Summer Travels

Well 33 days and counting until Gretchen and I leave for a summer full of English camps in three different countries. This is something that will be very new, and we are eager to see what the Lord has in store for us. There is much to do between now and June 30th, and we need all the prayers that we can get. Here is an outline of what our summer looks like…

June 30th—July 11th we will be in Smolensk, Russia. There we will be teaming up with the local church to conduct an English camp for what appears to be 80 students. This is the first camp of its kind that we know of in this area. The team is being lead by Dave and Lara Harrelson (a faithful God centered family in our church who have a big heart for the Lands of Russia). We have a team of seven adults, and four young people.

July 11th—July 28th from Russia we head down to the Czech Republic where we will have a night and half a day in Prague with just ourselves (a time to debrief and a short rest). On the 29th we will meet 22 other Grace Church and Grace Bible youth to conduct the seventh annually English Camp with Josiah Venture. We can’t wait to see what the Lord is going to do, as of today; we are at max capacity for this camp as far as Czech kids go. There will be over a hundred people total people, and we are grateful to be apart of this great ministry in Eastern Europe.

July 28th—August 15th from Czech we leave for Tirana, Albania for our final two and half weeks in Eastern Europe. As you well know, we are partial to Albania, (since this is where we desire to be in January of 2006 if the Lord wills). Last year the Lord did some awesome things with our team. We had 70 kids (had to close the doors because of space) and many of the kids heard the gospel for the first time. Our prayer going into that camp was that God would use it as a stepping-stone of things to come in Albania. He did just that, some were saved, and we hope to see many returning students again this year.

Our team this year is made up of some awesome people. There are six people who have been to Albania before, and six people who haven’t been to Albania. Above you will see a picture of the Albania team (as soon as we take team pictures of the rest of the teams we will put them up as well). Ryan and myself (Justin) are leading this team. The theme for this year is “God is love” sounds simple, but in post communist countries, it doesn’t come that easy. To portray God as love will be something that is brand new to many of the kids since the God that they may know is distant and has no desire to have a personal relationship with them. We want them to see the true and living God.

Prayer:
Pray for strength this summer, as it will be long, and hard at time. We want to be used by the Lord for his glory, and we want to reflect that glory in our relationship and when we are ministering to people.

Pray that God would truly save people, pray for conversation, for people to be transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of the beloved Son!

Pray for all the teams, for team unity while we are over there, and for us to reflect Christ, because often times that can tend to be the most impacting thing we do (our actions speak greater than our words).

Pray that God would get all the glory!