Zabreh and Provision

God is so good! over and over God provides for us, and i am constantly ashamed of my attitude towards Him during times where i am forced to trust Him. yesterday we learned that we are at full support for the summer. while posting on facebook, and talking with our family friends, i asked for your support, but to be honest with you i asked with a lot of hope, but very little faith.

minda and i are blessed in so many ways. we are love and supported by an amazing family in Christ. we want to thank you all for making this summer possible for us, and for God to be able to work through us to affect students. we have had so many amazing experiences and we haven't even started camps yet!

we are at Hotel Malenovice preparing for the first American team training, our first camp (with Trinec) begins this saturday and the american church should arrive here in the next hour or so. needless to say we are very excited for our first cam to begin. and we will send out an update after we get back from camp!!

our final youth group visit with Zabreh went really well! the youth group was a bit disappointed because there was only 1 student signed up for camp. while we were there we were able to visit 5 different schools and we were also able to have a huge interactive painting session in the center of town. two days after we visited schools and taught small english lessons, 2 students signed up and others emailed Katka, the Czech team leader who were interested in getting more information about camp.

I would ask you to pray that we get 10-15 students for this camp. this is the first english camp ever for Zabreh and we think that this would be a good number for a first camp. it is such an honor to be able to be a part of a first ever camp, and we are praying that this would be the start of many effective camps for Zabreh; where the Lord is able to use czechs and americans to show the love of God to students!

please pray for:

• our first camp in Trinec (pronounced tree-nets)
• for the american team, intern team, and czech team to work together well
• for students hearts to be open
• for more students to sign up for Zabreh camp (pronounced zab-chey)

we love you all and thank you so much for your love and support for us!!

Pre-Camp Prep

like we said in the last post we have been visiting the different youth groups that we will be working with at camps this summer. it has been going very well so far, we have visited zlin and got most of the planning taken care of. we are currently visiting trinec.

this youth group is lead by one of the few paid youth pastors in the entire country, Honza Merka. he is a young outgoing czech who has a giant heart for students. it has been an amazing time with the youth group with some great time being spent just getting to know each other.

yesterday we went on a hike with the youth group. we took a ski lift up to the top of the highest mountain in the area and hiked down. it was such an amazing view, we were able to see the entire city of Trinec from the mountaintop and we were able to take a while and pray for the students while looking directly over the city with the Czech team. it was the first time that i have experienced prayer for a specific people so tangibly.

our team is extremely excited to work with Trinec and get going with camps for the summer. this wednesday we will leave for Zabreh to plan the third and final camp.

this will be the first english camp ever for the town of Zabreh, so we are super excited to work with this youth group and hopefully help see the beginning of many great english camps for the town of Zabreh. more about this next week after our visit.

minda and i are doing very well, we miss all of you back in the states, we cannot believe that 4 weeks have already gone by! i am sure we will be home before we or the rest of you even realize. we have a few prayer requests for you all:

• we are at 90% support raised right now and have to raise a little over $800 before the end of the summer. if you would like to support us you can visit: Give to Nik and Minda. if you would like to pass this on to any friends you think would be interested we would appreciated it!
• our team is doing well, but the stress of the summer can get to us fast; please pray that our team morale stays strong and that we will be proactive in supporting and encouraging each other.
• pray that communication between myself and the Czech leaders is very clear and that we do not miss any details while planning camps together!

thank you for all your support and we cannot wait to tell you some great stories face to face!

First few weeks in Czech

So we have been in the beautiful Czech Republic for a few weeks now and it has been a life changing experience!
We first arrived on May 25th, had a few days to recoup and during that time we went to Poland for a Team Leader retreat! We had a blast! it was so great to be able to get to know all the different leaders and also to spend time in prayer for the upcoming summer.

After we came back from the retreat we had one week to get ready for the Amazing Race! Talk about an absolutely crazy adventure. We went to the airport on June 1st to pick up our interns and then we were off without a translator, no idea on how to use the public transportation, and a limited amount of money to survive for three days in Prague. The whole idea of the amazing race was for team building with the interns.... and it was awesome! We really got to know each other and also depend on each others skills.

During the amazing race there were 17 teams total, including ours. Through much running, walking, getting lost, sweat, and some tears of pain we made it to the final pit stop in 9th place! Our team was great! So cool to think that God can bring complete strangers together for three days to become great friends!

After the amazing race we traveled to Hotel Malenovice, a hotel owned by Josiah Venture, for intern training. Over 5 days we were taught how to make English Camps the best they can be for the summer; including things like training for: leading english class, games at camp, culture training, personality training, and getting to know our team even better! Our team is made up of 6 people: Myself, Minda, Melissa, Justin, Carolyn, and Tawnee!

Once we finished training we headed out to our apartment that will serve as our base of operations for the summer! Martina Pixova is letting us live with her at her flat, and it is such an amazing blessing! From June 9-12 we spent the weekend with the youth group at Zlin and planned for the upcoming camp in July and had a mini-retreat with them. It was a blessing getting to meet them and we are so excited to work with them for a couple weeks this summer.

We have a few days of break right now to spend time working on english lessons for the summer. We have a meeting this upcoming weekend with the youth group in Trinec pronounced (in english): "tree-nets". Our team is really hoping to have a great time with this group of students and we are praying that the Lord would make our time together fruitful.