I wrote in a previous blog, that we started our youth group this year.  Last year we tried to, but it seemed to be limping a long.  This year we have planned well and built a great leadership team. To this date after three months we average between 30-40 youth. This is a big number for Slovakia and is also big compared to our church of 80, mostly young families and elderly.  God is bringing in many young people and hopefully also connecting their families to our church as well. I am so excited to be a part of the main leadership of this group, although I hope soon, more young leaders will jump in and lead more.  I want to write about two events that we have done recently.

A couple of weeks ago we divided the guys and the girls and had a Bible study together.  We have decided that we will do this once a month.  The guys went up on a mountain and started a fire and cooked our dinner over it.  We then played a rough form of capture the flag where you tagged each other with socks full of flour, of course it turned into an all out free for all.  Afterwards we sat down around the fire and talked about God’s Word and how it connects with our lives. It was so encouraging to see even non-christian guys there talking about the Bible.

The second big event that we had was a Thanksgiving party. We invited all of the Americans in the area to meet and help us plan a Thanksgiving experience for the kids.  It was great, we had 45 students attend.  We played games, watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, ate food (Turkey, Pie, everything), and we had a talk about why we celebrate Thanksgiving and about being thankful.  My favorite moment of the whole evening was when we joined in small groups and shared what we were thankful for, then we prayed and thanked God.  It was a great opportunity to teach about how we depend on God and should be thankful always.