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.