Last day of Training!!

We finished our training today and are ready to serve the students at English camp. We all feel very encouraged and excited to begin our English camp on Saturday!! 

Today is our last day in Malenovie and we will be traveling to Val-Mez tomorrow. This is where our camp will be.  

The last day of our training started with incredible worship lead by James, Kadri, Lauren and Kelsey. They started our morning with an amazing set list that even included a new song written by one of our worship leaders at our church. It was really special to share the song with everyone and was a great start to our day!

Today we really focused on talking about our time with the Czech students. We had time to meet as a team with some of our Czech team members. 

This is an important time in order to create a great camp for students. Some of us are getting so close that they start twining :)

This could also be because they were English teaching partners last year....

We also had some time to run around and play soccer and hang out with other teams! 

Some of us enjoyed drinking the Kofola, 

others of us took the free time to hang out with the other American teams and enjoyed each others company. 

We finished another amazing day praying for one another and getting to chat with the founder of Josiah Venture, Dave Patty. It was an incredible way to end our last day in Malenovice. 

To top this amazing day off we all had some sweet treats together and enjoyed our last night in Malenovice.

Ahoj, from Czech!

Yes!! This is the amazing view we get to wake up to here in Malenovice. It is incredible! 

We had our first day of training today where we went over Czech culture, Czech history and how to tell our story well. Johnathan Rosen, pictured below, is the one that lead our training. He oversees all the English camps in Moravia and is such an encouragement to all of us. 

We then got to work on our English lessons and have time to bond as a team. This is such a nice time where we can get acclimated to the time change and learn more about how we can make our camp successful. 

After we were done working on our English lessons....some of our Czech team arrived!! (Only 3 of them but still super fun!!) It was soo wonderful to see them and to have our team meet some of the people we will the working with to have a successful camp. Then some of us went on an adventure and explored the country side during free time. When they returned it was time for dinner and it was time to try some Kofola for those that have never tried it before. 

Some of us enjoyed it and others thought it was different. :) The point is they tried it and that's what is important. We ended our day with a mock evening program. We practiced how that would look for our camp by doing games, camp songs, the loved camp dance and a teaching. Our very own James Cavslier lead the camp songs and I would say that our team did amazing with the camp dance as well!! 

We also got to hear the story of how Josiah Venture was first started. It was incredible to hear about how God is working in the Czech Republic and reminder for us to do this camp well and give our best efforts to support the church we are working with! We ended the day by watching the World Cup with the team from Wales and meeting new people and playing games. 

It was needless to say a wonderful day and I can't wait till tomorrow!! Please be praying for health for our team so we can serve well and give our best efforts. 

We are HERE!!

After over 24 hours of travel on cars, buses, trams, and three planes we made it safely to Malenovice, Czech Republic.  We began our journey at North Coast at 5:45am and traveled to San Diego airport. 

For many people on our team it was their first time out of the country or going oversees. It was Steve's very first time on an airplane and to top all the fun off it was Mary's birthday!! We were very excited to get on the first plane and then had some time as we waited for our next plane to London. As we waited some of us moved around and worked out before the long flight and everyone was looking for a plug to charge their phone. This year James had the genius idea to bring a power strip so everyone could charge their phones at the same time.

It resulted in a hilarious picture that I just had to share. Haha!! Oh us and our technology! We then boarded our second plane to London. After we landed, everyone was really starting to feel tired and drained, but we were only halfway. When we landed in Heathrow we had to take a couple buses to finally get on our last plane to Prague. Once we landed in Prague we got on a bus with two other American teams one from Kentucky and the other from Colorado. 

Many of us slept because we were so tired but some of us were up and chatting with others. It was a long 6 hour bus ride and then we were at the beautiful Hotel Malenovice!! We put on our backpacks and headed up the hill to check in and have our first Czech meal together!! 

Once we got our rooms some of us played soccer and others of us walked around this beautiful place to stay up until it was time to go to bed. After showers and watching the World Cup we all headed to bed. We will have our first day of training tomorrow!  Praying for great sleep for everyone!! 

Fully funded and ready to go!!

Tomorrow is the day and we just turned in our last bit of support in! Our trip is now fully funded and we are ready to go and serve the students in Czech through English Camp. 

We leave tomorrow!!! Please pray for safe travels!! We will update you tomorrow as we travel to The Czech Republic.

Our Send-Off Dinner

We had a wonderful evening tonight as we all gathered together with our team and their families at Kadri's parents house. (Thanks again Mr. And Mrs. Williams) We all had amazing food and fellowship together right before we leave on Monday!! It was a wonderful time for friends and family to come together before we leave.

Our team is ready to go and serve the Czech Rebulic!! We will be posting as we go and will also have a running hashtag #thejczech14 

We would love to have your continued prayers for our trip!! Thanks again for all your support! 

We are in the home stretch!!!

We can count how many days are left before we leave on one hand!! 4 days!! We had out last meeting tonight after the Jordan and did some team building, camp games and the much loved camp dance. 

Yes...it's an action shot so you can see just how much fun we are having. :) As we prepare to go we ask for your prayers for travel, health, unity and for our camp. We are doing a send off dinner with our families and then we will be on our way to the Czech Republic to serve. 

"Check" it out, I think our team is ready!!! 

Benefit Concert!!

Wow!! We had an amazing benefit concert to raise money for Czech and it went so well. Thank you to The Hoffman's for donating chickfila and a huge thank you to those that played: Kadri, Mainsail, and Anton Jon!!!

It was such a fun night and we also had some amazing raffle prizes. This was a successful benefit concert and we made over $1500 in support to our missions trip. Thank you to everyone who came out!!