Treasure Hunt

Well, now Gabie is officially BIG 6! His birthday celebration streached over a period of two weeks (it seemed). But, one of the highlights was the Treasure Hunt. Gabe and a mob of classmates (16!) from all corners of the globe were on a mission to find the pirates treasure buried along the Danube river. To say these little balls of energy were excited would be an understatement. How Ivetka & I survived the 2+ hours of following a string of clues, challenges, and sugar-high monsters God only knows. In the end all the treasures where found, we didn't loose any kids along the way, and Gabe + all the kids had a great time!

The Gang


First clue


Matching the map


Little Masscot

The Mob

Dragon's cave

Where is the dragon?

Clean Devin

Part of the education at FOREL (where I work & the boys school) is character development. Usually this is in the form or ethics like cleanliness, honesty, tolerance, etc. Even better then talking about good citizenship is actually doing it. On Earth Day (April 23rd) the students of Forel went around the village of Devin picking up trash to keep our local environment clean(-er?). For them it was a nice way to apply good values, for me it was a day without teaching and just walking along the river on a beautiful sunny day!

“20/20″

CityLight teaching: "20/20"

"It has been asked of me - “What is the vision for our fellowship?” What a great question! To be honest, my personal vision for our church is not important. What is important is God’s vision. What is His opinion, His will, His direction? That is what is important..."

See the full text + video at "20/20"

Scrambled eggs

Wow, I am so behind on blogging. So much goes on in a week that it seems like two or three weeks have swept by us. I try to do a bit of photo-doc of everything at least... so here is a bit from our time with the McCartney Family in Esztergom, HU. As usually our time with the McCarney's was packed with craziness, great food, and Southern hospitality. It's been fun to get to know this family who are faithfully serving the Calvary Chapel in Esztergom. Their main focus is the youth group which ministers also to youth in Sturovo, Slovakia. A good and fruitful work of the Lord.

Anyways, the boys has a blast. Here are some pics of a mad dash Easter egg hunt.







A very cute Bunny cake by our in-house chef extraordinaire Ivetka!

April 09 Ministry + Family Update

Sometimes life just gets so full that it's difficult to sit down to reflect & report on all the goodness of God around us. Hopefully we can pause and do just that here and we (that includes you) can rejoice in all that God has done. Thank you for your prayers - they are paying off!

As you know our main ministry focus is to plant a church here in Bratislava. Since September 08’ God has opened the doors wide open to do just that and it has been amazing to simply watch God work (it is certainly not us!) The church plant is affiliated with Calvary Chapel (which is our model of ministry), but we have opted to call it CityLight. The name simply summarizes the vision - to be a light to the city of Bratislava. It's been a great encouragement to watch the Lord draw people to the church, to see a desire in the those who gather to serve and love one another, and watch people get excited about Jesus. Starting this week we will be launching a 5 week teaching series focused on God's plan for the Church and our part in it. It should be good, but please keep me in prayer as I prepare!
Please also pray for Ivetka as she leads the children's ministry which is a lot of work. There are sometimes as many kids as adults and they are of mixed age and limited space... so its quite a challenge! Pray that the fellowship will grow in the Word, His grace, prayer, and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit

We are launching the CityLight web/blog site. Please check it out and if you can link to us that would help our site get greater exposure. Feel free to drop in from time to time to see what is new at CityLight and refer it to friends. Simply CLICK.

In addition to teaching at CityLight God has opened up opportunities to give out the Word at other ministries here in the Bratislava area. Over Easter I had the chance to preach at Calvary Chapel Esztergom. This was great for me to give back a bit to a church that really introduced me to missions in Europe more then 14 years ago! At the end of May I will be leading the teaching for Calvary Chapel Vienna's church retreat. Pray that it would be a time of refreshment, building up, and filled with the Spirit.

In terms of being a light to those outside the church I believe that most of the opportunities present themselves in our everyday life - at work, in the park, the grocery aisle, wherever! It's been great to simply watch God bring people in our path who are seeking to know more about spiritual things. Just the other day we were at a party and almost every conversation we had was with people wanting to talk about God! Recently in my classroom there was an offhand comment made, "when Hell freezes over", which incited a good conversation about Heaven & Hell with my students! In short- God has a better way of orchestrating situations for His Message to be shared then we could ever do! Please pray that we would be a bright light to all the people we rub shoulders with daily & that they would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus.

There are a few outreach events on the horizon that we would ask you to pray for. For most of the month of June we are planning to have an outreach team from World Race partner with us. Also, in June/July we will have another team from Calvary Chapel Tulsa coming over. Lord willing they will be involved in shining the light via children's ministry, University outreach, sports based ministry to youth, and just generally loving on the people of Bratislava. Pray for the teams and pray for us as we plan for the teams (it is a lot of work!) Currently we are partnering with Good Sports (a sports based ministry) to help them with their baseball program. Which means I am the new Tee Ball coach (which is a big joke!) and Gabie is one of the sluggers on the team (which he loves!) This is turning out to be a great opportunity to meet many kids & parents from the FOREL & QSI schools. Lord willing it will result in lives transformed for Him! Pray for us, the kids, and open doors to minister to them.

On the home front we are fully busy with the boys, work, and life. Gabe just celebrated his 6th Birthday - he is growing up so fast! Now that the weather is good he is trying to learn how to ride his new bike. Some small collisions, but nothing serious. David is as intense, active, and cute as ever. He is always up to "trouble", but his smile smoothes out everything from split milk, torn books, to toothpaste on the doors...to name a few. Ivetka has added Super-Teacher/Small Business woman to her list of other Super titles (such as Super Mom, Super Wife, and Super Sunday School teacher). Aide from the ministry I am having a blast teaching English at FOREL. It's a fun & interesting group of kids (one of my students is Prime Minster Fico's son) and the job allows me to be pretty creative in my approach to teaching. Pray for us as a family that we can effectively (and sanely) balance all our family, fun, work and ministry activities. There is so much you can cram into a life, but we don't want to push God out of it in the process

Ok... thank for following us along in this journey. I hope that you too will rejoice in all the good things God is doing over here in Slovakia. Thank you for your part - prayers, encouragement, and financial support. We couldn't do it without you!

Much love in Jesus,

Patrick, Ivetka, Gabriel, and David


Online Donations: Account # 1175

Our Sending Agencies:
Go! Ministries: http://go.ccnorco.org/
Shepherd's Staff: http://www.shepsstaff.org/

CityLight web/blog

We are launching our church web/blog site soon. Here is the "Beta" version.

Click & enjoy: http://ccbratislava.wordpress.com/

Passover

“For even Christ our Passover Lamb is sacrificed for us”
1 Cor 5:7

On Wednesday we spent the evening blowing the dust off the ancient, but deeply relevant Jewish fest of Passover. We ate, drank, learned, and explored this holiday that even Jesus celebrated and claimed to be the fulfillment of. It is a story of God’s abounding love to generations, grace, and redemption…which leads to JOY!

Vic & Darla D. lead us through the ceremony and highlighted the prophetic fulfillments. They did such a great job! We set the room up “Hebrew” style with one long low table where everyone sat on carpets or pillows to enjoy the festivities. Aside from opening us up to the beautiful imagery of the Passover, this was a chance to really enjoy one another as a church fellowship and serve one another. Personally for me it is just such a blessing to watch the Body serve one another, each person doing their part - hosting, teaching, feeding, crowd (kid) controlling, worship leading, cooking...whatever to edify one another.

Bow-wow

Recently we had the "girls" (Mahiro + Towako) over for a few hours. Japanese girls are so different from our two intense "sons of thunder," But don't be fooled... they are still wild and crazy, but just in their own way. We took a stroll over to Sloboda (Freedom) square where at around 4pm-6 you are sure to run into a bunch of canine characters at our own unofficial dog park in the shadow of high rises and skyscrapers. Living downtown has it's own sub-culture of people who suck the marrow out of life and every green spot in the middle of corporate concrete. It's an interesting life, odd at times, never dull.

Our little ogre

little chef

Buckethead

A lot of silliness goes on here in the home, much of it by David. He seems to be in his own little world much of the time, but it must be a great place because it spills out all over the place around him and causes much laughter. I'm not sure what was going on here - football game? knight in shining armor? gladiator? Only David knows!

Batter up!

Finally Spring is here (well, kind of) and with it Baseball! Actually, TeeBall. Friends of ours, Tom & Debbie Johnson, run a sports based ministry called GoodSports here in Bratislava. Tom is an interesting guy - one part pastor, one part former Minnesota Twins player (with his own baseball card! :) Anyways, they are wanting to start up a TeeBall team to their existing ministry. Our guys were totally interested, so we were hooked. Right now we "train" in Deinska Nova Ves, a suburb of Bratislava which currently doesn't have any evangelical church (as far as we can tell). It is also only about two bus stops away from were I work & the guys go to school....hummm "interesting". So, I will start helping out at GoodSports as a coach...haha God has a sense of humor. Anyways, Saturday's practice was loads of fun and the guys had a blast. Here are some pics of the craziness. Enjoy!

Prayer

I wanted to ask you for prayer for a decision I have to make. I just received an email from a short-term missions team that would like to serve our church in doing outreach for a few weeks in May-June. I have to give them a reply soon - Yes? No? If, Yes, what will they do, where will they stay, and a million other details. Naturally minded limitation: They have a 7$ budget a day... but is our God short of cash? I just need some wisdom from Jesus. So... thanks for the prayers!

Also, another short-term team should be coming in late June+early July! We have to also pray for all of those details.

Both opportunities are amazing in the same way - they were totally not looked for! Both team approached us and offered to serve here in Slovakia. For years we have been asking for teams and haven't gotten much of a response. So, it's very cool to see God moving hearts towards what HE is doing here in Bratislava...certainly it is not us! "Not by might, nor by power, but by MY Spirit" !!!

Also, I have been having some great conversations with friend & leader of GoodSports, Tom J., about partnering with them doing sport outreaches. This Saturday is the start of their baseball program. Gabe can't wait to join in and do some Tee Ball!

So, pray for us - wisdom, discernment, open hearts here locally... and time off work to facilitate these teams!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Sorry for the lack of blog updates. I've been sick, tiered, and as you can see from the pics - cold! Brrrrrrr! Actually, generally snow is nice. Yet, in the city it piled up so high that we couldn't use our car for days. Next it starts to melt and huge sheets of snow & ice crash down off the rooftops a few stories onto unsuspecting cars only to smash in windshields and hoods...then the wind, rain, hail....you get the picture. Snow in the city can get old after awhile.

However, in the mountains where snow should be it is great! Two weeks ago we were in Dolny Kubin visiting family and hitting the slopes. It was bitterly cold (-14c), but tons of nice snow to play in. Ivetka did a bit of skiing and I attacked the hill on my snowboard. Neither one of us had done this for a few years, so it was a fun and funny experience.