October 2024

 Rekindle Week

Ice cream within the final hours that ice cream was open for the season 

For the second time this year, we had a team of Americans come to Letovice! Eight Americans from my home church in Minnesota joined us for a week of outreach events that they lovingly named “Rekindle” based on the verse 2 Timothy 1:6-7 as they aimed to rekindle the spark for after-school clubs in the new school year.  They also focused on encouraging and building into our junior leaders as kid's clubs became full again. 

It is always fun for me to get the teams from the airport and travel with them back and forth from Letovice to Prague.  With all the great history in Prague, we have a great time exploring the city where I give a near constant “walking tour” with little snippets of Czech history in the center of the city. 

Sunday Morning on the train to Prague was accompanied with some worship!

WATCH A VIDEO RECAP ABOUT REKINDLE WEEK HERE!

Birthday Party

After multiple years, we once again had Birthday Party! (Which had been an annual kick-off to the school year before we moved into our new space.  For years, we desired to once again have Birthday Party, but with the building moves in our organization flowed by Covid lockdown restrictions, we hadn’t yet started it again.). Throughout the week, we invited kids from the schools, at clubs, and emailed all out LetFest attendees to come for this big kick-off event, and it was a huge success!  There were more people who came than any of us had expected with about 150 students who dropped in during the event. 

The American Team led many Party Activity favorites including Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey, piñatas, face painting, balloon animals, and many other party games! 

Enjoying the Photo Booth!

One of my students from English Classes the previous years came during club time and Birthday Party the week the American team was leading.  This student’s mom and I had talked just a couple months earlier that her daughter is very talented at English, though the mother said her daughter had expressed not seeing the value in learning  English and wasn’t motivated to continue practicing.  I encouraged the mom (a friend of mine) that all it will take is an experience where the little girl realizes how beneficial learning English is.  The mom told me excitedly, “She came home the other day and just started talking in English! When I asked her why she decided to start now, she said she realized there was no other way to talk to the Americans who were at ELIM.”

We finished the Birthday Party with a special program starting with a comical magic show and then continuing with a message about Jesus’s birthday - a birthday that changed the world - and the gift Jesus gives to us because of His birthday.  The kids enjoyed listening to this program and then participating in a raffle drawing and finally receiving a gift from our American friends who had graciously brought birthday bags and gifts for all the attendees.

During Birthday Party, one of the girls we had met during the school visits came in crying and wrapped her arms around me.  As I asked what was wrong, she explained she was so happy to be at Birthday Party with all of us.  Initially, her mom had told her she couldn’t go, but as her mom read more about our organization and learned many of her daughter’s friends would be there, she gave her permission.  This girl has since come to our youth clubs each week since connecting with us during the school visits. 

WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT BIRTHDAY PARTY HERE!

School Visits

For a couple of regular school lecturers, we found ourselves for the first time both in the back of the classroom as the Americans led class visits

For three mornings the Americans were with us, we visited the Middle School in Letovice and taught immersive English in 26 classes while also inviting the students to our youth center and after-school club activities!  The teachers and students all enjoyed the lessons.  Students regularly found us again in the hallways between classes to continue practice in English conversations. 

One of my favorite parts of watching these Americans teach in the classrooms was how they became comfortable in front of the classroom, and by the end of the three days, they were also comfortable to help in lessons of their teammates as they had seen it done so many times.  There was wonderful efficiency in this group and the variety of their games created a wonderful environment for the middle schoolers to practice their English with native speakers.  

We saw the fruits of the school visits immediately when many of the kids we met in the school came to youth clubs that week (and multiple more have been continuing to come!).

Kid's Club - Letovice

(1) Decorating cookies with edible ink, the kids figured out how to stamp it on their tongues to make tongue-tattoos! (2) proudly holding a completed BINGO board.

The first week of October was our kick-off week to clubs in Letovice and with the American team here for school visits and to lead clubs during the week, we quickly had active clubs again!  The Americans created a “getting to know you BINGO” that all the kids received upon arriving.  This helped break barriers as the students were encouraged to meet the Americans and ask them about themselves.  Those who were most active in the activity received more American candies and full, colorfully stamped cards! 

We have been enjoying lots of games and crafts at clubs in Letovice.  The kids regularly ask for people to join in with Headbands, ping-pong, or ask for a creative project.  It has been fun seeing the kids try new things that they wouldn’t have tried before and learning something new.  One of the boys decided to try a weaving project with us and was surprised at how much fun he had doing it!  Soon all his buddies had joined in the fun, and at one point, the craft table was filled with only boys enjoying the weaving project! 

Girl on the far left after asking many questions in Headbands finally declared, “I don’t know… I must be a flying shark!”  She was a dragon, but all her friends thought her response was comically clever! 

Traditionally, our club time is filled with free-time and group activities that help leaders build connections with the kids.  During the week the American Team was with us, we also had a short program time that intersected free-time and group activities.  The program encouraged the kids to ask deeper questions and seek answers. While our group of kids in Letovice is the youngest of our three locations, they were engaged and focused on the program. 

Even with the cooler autumn weather, we enjoyed little breaks of sunshine at clubs that allowed us to go outside for large games at the beginning of the month.  

Kid's Club - Velke Opatovice

At our kid’s club location in Velke Opatovice, the start of the school year had been a slow start with usually 4-5 teenagers at the club.  With the arrival of the American team, we went first to Velke Opatovice and it encouraged the kids to all come together and join in the activities.  We noticed it was this group that had the most questions about the program time and enjoyed connecting with the leaders long after the program had finished to discuss the deep questions they had acquired during the talk about where life originates and how can we know if there is a Creator.  We are very grateful for these conversations and the openness these students have with us.

Kid's Club - Boskovice

This school year, the students attending our Boskovice youth center are mostly high school students.  We enjoy their laid-back personalities and their desire to simply be with friends.  The billiards pool table is always active, there are typically a couple guys throwing a foam football around, and recently, coloring anti-stress Bible Verse coloring sheets have been a hit with boys and girls!  Our Spikeball at this youth center had broken some time ago, and my mom brought a new one to gift the center.  It was really fun to start teaching the kids this new game as many of them have not yet played Spikeball before, and we are really happy for an active indoor sport activity to have with these teens during the winter months! 

Of course, during the Rekindle Week, we also had a special program for the youth in Boskovice, and we were pleasantly surprised with how engaged all these youth were in the program time.  Last year, when the same speaker had come to visit, the students seemed disengaged, but this year there was a lot of interest in his presentation and trickling conversations that continued afterwards!

Little Linguists

This month, the Littles learned about Dinosaurs and Things with Wheels! We marched like dinosaurs and explored with many dinosaur sorting manipulatives.  With our theme about Things with Wheels, the toddlers enjoyed riding around on their little cars, sorting, and our favorite game - Stop, Go!  The toddlers and moms all joined in for this game as they listened to the stoplight instructions of “stop” and “go” as we jogged around the racetrack. 

Dinosaur matching and sorting

In Czech culture, children should begin to attend preschool a couple mornings a week after they turn three.  Usually at the start of the new school year, I see a lull in attendance as the three-year-olds are now in preschool and new moms have yet to hear about the program.  This month, however, the class has been at a good size with moms and toddlers and a few moms opted to keep their toddlers home from preschool on Tuesdays so they can continue to attend the Little Linguist lessons!

Things with Wheels Activities

Youth Group

I absolutely love the time with these youth kids.  They are such a fun group, and I really see how their years of growing up together and their friendships are helping them in some harder seasons of life.  In a recent theme about Home and finding our Home in Jesus, we were talking about our physical homes and one of the youth said, “well, I don’t really have a great home because my family just kind of ignores each other.  Sometimes I try to pull everyone together but it can be hard.  That’s why I’ve always considered ELIM and this group my home and family.”  I treasure being a part of the family for these youth kids. 

Mom brought some American Marshmallows for S'mores at Youth Group!

The leadership talent in this group is extraordinary.  I’ve seen it grow over the years, but this last summer it became evident their self-sufficiency was at a point of their truly great potential as a team.  With a vision in mind and knowing I have helped prepared these youth to be leaders in this ministry, I decided to take a step back and pursue a role as an itinerant missionary.  I plan to travel back and forth a couple times in the year to encourage and mentor these young leaders and to give them the next push in leadership.  While this move is bittersweet for many reasons, watching how these youth students are already taking more leadership is beyond encouraging!  During Rekindle Week, a translator who I had only briefly conversed with went and found the American she would be translating for on her own and prepared as any good translator would do.  Later in the evening, I had brought her over to the American to introduce them only to find out they had already met and talked through everything earlier!  I am so proud of all of them!

Trip with Mom

After seven years, my mom was able to come back to Czech for a visit!  There have been a lot of changes and growth in my ministry since those first years, and I was so happy to share it with her.  

Walking in the foggy fall weather

Meeting many friends, students, my pet bunny, and volleyball team

We then took a quick vacation to Berlin and finally Prague.  My mom had been in Berlin 40 years ago, and it was really fun for me to wander around with her and hear all her memories of that time.  (We went to many tourist sites and the powerful wall memorial and Holocaust memorial.) 

I read a couple books about tunnel operations in Germany in the Cold War. Found the location of Tunnel 29 which rescued 29 people from East Germany and walked along other tunnels marked on the surface.

 

Memorial to the Jews of the Shoah

We then spent a full day in Prague after that and I had the best day!  We did three activities that had been on my “want to do in Prague” list for a while and hadn’t worked out yet, and all three activities were hits!  (An Art Nouveau style synagogue, an outdoor man-made cave labyrinth, and a Cold War and Soviet Bunker tour by a guide who defected from communist Czechoslovakia as a 19-year-old in 1970 and returned after the revolution.)

Jerusalem Synagogue

Man-made caves in Havlicek's Garden

Soviet Bunker Tour in Prague

September 2024

Little Linguists

It typically takes a few weeks for the Little Linguists class to gain new interest in the new school year as many of the toddlers begin preschool, so we have to wait a few weeks until new families hear about the class before our room is full again. However, since some of the toddlers only go to preschool a couple days a week if their mom is still on maternity leave with a younger sibling (since maternity leave in Czech is three years paid), the moms have opted out of Tuesday preschool so their toddlers can keep coming to Little Linguists! I love that they are so excited about the classes and want to continue for as long as they can. 

We started Little Linguists for the school year with our favorite outer space theme and song "Zoom, Zoom!" This is a theme we go back to regularly, and the toddlers suggest we sing "Zoom, Zoom" following most other lessons. There is always so much to do in this theme with colorful planet cards on the magnet board and pattern recognition at the manipulate learning table. 

Our favorite activity with this theme though is light exploration! I break a handful of glow-sticks, grab many colorful mini flashlights and lay out multiple telescope galaxy pictures. We turn out the lights and the kids have best time exploring with the little lights. If that wasn't enough, we also make paper rockets with large rubberbands that shoot across the room. The toddlers giggle and chase the paper rockets and come back to reload by pulling the paper rocket against a rubberband looped around a chair. One of the toddlers had launched her rocket so far that she declared, "It must have reached Kendra!" Many of the parents had explained to their kids that I was in America over the summer and it's really far to come see me, so we believe this is what she was referring to since I was sitting right next to her - it was her way of saying her rocket went so far! We finished up the morning of activities with neon markers and star stickers on black paper.  There is just always something exciting about vibrant colors against black paper.

 

Kid's Club - Boskovice

We began kid's clubs in two of our three locations this month. I have enjoyed being at both locations on rotation and getting to spend the time with the kids as they get back in the swing of the new school year. At our center in Boskovice, it was almost like we didn't have the summer break as the kids all came back and fell into their regular after-school activities. I grabbed a group just sitting around and taught them how to play a game called "Pass the Pigs." Another leader watched as this group of teens actively participated in a couple long rounds of this game and then asked, "How did you do that? I never thought those kids would want to play a table game. They put on a 'cool front' and are typically really hesitant to organized activities." I told this other leader, "I could tell that with this group, and it helped one of our junior leaders also encouraged participation, but you also have to know what game would appeal to your crowd. In this game, you roll pigs on the table and risk your points - in my experience, when getting teenage boys to participate, anytime you can risk all your points, the game is suddenly much more appealing!" Needless to say, we have a new favorite game with these kids! 

Kid's Club - Velke Opatovice

Our kid's club in Velke Opatovice is a smaller crowd at the start of the new school year, but a handful of the regulars love to drop in and hang out with us. I love how comfortable they are in the space and with the leaders, often asking immediately when walking through the doors if they can challenge us in foosball or any other game. I'm always up for a round a foosball! After playing a few rounds with one student, I rotated with another leader and went to sit next to different student who was playing a game on her phone. I said, "oh, that looks interesting! Is that a fun game?" She replied, "not really..." I said, "well, we have many games here, let's play something together." We grabbed my favorite two player game, Logic. This girl guessed my pattern in only two tries! I have never seen anyone guess that quickly! We had fun playing many more games before finishing club that day.

School Outreach

 

As you may have noticed, I did not begin regular English Classes with my Elementary students like I usually start in autumn. I have some upcoming ministry changes in addition to other activities, like a team of Americans arriving for the kick-off of the school year activities at the start of the week, that require my attention and organization for my team. I adore all my students, and it was hard not starting the regular classes again, but I also could not even think about how I would have managed that. To make up for my desire to see my students again, I talked with one friend who teaches in a village school where many of my students from last year attend. I came in for a special day of regular English Class activities - even bringing our character friends - Gerald, Piggie, and Pigeon.

We read a book, played a guessing game with colorful birds on our heads, and then the students created their own pictures of birds on Gerald's head (like in the book). We of course ended the lesson with American candy.  It was so fun to see these students' excitement for this typical English Class lesson. One of my favorite parts of teaching kids is training in new translators. I grabbed one of my former students from his 5th grade classroom and pulled him in to translate for all the younger levels. He did such an amazing job and showed many skills of a great, upcoming translator! I was so proud of all of them and loved investing in the school in this way.

 

Youth Group 

We came back together in this new school year as a youth group and have been talking about what it means to fully rely on God and trust each other. It has been fun seeing everyone after summer and reconnecting again. Throughout the summer, we saw each other as we worked together at LetFest and spent free time grabbing ice cream or hanging out, but we are always looking forward to seeing each other again! One of my favorite parts of this ministry is the deep questions from these youth. A young friend asked to meet with me last week to discuss prayer. I was thrilled to meet with her as we talked about what it means to pray and how to have a lasting relationship with our Creator and communicate with Him through prayer. These youth are ready for more leadership in the upcoming year, and I love encouraging them and supporting them in their potential. I continue to help them and lead in this season and will then take a step back to let them really thrive in their leadership growth.

Weekend Trips

A group of North American missionary friends and I joined together in Prague for our regular book club meeting.  We just started a new book about the rebirth of belief in God throughout Europe. While we were all in agreement that many of the examples have not quite reached Czech churches yet, we can see how these principles are coming on the horizon and could affect the Czech church culture as a whole in the upcoming years. There are so many perspectives as we come from churches and communities all around Czech and get to encourage each other in this.

At the beginning of the month, I group of friends and I went on an overnight roadtrip to celebrate our friend's marriage! It was a fun time at the wedding and on the road with this group of friends. We all enjoyed long conversations together and feeling even more connected with each other through this one friend and all the ways she has encouraged our friendships.

 

Salzburg

For many years, I have figured out the best time to travel in Europe is early September. The weather is perfect and the kids are back in school, making tourist locations a little less chaotic. Last year, a friend and I took advantage of this timing since we start youth clubs a couple weeks into September at ELIM and she starts university later in September as well. We decided to go on another trip this year at that same time, and it was the perfect mix of city and nature! Salzburg captured our hearts. 

My friend had never seen Sound Of Music before, which is a must before visiting Salzburg. (She loved it and watched it twice, she herself a musician.) We went to many of the locations in the film - jumped the steps in the garden, walked around the fountain, ran through the tunnel of greenery, visited the abbey, and then made like the Von Trapps and climbed the mountain! It was a good 3.5 hour hike to the top (if you want to just do stair steppers for four hours, this is the right hike!). Honestly, it was probably my favorite part, as I've learned I really enjoy the adrenaline of mountain hiking and reaching the summit! 

Untersberg - elevation 1,973m.

We absolutely loved the museums (both of us keen on history) and especially had enjoyed the birthplace of Mozart. It was a quick trip - just two full days - but it was filled with the perfect amount of nature, history, music/art, and especially time together as sweet friends.

Someone once told me they only count having visited a place if they met a local. As we were walking around Salzburg, I saw this guy with a Twins jersey! Being a fellow Twins fan myself, I walked right up to him and asked, "are you a Twins fan? I'm from Minnesota!" He shared he had been a au pair in Minnesota for an extended time and had become an avid Twins fan going to seven games in the season! Though originally from Salzburg, I definitely made quick friends with a local.