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!