Sheppersons in Slovakia

How can we stay connected? Which campers will continue to seek after God? How do we follow-up those from out of town? What teaching do they need first? Who will take personal responsibility for parenting each new believer? These questions occupy the mind of our camp teams now that summer camps are over. This is when it’s easy to lose the ground that we have gained. Satan says, “great camp, now move on to another project”.

After the camp in our local town, we have about 14 students within our reach who need follow up. And across the country there are hundreds like them who had encounters with God at our summer camps. Kim and I have taken the responsibility for the official care for all these students from our local camp. So we have started a small group on Thursday night as the core of a regular connection time.

We already had a couple of times together since camp and we are praying that God will mold us together as a growing community of believers that will effect many others in our city in the months to come.

Please pray, when you think about us in this way:

* That Satan would not distract these new seekers of God with the cares of this world.

* That the camp follow up team would be loving and responsible spiritual parents.

* That the Word of God would do it’s powerful work of transformation in their lives.

It was the highlight of my summer camp tour! Three former summer camp students standing in front of a room of new campers, giving their testimonies of how God had changed their lives.

I compare the work in people’s lives here in Slovakia to the way Slovak houses are often built – slow but sturdy. Sometimes it takes ten years to build a Slovak house. And that is what came through in these testimonies. God is doing the “building” in His own way and in his own time in the lives of these students. Many times it’s not in connection with any program, camp or certain person. But they are always energized fully by His Spirit.

Here are a couple of intriguing quotes from their words.

“I tried my mom’s form of religion (Catholicism) and there was nothing there for me. So, then I

tried my Dad’s religion (atheism) and it was empty for me”. Then I came to camp and met real Christians”.

“I went to church and I knew about God. I remember going to church one Sunday and hearing about Jesus. I came home and remember thinking that I had heard about God but I was sure I was not familiar with Jesus. Soon after that, I met a schoolmate who was a Christian and I knew he had something that I didn’t.”

Now these former campers are the leaders of the present camp – meeting, planning, praying,
calling, building relationships. A new generation is rising up!

Thank you for your prayers and support for the work here in Slovakia. God is building his building year after year – slow and solid!

It was a sad report from one camp. Kids were withdrawing their camp registrations because of a rumor that the summer camp was organized by a cult. How was this God’s plan? What would this mean for the camp?

Finally, the local youth pastor who was organizing the camp locally, stopped returning camp registrations. The camp sight was already reserved, the plans made and deposits paid.

Now skipping to the happy ending –

by the close of the camp, the student’s who were forced to attend the camp, were texting to all their friends who withdrew their registrations. The messages were ecstatic. “This is the best camp of my life!” “I’m sorry you missed it”. And the others wrote back – “Can you please try to make a reservation for me now for next year’s camp?”

The story was clear. The bad rumor had dwindled the camp to 12 students. Had Satan had a victory or had God had a perfect plan in a smaller camp. It’s hard to say for sure. But the reality is that 12 students came face to face with the truth about God’s plan for salvation in Jesus Christ. They were visibly moved by the presence of Christ in the actions, words and ways of the camp teams (Americans and Slovaks).

In the end, they all returned to their villages to be followed up by the local church youth group that sponsored the camp. Only eternity will tell the reason for the rumor and the small camp in the mountains of Slovakia.

Zac and the Kompas staff will be traveling to America in the fall to attend both the National Youth Leaders’ Conference and our mission’s (Josiah Venture) capital campaign in Atlanta. We are praying for the possibility that the whole family can join him on this trip. We believe it would be a great opportunity for the kids to connect with family (Kim and the kids would visit family while Zac is attending his conferences) and be apart of the capital campaign in Atlanta as a family. The itinerary isn’t final at this point, but the trip could be up to 4 weeks for Zac. This is a long time to be without him.

We have tentatively postponed our summer family vacation, to put that money towards the expense of going to America. This doesn’t begin to put a dent in actual price for all of us to fly to America (tickets currently are around $1100 each), and so we are asking God to provide the rest. We believe it would be a great “unscheduled” visit for everyone, especially the kids, who are always asking for a trip to see grandparents and cousins! We are praying this trip will work out!

Double our fruit! That was the challenge of our international mission director for this summer. We were immediately skeptical, because we were already stretched to do the the four camps we normally do each summer. But we embraced the challenge. Through the years English camps have been the most fruitful evangelistic effort in Josiah Venture across our central
European countries.

Now, well into precamp phase of EIGHT camps, we realize that God was behind the challenge as well. We have eight local churches across Slovakia and eight local church teams from America who are partnering with each local Slovak church.

This summer, over 400 students will hear the gospel of Christ in these camps. Can you pray with us, starting next weekend (June 28) with camps running throughout the summer, that God will in fact double our fruitfulness?

Somebody said our Israel was like “the Bible in 3D”. This is exactly the way I felt as we traveled from one important sight to the next. Most of the places that I have traveled, there has been a certain excitement about that particular place. Something that I had never seen, or a certain fame about a location or some famous landmark. But I have never traveled to a place where so much of what I ALREADY knew and had studied, synchronize with where I was traveling.

Connected with experiencing the wonder of the country itself was the 4 day global youth trainer’s conference in Jerusalem. 250 youth trainers converged on the city from around the globe. They traveled from unusual places like United Arab Emirates, Mongolia, Zambia and Indonesia and more common places like Brazil, England, South Africa and America. It turned out to be a strategic 4 days. Meeting youth trainers from other contexts was inspiring. Sharing successes and failures in youth training was encouraging. Learning from the Biblical example of Jesus in the Jerusalem theater was priceless!

Here are a few miscellaneous facts I learned. (more…)