EBF Youth Leadership Conference May 23-27, 2011

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New Students... New Visions

As I prepare press releases and promotion for various training events and courses in the upcoming year I am excited to think of the various people some unknown to this point, who we will come into contact and encourage and train this year.  I am praying that some online lectures by youth workers and HORIZONS and the IBTS courses will be a continuing source of inspiration to various students.  The campus is quite busy now as all the new students, Certificate of Applied Theology, Masters and Magisters and Phd alike are all running around campus to find the requisite classrooms to meet with their instructors.  Meanwhile I am preparing promotion for events that will happen as far as away as June next year!  Its fun to be forward thinking but at the same time it feels like skipping a stone and waiting for the last bounce before its done!

Year 9 here we come!

I remember 9 years ago TODAY distinctly as if it was yesterday, arriving massively jet lagged at the Prague airport.  The smell in the air, the sights and sounds, trying to buy groceries in a foreign language with the fog of jet lag over our heads and collapsing into our bed with Zachary in between us and sleeping for an hour before a meeting with the rector at IBTS for lunch!  To this day I can't tell you what we talked about, I am sure we left a very strange impression to him!  All I could think was "what have we done?"  "What is God doing?"

That was a long time ago... and a lot of amazing things have happened through the years, we have encountered, taught, laughed, cried with and befriended more students and leaders from 50+ countries than I could count.  What a gift to be able to have such a scope and breadth of ministry placed in our care with His watchful care over us.

I would never call a year "routine" as there are so many things that happen in the run of a year that are new and difference and exciting.  Then there are those things that we expect to happen in its time and rotation.

Its funny we always see the "beginning" of the year as starting with September.... rather than January!  The kids start school (Zachary in grade 8 and Matthew grade 1), our new students at IBTS promise another exciting and interesting year.  We have students again from so many places, Korea, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Belgium, Italy and on and on....  It always hard to see students go but this year we had 4 students from the Certificate program from last year and enroll as Masters students and that is exciting to see.  So here is to the academic year of 2010-2011 and beyond!  Lead us Father!

Back to the Mill....

Well its back to work for me!  Had a great three weeks holiday (the longest consecutive time I have taken in many years).  Feel great and looking forward to getting back to the things we are working on and getting ready for the fall.  We had a wonderful break and drove to Rome Italy for two weeks where we stayed at a friends home who was away on THEIR vacation.  So it was affordable, HOT and a great time for us to get away.  Now the work resumes!

A TEENAGER? Gasp!!!

Happy Birthday to our beloved eldest son Zachary who turned into TEEN on the 18th!  With all our love Happy Birthday Zachary!

Gone Fishin....

Well not literally but we are on holidays and will post back here after the 20th :)

Blessings all!

Jeff

Creation Calls -- are you listening?

Horizons in Czech...

Yesterday had a great meeting with Jan (Honza) Jakanic to talk about the ongoing translation of Horizons into the Czech language.  It will be in a print form so the course will be used in "Live" seminars starting in January.  Honza has been leading the Czech Baptist youth work for 5 years now and has gained a lot of trust with the leaders.  There is potential for 50 youth workers from the union to receive training.  Pray that their progress in translation and being able to "contextualize" the material for "Live" seminars for next year!

Bethel House of Christian Help

We have had a long and vibrant history working with the Bethel House of Christian Help over the past years.  This year we had a small team come to teach English and we have many new dreams and visions for the work at Bethel!  Today I met with Robert Krejci and Martin Ruzicka and we had a "dream session" about the future of the work of Bethel.  There will be some changes coming in the structure and focus of the work at Bethel.  New windows of opportunity are opening as doors close in other ways.  We are first excited to say that since the last Canadian team, one young lady gave her heart to the Lord and has become a Christian.  Also this past week four Roma became Christians and were baptized as a result of an American team coming.   We are keen to recruit new teams of people (teams of 6 to 15 or more) who would come and either participate in an English camp or a sports camp.  If you are interested of know of someone that might be get in touch with us!  We would love to run a Christmas Camp!  Imagine being in the beautiful city of Prague and the area over Christmas just prior!  We also run a Spring camp and a summer camp as teams become available.  You will never see hosts most gracious and more grateful for people to come and share themselves.  People may not know it but the rate of atheism is highest here than in any other European country!  So we need you!  

Prayer Request

One of the biggest challenges we are facing in HORIZONS leadership training is equipping mentors.   Lately I have been asked to provide mentors for a "closed" country that would benefit from one of the language groups we offer.  Pray that God will release someone to fill this need as soon as possible.  If I had one wish from God I could ask it would be for the gift of infinite tongues to be able to speak all the languages we have in the EBF family.   I am praying for a miracle.

Thank you for your continued support and your interest in HORIZONS and the EBF Youth Leadership Program in our development years.

Monday... Monday...

I have the Momma's and the Papas in my head!  (you have to be born in the 60's to understand).  Its been time to clean out 6 or 7 years of paper build up and throw away accumulated stuff from the office.  I don't know about you but I tend to work better if things are neat and in an orderly fashion.  Not that my desk or office always portrays that desire!  However, since we had to renovate the home office and stuff was in such a disarray.  Deann and the boys went with some friends from school to the Prague zoo today.  Its a wonderful zoo with such a nice habitat for all the animals there.  Sorry I could not tag along!

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