Elim "Dream Team" took Monday of Spring Break to collaborate and team-build!
It was Spring Break last week, which sounds ridiculous from a Minnesotan in the middle of February, but yes... we have spring weather in Letovice. Unlike Minnesotan Spring Breaks when all the Minnesotans flee to Florida and avoid a week of scraping the ice off their car, we take the youth kids to the Czech mountains for fun in the snow! This year, we didn't have much snow in Letovice at all, so we were all very excited for the snowcapped mountains for skiing and snowboarding.
It was so much fun riding the slopes with this group! There were a few times we all waited for everyone to gather at the top of the slope so we could ride down together. Though it isn't always easy to stay together in a group of 11, we broke off into smaller groups for some time and then rejoined and regrouped as we met again on the different hills. (There are many different slopes and ski-lifts at this location!) For some people, skiing and snowboarding is an individual, quiet sport - not for our youth group! We'd laugh and call out to each other, encouraging one another, and one of our students brought a bluetooth speaker in his backpack, so we often had some background music for our little group as enjoyed the sport together.
Skiing and Snowboarding
Fun on the Slopes!
Many of us spent a good portion of the day on the slopes - from after breakfast until mid-afternoon. We would regroup at the cabin to play table games and relax before evening programs and activities. After dinner, the youth pastor shared an interactive program through our theme of "How Much Does Human Life Cost?" Through many different activities, we asked the students to think about the life of others and their own lives. In one activity, the youth pastor put a list of bad qualities on the projector and asked the students to write down about four personality qualities that they don't like about themselves. Then, we gave the papers to a friend and the friend wrote good qualities about the person on the opposite side of the paper. The youth pastor then collected all the papers and cut off the bad qualities throwing them into the fire, explaining that is what Jesus did for us when he died for our sins so that we may be pure in the eyes of God. The students were all silent watching their papers burn.
Watch our Video of Winter Retreat!
The Littles have been enjoying learning about Vehicles and Circles. Simply watching them explore through the themes is so fun for me and the mothers to see. We sang about the wheels on different vehicles in a remix of "The Wheels on the Bus". Afterwards, the Littles took turns riding on the push cars and motorcycles while some of them played the traffic light. In the lesson on Circles, we held hands to make our own circle bigger and smaller and then decorated a paper with all sorts of different colorful circles.
Holding red and green balls for "traffic lights"
Fixing his motorcycle
Circle Art
Beginners English Class finished their theme "In the City!" They were so excited to finally take their cities home. This class loves to learn! They eagerly come to class each week, and I overheard one student tell his mom, "I wish we had English Class more than one time a week." The time flies with this class, and last week when I told them to begin cleaning up their activity, I immediately had three kids next to me asking, "Is it really time to go home already?" I said, "No, we have time for one more game, so quick, hurry and clean up!" I love watching them care for each other, and the way some of these kids swarm around the translators like moths to a light it heartwarming to see. To finish our theme, we played Students versus Translators to recall all the vocabulary from our unit theme. The students pulled out a win with the last question, and were more than excited to declare victory over their translators!
Lining up for Red Light/Green Light
Translators helping with the stoplight and "policing" :)
Trying out the Stoplight
Adding the final touches to their city pictures.
Next Step Class has been growing since the start of the new year! New students are interested in trying out the class and some students who thought they wouldn't have time in the New Year for the class have found that they miss the time in English Class and have joined us again. Since these students are older, the class has yet to be all together as the older students have more homework and after-school activities that occasionally interfere with attendance at English Class. On Monday, these students studied homophones in recognizing the homophone and choosing the correct homophone for the sentence to make sense. It can be a difficult concept for English speakers at this age (how many 10-year-old do you know who still mix up "hear" and "here"?) yet, these students dove into the theme with determination to succeed! They enjoyed the homophone jokes and tongue twisters the most. All the students wanted a chance to try the tongue twister in front of their peers! Go ahead and try it too - "If two witches where watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch?"
Playing Homophone Dominoes
Club kids are the fastest, most dedicated learners. I am often humbled by how quickly they pick up a game as it doesn't take them long before they begin beating me. They cleverly rearrange the numbers in Rummikub and their serves is ping-pong hit the very edge of the table. Recently, one club kid has taken a big interest in foosball. Being also very fond of the game, I often played with this student - sometimes giving him an advantage to encourage the game along when needed. Then one day, he showed up for club with skill that seemed to sprout overnight! I was just doing my best to keep up! After hours of playing, sweating, hand cramps, blisters, and jammed fingers, I am confident I still lost, but the competition was exhilarating, leaving us all excited for the next club to try at it again.
Club in Boskovice
We are having lots of great discussions at Connect Club as the girls learn about the different miracles and teachings of Jesus. Last week, we looked at a part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. We focused on the part where Jesus says to "love our enemies", and for sweet, little girls, we thought the word "enemy" might be hard for them to connect with, so we changed "enemy" to "someone who is hard to love." The girls could think of people in their lives who are harder to show love to, and we discussed how to show love simply through our actions and words. While talking about showing love through our words, I gave the girls a tube of toothpaste, asking them to squeeze out the toothpaste onto a plate. They squeezed and squeezed until the tube was empty. Then, I asked them to put the toothpaste back into the tube. The girls looked at me with confusion... the task is impossible! We explained that our words are like the toothpaste. Once they come from our mouths, they cannot be returned, so we need to make sure, like the toothpaste, our words are clean and making others smile. This is an activity that Sunday School teachers did with me when I was in Elementary School and another leader also remembers doing this activity when she was younger too. We hope and pray that these girls will also have a life-long impact of this activity as they think about how their words are powerful.
Squeezing toothpaste onto the plate
Game time at Connect Club
I always have so much fun spending time with Connect Girls outside of Connect Club too!
Connect Club is very unique in that the girls who come are all friends and spend time with each other outside of Club also. Even as the group grows and changes, there is something special about these girls in that they make friends so quickly. Youth group is a mix of many different group of friends, which can sometimes make it harder for whole group games, but not impossible. During program time, we sit in a semi-circle so we can all feel a part of the program. After program, we sometimes have dinner all together, and we are finding activities that many of the different groups of friends like to play together. It is sometimes a "divide and conquer" atmosphere of the leaders as we engage with different groups of students in their different activities, similar to what we do at club, and sometimes we have the chance to ask their thoughts about the programs and share God's love with these students even deeper.
Semi-circle program time