Slovakia: Camp Reflections and Jesus Encounters

To my supporters and fellow Jesus lovers!!

We got back from Slovakia last Wednesday after a short delay in Munich. I went right back to work after getting back and was still catching up on sleep over the weekend. I wanted to get out an initial update while the experiences, thoughts, and the people of Slovakia are still fresh in my memory. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of pictures from the trip because we were quite busy throughout the duration of our time there, but I will post a follow up when I get the camp photos hopefully in the coming week. I am just going to write chronologically on all that we did from getting in country to the time we left.

Training

We landed in Vienna the morning of Thursday, July 11th. We met up with the four other teams that were all coming to Slovakia to help with a KECY camp like ours. We all took a bus from Vienna, Austria to Zilina, Slovakia and had some time to rest before the first training session that evening. The organization that ran the training in Slovakia was TC Kompas. They work hand in hand with Josiah Venture in Slovakia to run these trainings as well as all of the other year round ministry that takes place in Slovakia. Over the next two days we had many different trainings from cultural awareness to gospel sharing. We would have worship each evening as well which is always such a special time. The ability to praise the Lord with people from a different culture never fails to amaze me and is just a special blessing each time. I was quite impressed with how detailed the training time was even though it was just two short days in all.

I loved getting to know all the different teams and in country Slovak missionaries. It was sad to leave them all and head to camp because I feel as if we had just breached the surface of getting to know each other. But camp was coming quick! Josiah Venture runs a summer intern program every year for young people interested in seeing and participating in their ministry across the 16 european countries they work in. These interns helped to run the training as well as getting us at the airport and anything in between. Since our team was just four people, two of the three interns joined us for camp the next week. James and Vivian were such a blessing to get to know and truly made all the difference during camp week.

Camp Set Up

On Sunday we departed to Krahule, our camp location. Krahule is a tiny little mountain town located 45 minutes outside of Banska Bystrica, where most of the students were from. We stayed in the main hotel in that city thanks to a connection of the pastor’s wife, Vierka. The location itself was absolutely beautiful and a perfect place to host a summer camp. When we arrived on Sunday, the Slovak team was already in full force setting up camp. Shortly after we did some brief introductions to get to know each other and started preparing for our english classes for the week.

The Slovak Team

The team that ran the camp was composed of the youth leaders from their local multiple city youth group in the region. They were from a plethora of different churches, but joined forces to have one big youth group. Essentially all of them were younger, 17-19, and it was so impressive to see the hard work and dedication they had put into the camp preparations. They had been preparing for months beforehand to prepare games, event nights, the program, music and worship, decorations, and all the logistical details behind the scenes. The pastor, Rene, and his wife Vierka, from a church in Banska greeted us and played a big part in the camp as well. Seeing them step back and let the youth leaders truly be in charge of the camp and run it themselves was really encouraging. The leader of the camp was Samo, a 21 year old from Banska. He was very well prepared and led the team with diligence and gentleness. He was always able to lead the meetings and organize details well, while also able to let loose and have fun at the camp without being bogged down by the responsibility of leading the whole camp. I know that’s not an easy thing to do and again I was very impressed with his maturity and leadership ability at such a young age. This spread to the rest of the team as well. Each of the leaders took their position and responsibilities quite seriously and owned what they were in charge of. For being such a young team, the quality of their work was wonderful and very well thought out.

Team Orange Juice!

Each of us Americans led a different team of students throughout the week. We were together for English class, and all of the camp wide competitions. On the first night of camp we got our teams and had 30 seconds to come up with a team name. After some heavy deliberation we settled on Team Orange Juice. This may have had something to do with the fact that our bandana was bright orange, not totally sure… I had three awesome translators, Daniel, Maruska, and Mischka. Daniel was a part of the band, gave one of the talks, and had a hand in many other activities in the camp. Daniel has a huge heart for the gospel and sharing Jesus with others around him. We have kept in touch since camp has ended and he is setting out with another leader from the camp, Mato, to do street evangelism in his city. Maruska was a part of the event nights (enights) team and has a very gentle spirit. She was always so helpful in english class and really helped me to interact with and get to know the students better. Mischka led a lot of the icebreakers and did the enights as well. She had a lot of energy and was always willing to learn and engage well with the students. I get to know these three the best, and they invited me in which made a huge difference with such a short camp. The students in my class were wonderful as well! There was Peter, Adam, Nikolas, Kika, Klaudia, Eliska, Marta, and the camp nurse, Karen joined us as well! They were shy at first, but after the first day I made some adjustments to the curriculum. As we got to know each other better, they were more and more willing to share and we had a great time together as a team.

A Day at Camp

7:15 – Leader Meeting

7:50-8:50 – Breakfast

9:00 – Morning Program (it looked roughly like this each day)

• Announcements
• Icebreaker
• Camp Dance
• Testimony

9:30 – 12:30 – English Class!

10:45 – Initiatives/Snack Break (a different challenge each day done in our teams worth points and designed for team bonding)

12:30 – Lunch

14:00 – Activities (Games worth points done in our teams)

16:00 – Sports (led by the US team) / Crafts (Slovak team)

18:00 Dinner

19:30 Evening Program

• Icebreaker
• Band
• Talk (based on the theme of the day)
• Points Update

21:00 – Discussion Groups in Teams

21:30 – 23:00 – Enight! (different themed event nights!

• Monday – America Night
• Tuesday – Food Challenge
• Wednesday – Neon Night
• Thursday – Labyrinth (Gospel Presentation to Students)
• Friday – Chill last night hang out

23:30 – LIGHTS OUT

Theme of the Camp

The Original was the theme of the week. JV did a great job with the production of each days theme that centered around Jesus as the original. Each of the camp talks was centered around this theme. Jesus was presented as the Light of the World, Good Shepherd, The Gate, The Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Vine, and the Life and Resurrection. All of the talks used Scripture from the Gospel of John to create continuity of Jesus as the Original of all these things. The world has given us false refuge, false teachers and bad leaders, broken cisterns, dissatisfying sources of life, and insufficient methods of flourishing. Each day the students were shown how Jesus truly fills their desires for purpose, life, and thriving in this life. On the fourth day of camp, the students were presented with the gospel by going from station to station and learning who exactly Jesus is and how the gospel can truly change their lives. At the end they were given the option to go and pray with a leader or to go and be at the fire and just hang out. Out of 52 students, only four chose not to receive prayer. They had never seen this many students choose to be prayed over before and were so excited to see this level of interest in the gospel. Three students gave their lives to Jesus, including one girl who had become disillusioned by the church, but experienced the love of Jesus through the camp and wanted to return to Him.

For me personally, it was a challenge to stay fueled spiritually each day. I thought since it was just a short trip it would be easier than being on the World Race for months at a time. This was definitely a sprint and not a marathon, so staying strong in the Lord each day was essential. Through a combination of daily Psalms and Proverbs given to me by my Grandma Schubert and Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray, I was able to find pockets to recluse and be with the Lord. Though these times were short, the Lord was always faithful to give me just the energy I needed each day.

Favorite Moments

On Wednesday we did an all day hike that had different stations and challenged at each station for each team to go through. At the end of the hike there was a big lookout tower where you could see for miles over the mountains of Slovakia. On the way back from the hike, we were caught in a massive lightning storm which was a bit too close for comfort. We were all totally soaked by the time we got back to the camp, but ended up just playing in a massive puddle like little kids. It was a great moment to embrace childlikeness which I think is pretty biblical.

James and I would play basketball with a bunch of the boys after dinner and those kids do not hold back. I have never seen kids go all out in a game of streetball like that before. This was a great time to just let loose and hang out with these kids. The fouls were outrageous and we were tired, but the kids had so much fun we had to keep playing.

Leaving Camp

After all the students left on Saturday, we had a short team debrief and then packed up. We spent that night in Banska Bystrica and then got to go to Rene’s Church the following morning. We wrapped our time with one last enight before we had to drive to Vienna to fly out the following morning. Then, of course we got stuck in Munich for a couple days. This was honestly a blessing from the Lord to be able to rest before the long travel day and see some sights we weren’t expecting to.

Key Takeaways

The people of Slovakia are hungry for the gospel. A lot of the kids from the camp are familiar with the church, but might not truly know Jesus. To me, it seemed somewhat reminiscent of America’s situation. There is a lot of religion, but not a lot of relationship. The Slovak team constantly expressed how glad they were that we were able to come. Now it wasn’t about us at all. This team has been doing these camps for four years now, three of them without a US team. They were thankful for the support since it was an English camp and part of how they market the camps to the kids is that they can interact with native english speakers. The unity that we had between the Slovak Team and the US Team was great. To us, it truly felt like one big team with one purpose which was to reach the students. Yes, teaching english was part of it, but moreso sharing Jesus with them. We played a small part in this and it’s the Slovak leaders that will continue to build relationships with the students throughout the year that will be able to continue pursuing and discipling these students.

I am so grateful to everyone who supported me financially and prayerfully on this trip. I saw the Lord move in great ways and was blessed to see the faith and perseverance of other believers who desire to share Jesus with the younger generation. Thank you for your support in this trip. I don’t know what the future holds, but were I to be called back to Slovakia, I would certainly love to go and support these new found friends in Christ in Slovakia.

in Christ,

Nathan Schubert

P.S. Sorry about the long read without any pictures. They are coming soon I promise.

TL;DR – Slovakia is awesome. The people love Jesus and we had an awesome time encouraging one another, hanging out with Slovak kids, and sharing Jesus with them.