Serving Communion. L-R Josh Patty, Pastor Zvonko, Terry Jackson. 

We had 64 people attend the conference and 7 people came forward and accept the Lord for the FIRST time! And many others rededicated their lives to the Lord.

A Jumble of Activity...

After months of cold winter, wind rain and snow…. the weather is starting to change!! And in the same way I feel as though my heart is beginning to awaken again and I have a new excitement for what the Lord is doing here in Slovenia. Ive been so busy that I havent gotten around to posting, but here is a bit of whats been going on this March...

America...
The First week of March I was in America. I had to go back to pick up my Residence Visa. And it came at a perfect time because I was feeling very drained and needed to rest and be with family. I had a WONDERFUL time with my family and a few close friends. My week can be described as pretty much just sitting on my parents couch, talking, sleeping, and watching movies. Soo restful! I came back and had a two day break and then headed back on the road to Croatia for a Josiah Venture Womans Retreat.

Croatia...
It was an incredible time of learning, laughing, crying, and deep talks with woman that I deeply respect and admire. All of the women that came are missionarys with Josiah Venture throughout Eastern Europe. There were about 32 of us there! I dont have pictures yet, but when I do I will post a few....it was exactly what I needed and the Lord really spoke some significant things to me during that time.

Slovenija!!
For the last week and half I have been devoting a lot of my time to studying Slovene, spending time with my highschool girls. I also found out that I am directing a camp this summer! A camp for Girls!! I am meeting tomorrow with the other women on our team to talk and pray about what we want the camp to be about. Ahh, Im not really sure what Im getting myself into!! But, some of my ideas for topics are Purity, Follow-up for New Christians, or Beauty.

Back to Croatia...
This Friday I head back down to Croatia (and the exact same retreat center) for our church retreat. I am REALLY excited about this. Mel and Amy Ellenwood (Josiah Venture Missionaries in Czech) are the speakers! Also, a few of our students will be attending. I am looking forward to getting to know people in our church better. A little nervous too because I know I will be in a completely Slovene environment for the weekend and my language skills need a lot of work!! But like I said, Im really excited about it too!

Ps-Oh yah, yesterday was my birthday too. I had an awesome time with my team who have become like family to me here. And I had friends and family email and call me all day long. I was taken on a lunch date with Kristi Patty and then Lori Jackson made a big dinner for me complete with a German Chocolate Birthday cake! Our whole team came over to the Jacksons house and we talked and ate and just had a great time!! It was an incredible day, I felt so loved!

I got to watch my brothers wrestle around the house... (These three are all just over 6 feet tall!) 

Then making up... 

My brother Josh being cool. 

I even got time with Grandma! 

Our Church Retreat Speakers, Mel and Amy with their family (Hannah, Hailey, and Noah). They are an Incredible family!!! 

Zimski Tabor (Winter Camp)!

Here are a bunch of Winter Camp pictures. We had an incredible time. It was a very significant weekent for a bunch of students... myself included! I will be sending out an update about it soon. But here are some glimpses of our fun times!! This is a small picture, but to view the pictures bigger you can click on them... Enjoy

The Boys! l-r Sabi, David, Johnny, Gasper (front) 

So this is a funny and embarrassing story if you ever want to ask me about it... lets just say that one DTR and one embarrassed Christina later....I found my Superman!! 

"Do you now what this is? Do you know what its used for?" Oh fun youth group games. Metka is showing an embarrassed Ales what her arms are used for... 

An overly confident Ales showing a shocked Naja what his hands are used for...

Uh oh....what are these used for??? Someone is in for a surprise.... Oh youth ministry...! 

Can I just tell you how cool this girl is!! Mateja is 17yrs old and one of our student leaders...We like her a lot!

The girl youth leaders and super fun friends!! Glorija Metka Katka and I! 

Having fun and looking cute. l-r Glorija, Mateja, Jasmina and me.  

My good friend Neja and I. We were intertubing partners! 

Building Relationships...

I know I often talk about the same students....but here is a student you might not have heard about before. She is WONDERFUL! Her name is Eva, she is 17yrs old. Half Austrian and Half Slovene, she speaks German, English, Spanish and Slovene fluently, and she is hoping to learn Chinese too!! Downtown they have these fun free picture takers. Today we met up had tea and then decided to take our picture. 

Quickly approaching..

We are currently preparing for Winter Camp! Feb 17-20th. Please pray as we seek to provide an atmosphere for these students that draws them deeper into a relationship with the Lord. We have some great things planned and we are so excited to see what happens!

Last Years Winter Camp! 

One last picture!

Ok, i know that Ive been bragging for a while about Katka, but I just have to share this last picture!

Big week in the spotlight!

Katka singing with Anzej at Slovene's version of American Idol. She is second from the left! They won! Eurovision Competition and Greece here they come! 

Although the pic isnt the best quality you can see Katka on the far far left, hand in the air, singing with Anzej. If you want to hear the song or see the video clip, let me know! I got it!

Ok, so, funny story...There I was last friday morning, in my pajamas enjoying a quiet slow morning and Terry Jackson calls me. He asks if I have plans. I tell him, Well, not at the moment. He responds with, "Well good. Because the President of Slovenija will be at your place in 45 minutes and I wanted to make sure you were decent just in case we need you to make us tea or something." Within 20 minutes I not only took a shower, got dressed, and blowdryed my hair. I also cleaned my house. Needless to say, the meeting place, actually the Baptist Church but also doubles as my house (I live in the top room) was changed at the last minute and I never met the President. However, this picture shows the President with Sebastian (our youth pastor) and Terry (missionary leader on our team) in the background!! They were also on TV!! We were pictured because there is a group of men from our church that pray for him on a regular basis. The title of the article is translated: Drnovsek (the president) makes his own movement (for justice). From what I understand one article printed said that Sebastian and Terry were Lutheran Monks. Well...what can you do!

Slovene American Idol

So Slovenia has this thing called Ema--similar to American Idol. A bunch of Slovenes competing in a singing competion. Whoever wins becomes super popular and goes to Eurovision which is the big Europe singing competition. Well many of you know my dear friend Katka. This year she was singing back up vocals for Anzej Dezan (www.anzej.com), who tonight WON the Ema competition!!! We are all super excited for her--an him too of course. It was also kinda fun for them to win because yesterday she invited me to come to their rehearsal. It was there that I got to hang out with Anzej Dezan and Katka in their dressing room as they practised. I met a bunch of the other singers too, but it was pretty obvious that Anzej had more talent and was much more respectable then the rest. And of course had the most amazing back up vocalists!! Go Katka!!!! The competition is in Greece this year. Tonight I asked Katka if she needed a personal assistant....!

Croatia...

Yesterday I got back from a youth retreat in Croatia. Our youth group named Več (means “more” in Slovene) joined other Croatian youth groups for a weekend conference on Apologetics. It was Incredible! The speaker was Matt Morginsky from the American ska band the Supertones. He gave helpful tools on how to share their faith and some practical ways to do this. One night there was a concert with Matt and a Croatian band, SeekersPlanet. It was a hit!! My favorite part was watching our group interact and love each other. Being a new youth group and not knowing any of the other youth groups I was not sure what to expect. However leaders were so amazed at our group and began asking us how we do youth ministry, because they wanted to emulate it! What an incredible weekend...

Worship Time... 

80-90 Croatian and Slovene highschool students and leaders gathered for a weekend of worship, teaching, and fellowship. 

Mateja and I learning lots! She told me multiple times how much she enjoyed the worship portion of the conference.