Time – My family pretty much rocks. I mean, yeah, we totally have our dysfunctions, but what family doesn’t? And whether I was bumming around the house with my parents, crying on the couch with Liz, or singing to ridiculous songs with Will and Sarah – it was so great for my soul to just be with them all.

2) Saturday, Nov 22nd – This day involved a lot of my favorite people: Steph, Mere, Christian, Addy, Katie… I love each of them a lot and this day was both super fun for me and spiritually refreshing. I constantly feel blessed with the depth of friendships that the Lord provided for me in college.


3) Corporate Worship in English – Singing worship songs in my native tongue rarely happensanymore, so I was soaking up each opportunity I had.

4) Driving – I never drive in Slovakia, so it felt great to be able to go and hop in the car whenever I wanted to go somewhere. Thanks SO much to my gracious parents for allowing me to use one of their cars for 3 weeks!

5) Breakfast with Susan – Susan and I have known each other since we were six. Seriously. We were out of touch for quite a while, but God brought us closer together after graduating from high school. Since then we’ve been through some crazy intense stuff, which has really tied us together for life. I adore my friendship with her, and it was a gift to be able to sit in on her couch in our pajamas, eat oatmeal, and pour our hearts out.

6) FOOD – Sushi, Indian, Mexican… oh, the list goes on!

7) Starbucks in ATL – One evening while I was in Atlanta, I went to Starbucks with my friends Margaret, Steph and Brett. And I honestly think this is the first time we had all been together since maybe late 2005. We had a ton of fun just reminiscing about funny stories from college, as well as talking about some of the things God had recently been teaching us.

8) The Clash of my Worlds – It was a joy for me to have my family get to know my Slovak team. I now feel a little less like I’m living two separate lives.

9) Asheville – Maruska and I traveled up to see my friend Elisabeth there, and it was so great to see her. I would have been severely upset if I had been home and hadn’t! It was also super fun to see Maruska enjoy the city, considering she’s a lover of all things art, like myself. And, before leaving we got to drive through the Biltmore grounds, thanks to Liz being an employee there!

10) Publix – I know, this may seem ridiculous, but grocery stores just aren’t the same in Europe! The last time I was in the States I cried the first time I stepped into one. Literally. And poor Will was with me and had no idea what to do. It was just so spacious and clean, and I could find just about anything I wanted there… so different from what I have become accustomed to here. I mean, come on, they have SUSHI people!! I desperately wanted to take one (yes, a whole Publix) back with me to Bratislava. This time around I didn’t let the huge differences get to me and just enjoyed the perks!

11) Danielsville with the Halls - My aunt Marla and her family live about an hour outside of Atlanta in the town of Danielsville. It's basically in the middle of nowhere and that's EXACTLY what Maruska and I needed after being in Atlanta for a week. It was such a needed escape for us to be able to just walk around their property, and then to come back to a home cooked meal of southern fried chicken! It was glorious. Here's a picture of what we were surrounded by:




LOWS:
1) Jet Lag – Wow. I continue to misjudge just how horrible I can be when I’m jet lagged. I need to send a blanket “sorry!” to my Slovakia teammates.

2) Overindulgence – I hate how overindulgent I become when I’m home! I think, “Oh, I’m never here, so it doesn’t matter!” But then after 2 weeks my body regrets it big time.

3) Losing My Voice – The last week of my time in the States, my one week at home, I conveniently got sick. And, to add to the lameness of being sick, I lost my voice for the first time ever! So for my last 2 days home I could only speak in a glorified whisper.

4) Atlanta – Although many people I love live there, I really dislike how freaking huge and spread out Atlanta is. Why is this necessary? And if it has to be this way, can’t they figure out how to make a better public transportation system than the marta?

5) Not Enough Time – This time around was such a tease. I hardly got to see everyone I wanted to, and definitely didn’t get enough time with the people I did see. Hopefully next time will prove better in this area.

6) FREEZING Weather – Um, who told Columbia to get so freaking cold in November?!? I get that enough here!! At least it was still sunny…


I could totally go on with my highs, but thankfully these are about the only lows I can think of at the moment! So, there you have it. An overview of my US trip High/Low style... Now go grab a friend and do some High/Lowing for yourself!!

Kukova Trip

Last weekend Noemi and I traveled out to the eastern part of Slovakia. We were invited by my teammate, Maruska, to come be a part of the Kukova Kecy Club, and we made a weekend of it while we were there. Kukova is the small village where Maruska is from, so we stayed with her family while we were there, and were treated with the most amazing hospitality... which basically means we were fed until we thought we might explode. Or give birth. Or something. It was a lot of food.

Anyhow, Noemi and I felt like we were little kids who had never been in the country before. We were so excited to just be out in the open country, instead of surrounded by buildings like we are in Bratislava. Don't get me wrong, I love BA and can't see myself anywhere else at the moment, but it was good for my spirit to just get out and breath. To be surrounded by God's beauty. To hear only the nature that was surrounding me, instead of the traffic that I'm hearing out of my open window right now.

Overall the trip was really amazing. Traveling 7 hours to get there isn't amazing, and me getting sick (via the incredible hospitality mentioned earlier) wasn't a perk, but I'd do it all over again. I can't wait until my next visit.

Me with the village of Kukova behind me. Yeah, that's about the whole village.



Maruska and I. We basically walked up this hill in our pajamas... one thing you could NEVER do in Bratislava. It was glorious.






These are a few pics from Kecy Club the night before. The topic was on "Identity." Basically how when we put our identity in things apart from Christ, our foundation will always be unstable. I shared a little testimony about something I experienced in high school pertaining to this topic, and also taught the students there a few new phrases in English. It was fun.

My SK Fam...

Here are the latest pics of my Kompas coworkers/family:

From left to right, top to bottom...
Peto, Draho, Mike, Noah, Zac
Janka, Me, Maruska
Peto, Jany



Yay! We love each other!




And here's the whole Josiah Venture family from our fall conference:

Josiah Venture's 2x3 Campaign

Josiah Venture is heading up a campaign to see the fruits of our ministry double in the next 3 years. Some of you may not know this, but Slovakia is just one of eleven countries that JV serves in. The others are the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia, and Albania. I am extremely committed to the vision of Josiah Venture, and I'm incredibly excited to see what God will do through this campaign. Here are some videos that give you a taste of what we hope to see happen in this area of the world, and to find out more about the 2x3 Campaign go to http://www.2x3campaign.com.




Next Generation from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.


One Percent from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.

(The pic of the group of people waiting at the tram stop was taken in Bratislava, just minutes from where I live.)

Levice KECY

So, our third and final camp this year was with Levice. To be honest, our team was incredibly burnt out at this point. We had just had an amazing camp with Bratislava, and the idea of having to do it all over again with a completely different group of students was a little stressful. And at this point in the summer all of our immune systems were slowly shutting down, so we were all feeling a little sick. But, we knew we had to do it, so we rallied as best as we could.

Now, I'd love to say that this camp was a breeze for us, but in reality it was the most difficult camp we had all summer. I've never experienced the amount of spiritual warfare that we encountered during this week, especially on the day that we were going to present the Gospel. However, we definitely saw God move more in this camp than any other time this summer. We were completely honored and humbled to be a part of this camp, and especially to work with this Slovak team. They were phenomenal all week, and I know that I have made some true friends from among them.

As always, here are some pics from the Levice KECY:

Here we are teaching the camp dance on the first night:



And here are the students learning it... It was awesome how excited they were to do it! Sometimes we just get blank stares, so it's always nice when students WANT to learn it.



This is Laci and Edita. They were our camp leaders this week, and they are officially 2 of my most favorite people in this country:



Some tug-of-war action during activity time. Here are the girls kicking butt! They killed the guys, but the guys were also drastically outnumbered:



Us with all the girls on the Levice camp team. These girls are all so amazing, not to mention gorgeous:



A picture of all of us at camp... Check out those sweet carpets!

Some BA KECY pics...

These are a little late, but I still wanted to share them with you. Here are some of my favorite pics from the Bratislava Kecy...

A pic of me and the new sis... It was soooo good to have her back on this side of the ocean:














This was Will and I's English class. It was pretty much the best class ever. But you can see that from the pic:















Gotta love all the blindfold games at camp. Here Will decided to make it a little more interesting, so he danced while having no idea what the heck was going on around him. I LOVE that Sarah captured it:




















Sarah and I figured we'd give cheerleading jumps a go at the top of the mountain:
















Janka, Paja, myself, and Noemi on the hike. Noemi and I made the time go by quicker by retelling fairy tales with our own spin on them. My favorites included one of the 3 little pigs having ninja skills and Little Red Riding Hood dating the Big Bad Wolf.















A pic of one of our night programs:














Our whole camp... all 106 of us:













Striking my favorite pose with students back in BA after camp:














Our intern team with the Kriska family... my home away from home:














I need to give some extra thank yous to Nina and Will for providing me with a few of these shots. So, uh... Thanks!

THANK YOU SARAH!!!

I just realized as I was working on my most recent post, that I haven't given credit where credit is due. You should know that I have barely taken a single picture this summer. The majority of all the pics you see on here from the summer are straight from the camera of one fabulous little lady named Sarah Kean. However, I did take this one... Yay for being a cheesy tourist!!!

SO excited!

We just finished up camp with Bratislava a few days ago, and it was so great. I don't even know how to communicate the excitement that I have for what God has in store for this Fall, but if I could put it in a picture it might look like this. Really, I feel ridiculously blessed by what God is doing in this city, and I am completely humbled at the thought that He wants me to be small part of it.

Game time!

This was the first time Roznava did Kecy camp, so our intern team took more of a behind the scenes role to make sure that logistically things went well at camp. This meant none of us were actually part of English classes or activity groups, and instead we helped prepare and run all the initiatives and games/activities. It was a bummer that we weren't available to be as relational with the students as usual, but I really loved walking alongside this Roznava team and getting to spend more time with them.

And, let's just be honest, I also loved sitting back and being entertained by everyone else participating in these hilarious games that we set up. Here are some pics from this time at camp:









However, we did not get by without being pulled into one of the activities, which was so cleverly called "push the trabant." It involved each activity team pushing our camp leader's trabant (which is small European car) as far as they could on a grassy hill in 1 minute. After each team went, we got heckled into doing it also. I wasn't laughing as hard after we did it...

Here we are in the process of pushing the crap out of that trabant. Right as we started the song "American Woman" by Lenny Kravitz came on... it was perfect.


Post push we all immediately passed out. It was a lot harder than we expected!

Roznava Camp

Camp with Roznava was so great. However, we dealt with a lot of spiritual warfare leading up to the camp. Rumors spread that the Roznava camp was a cult, so many students dropped out of camp from fear, but in the end we had a group of 12, and we knew they were exactly who the Lord wanted there. About half way through the camp the students that did come began to realize that we weren't trying to manipulate them into anything, but that all we wanted to do was show them love and to communicate what we believe to be true about Jesus Christ. From that point on the walls fell down and we became one group, not two. And by the time camp was over, no one wanted to leave, and students were already trying to reserve their spots for next year! Quite the transformation from day one.

Host City Visits...

Over the past 3 weeks my team and I have traveled to 3 different cities in Slovakia to help their teams prepare for camp and to promote camps in the high schools. I have completely loved this time, because ultimately building relationships is what I am passionate about. So, it has been a joy to get to know these different youth groups and to encourage them during this process of getting ready for Kecy Camps.

The first city we went to was Roznava, which is a city closer to the eastern side of Slovakia. The team here was so amazing, and I have truly never felt more welcome, both in Slovakia or in the States. During our time there, the camp leader and his family took us to see a palace that had the most beautiful grounds I've ever seen. Here is a pic of Robby (my co-leader) with Rudo (the camp leader) and his 2 year old, Ema:



Next we were in Bratislava, my home city. It was so great to be home after being gone for close to 3 weeks, and I was excited for the interns to get to know the people in my life here. We didn't do as many high school visits as we did in Roznava, so most of our time was spent just hanging out with the team and other youth that went to camp last summer.

Leila, Sarah, and I with Barca and Marica:



Our final visit was in Levice, and we had such a great time with this team. But dang, they worked us to the core! We taught a total of about 15 to 20 full English classes in the high schools (which is how we promote camp), went on an 8 hour hike Saturday, and then on Sunday we attended the church's family day which was filled with sports. We were exhausted by the end of this visit! But we also left with a huge love for this team, and a ton of excitement to do camp with them.

These are some girls we met in the high schools who came to hang out with us one afternoon:



The peak of our hike:



A 13th century chapel we stopped at along our hike:



One funny thing about our intern team is that all three of these cities are in very different parts of Slovakia. So, we've spent A LOT of time on trains, so we've actually already looped the country twice... and we haven't even started camps yet! SO, tomorrow we actually leave to start our first term of camp with Roznava, and therefore begin our next loop. Woot woot! Thank goodness Slovakia is so beautiful!