Sheppersons in Slovakia

As you can tell from the photos, while one of our boys (Samuel Green) lost his first tooth, another one (Hampton Grey) is getting his first teeth! Equally as cute we had to share them with you.

Although Hampton’s new teeth were not as a shock to us as Samuel Green’s lost tooth (he is only 4) we didn’t expect 4 teeth at one time! It did however explain a lot about his disposition over the last few weeks!

Samuel Green on the other hand was eating corn on the cob at dinner one night and asked Zac what the “red stuff” was on his cob. Not even remotely thinking it could be

his tooth, we quickly dismissed it as nothing (red sauce from the lasanga!), and told him t

o keep eating. A few minutes later he again asked his dad, “what is this hard thing in my corn”.

When Zac looked at the corn cob he realized it was Samuel Green’s tooth!

Thankfully, Emili had lost her first tooth at an early age, so a panicked call to the dentist wasn’t needed this time :)

My life has been a little on hold over the past few weeks due to my computer dying. I use “dying” since technically she didn’t “crash”, but rather just wouldn’t turn on. Many of you may know that i am a little crazy about my apple ibook so when she “died” I was devastated. Although she had been running very slowly these days, i’ve had no trouble with her for the 5 years since I’ve had her. This was completely unexpected. (more…)

From March 6 – 17, over 200 youth ministry trainers from all over the world will gather in Jerusalem for a worldwide summitcall the Global Youth Initiative. About 50 of our trainers from Josiah Venture, who work in Eastern Europe, will be attending this event.

This will be my first time to Israel and I can’t believe I’m getting to go! I have studied about this land for my whole life and now I will actually touch, smell and see it.

Please pray with us that God will use the passions and ideas generated from this gathering to propel youth ministry across the world into the next phase of what He has for the church.

Also pray for Kim as she is here in Zilina with all the kids. She will have some help some of the time, and she will be alone some of the time.

Kompas Café has been a trademark of Kompas ministries for the past 8 years. Probably you remember seeing pictures of this warm, welcoming space that attracted so many hundreds of students through the years. God has taken us in a new direction now with the café.

The second week of December 2007, Kompas Café closed itsdoors for the last time to public service. It was an emotional time for us all. We have loved every moment of the café’s life. It was such a central part of Kompas life that it has often been confused as main purpose of Kompas Training Center.

Originally started as a ministry to local students in Zilina, the café, a vision of our founder Danny Jones, quickly became a popular place for both Christians and non Christians alike. It was the perfect environment to meet new people, start new relationships and point them toward Christ. The plan was that the café could be a help to local church youth ministries of Zilina in reaching students for Christ in a natural way.

In it’s lifetime, the café had special weekly programming, english classes, concerts, parties, retreats, camps, teas, coffees, icecream, toasts and much more. And for several years, it seemed that Kompas Cafe was accomplishing it’s vision. And in many ways it certainly was. No one can deny the lives that were reached, touched and changed for Christ through the ministry of the Café.

However, as time passed it became clear that the café had become a youth group in itself and had inadvertently (more…)

One of the challenges in our youth ministry training here is giving the students a different picture of church from the only one they have experienced. So, we search all over our country and neighboring countries for relevant church models that have growing church bodies, healthy leadership teams and a vision for reaching those without Christ.

One such model is in Romania in a city called Arad. It is a city of about 200,000 which is just beginning to emerge economically from its years under communism. The church is a group of about 300 members with several distinct features that make it unique in Eastern Europe.

First, they have a plurality of leadership who work as a team to lead and teach the church. Team leadership or shared leadership is one of the concepts that is not inherent here. Heavy handed, dictatorial style leadership is much more innate.

Second, small group ministry is the core of the church structure. Outreach, fellowship, teaching and service all are essential parts of each small group.

Third, ministry to the needy is embraced as a core value. Every small group has a specific needy family, people group, or project that they have adopted and serve. Likewise the church as a whole has projects focused on meeting the needs with certain people such as the homeless.

To see these features up close and to actually participate in some of the small group ministries to the needy was the kind of hands-on experience we wanted for our students. Our hope is that this kind of exposure will expand their understanding of what church means and be part of the force that shapes the
church here for the next generation in Eastern Europe.

Jano is a new guy in our church who is just starting to learn what it means to follow Christ.

One day he said to they guy who was discipling him, “I think I know what I want to do with my life!” Of course his discipler was eager to hear the answer. Jano said “I have been reading on this one amazing web site and I think I found what I want to do in life”. “One article talks about pouring your life into the lives of other people for the sake of Christ. When I read that, I suddenly realized that is what I want to do with my life”.

This was an amazing discovery for Jano in itself. It shows clearly how God is always at work drawing people to Himself at all times and in many ways.

The second amazing discovery in this story was about the website that Jano was reading. It was “Davka” the youth leader’s resource website that we produce here at Kompas. Jano had simply stumbled across the site not knowing that it existed, and seemed to have a life changing encounter with truth.

To date we have over 500 people registered on the site and the number is growing daily. With web site material, it’s often hard to realize its benefit and effectiveness. But this story will keep us encouraged for some time, that the site is being used of God to build the next generation of God followers here in Slovakia!

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If you haven’t visited the site you can see it at www.davkaonline.sk. It is all in the Slovak language, but you can get an idea of what it looks like.

If you would be interested in helping to support the life of the davka website project, please send me an e-mail at zshepperson@josiahventure.com. Believe it or not, our annual budget is only $2000.

Recently Zac has misplaced (lost) his keys. We thought they would “show up” somewhere, but it’s been more than 2 weeks now, and no keys.

We’ve retraced our steps since the last time he had them, gone back to stores and places we’d been and still no keys. Then yesterday i heard a funny story from NPR’s Car Talk, maybe you heard it too. It was about a woman who lost her keys and the Saab dealership wanted $2000 to reprogram her car’s computer and issue a new set of keys. She was calling the guys on Car Talk to see if there was any other way, less costly, to get her car reprogrammed. Upon their recommendation, she took the car to an independent mechanic and he was willing to do the work for only $600. However, not having $600 either she had to leave the car parked for several weeks and went on a city wide search for her keys. According to the story, she had the entire town looking for her keys. She told them that her mother was even praying that she would find them (they got a big laugh out of that).

Then one day the DMV called her. She was afraid it was about her car being parked and abandoned for so long. Instead, they were calling to say that someone had turned in a set of Saab keys to them and they wondered if she would like to try them! Of course the story is that they were indeed her keys and although it was evident that neither guys or the girl believed in prayer for themselves, it was called a “miracle” that the keys were found.
Hmm? praying for keys? Are somethings insignifcant to God? does He care if we loose our keys? Is that something we can really pray for? I believe that nothing is too small or insignificant to Him and i think this story had to remind me of that. So I’m praying now, that we can find his keys. Can you help me?