scott's euro missions journal 2007 #3

dzien dobry supporters,

well we finished our time in kosice, slovakia with a flurry of activity. we
started with a school assembly at a gypsy school in this village of run-down
high rise apartments called Luneck 9. Lance Lanning the Youth Alive
Director in Montana (an outreach to high school students), is traveling with
us and he led the assembly...giving the students small talks about purity,
dreams, treating each other with kindness and Jesus is life...these were
interspersed with songs and drama and funny videos on the projection screen.

The principle of the school loved it, and said they had never had anything
like that ever come through their school. We really gave the students a
chance to hear aobut Jesus and how to enter into a relationship with Him.

When we finished there we traveled to the square for our second outreach
there. The church has a huge sound system that they set up, which makes our
band sound terrific. The band is really good...especially when each of the
students in the band come from a different city, and we've only been able to
practice once. During this hour long "concert" we perform the dramas and
give testimonies...finishing with a small talk on how to enter into
relationship with Jesus.

Many of the students from the english classes have come to watch these
performances, and they tell us they will come later the night to the
send-off party at the evangelical church here.

so we grab a quick bite to eat and head to this church for the last rally.
the place is fairly full with people age 12-35, including quite of few who
have never been to this church before. At the end of the message by Lance,
6 students stand to recieve Christ...i will tell you more of their stories
later.

We had a good party, then raced to the train station. we got there a bit
late and so we only had 3 minutes to scamper through the station and hop on
the train before it pulled away from the station. 7 long hours through the
night and we ended up here in Krakow, Poland.

Thanks for all your prayers!!!


scott

scott's euro missions journal 2007 #2

ahoj supporters,

Thank you for praying for this time with the gypsy church on Sunday. We had
a great time with this small but passionate group of believers. They packed
about 50 people into a small room that is built onto the side of a gypsy
school. The worship lasted about an hour, and was very up-beat with lots of
clapping and joyful singing. I could only take two students to this church,
but each of them did a great job, Leslie sharing her story, and Robbie
playing his trumpet.

The church welcomed us with broad smiles and many greetings of "dobry rano"
which means "good morning". When i got up to preach i felt so filled up
with the Holy Spirit i was "ready to preach!!" I ended up sharing for
almost an hour...and afterwards we prayed for people for almost another 1/2
hour.

I shared from Mark and talked about the "three legs of faith"

-believe that God exists
-believe He has the power to change anything in my life
-believe He cares about me enough to use His power in my life

This third leg, is the one on which most believer's faith gets shipwrecked.
I also felt God leading me to preach this as well...to emphasize the second
leg of the power of Jesus. Gypsy's are often drawn to the occult and any
religion that will offer them some kind of "formulaic power" . Jesus can
often be lumped in with the other god's...so i felt Jesus wanting me to
impress upon them through scripture Jesus power over -demonic powers,
-sickness, -death, -provision, and even the weather.

We had a powerful time of prayer afterward, and I believe there will be
reports of some healings or some calls to ministry through this time. Thank
you for your prayers, they are having "real time" impact on our missions
trip.

In about 20 minutes we are heading back to this same Gypsy settlement called
Luneck 9 to do an outreach similar to the one we did in the square on
Friday, with music, drama, testimonies and a call to Christ. Please pray
for this outreach tonight as well as our last outreach tomorrow afternoon in
the square.

Tuesday night we will be taking the night train to Krakow, Poland. Please
pray for me as i will be leading this leg of the trip. Bless you all for
your investment in this missions endeavor!!


scott

scott's euro missions journal 2007 #1

Hey XA Blog readers!

Scott and others are over in Eastern Europe right now. Every once in a while they're able to get to the computers to send off an email, so I'll post them up here for you to read as they come in. Enjoy!

-Lance

---

hello supporters:

I am writing you from an internet cafe in the slovakian city of Kosice. It
is one of the most beautiful cities in central europe, a city of around
300,000 people. I spent last week in Krakow, Poland visiting with friends,
but took the train wednesday night to meet the rest of the team here in
Kosice. I didn't sleep much on this train, because I have had a few bad
train experiences, including getting off the train in the middle of nowhere
:(...and almost getting mugged on a train through cheque republic. So when
i made it to the hostel where the team is staying i only had 30 minutes left
until we had to be up for the first part of the outreach.

There are 25 students and staff here with this team. It would have been the
biggest team we've ever taken to Central Europe, but unfortunately four
members of the team had to stay behind. Three of them did not receive their
passports, and one girl could not find hers. This was really sad thing, so
maybe pray for them, as they are all very dissappointed.

We hit the ground running on Thursday dividing into two teams and going to
public schools to talk with students who are studying english. This is a
great way to start missions trips, because each person gets a chance to talk
and share...usually at first about normal stuff...where we are from, what we
like to do, U.S.A stuff, but then the questions start turning to: why are
you here?...and then team members get to share their testimonies with these
students.

We worked with students all morning, then met together at a large
evangelical church here in kosice to practice our dramas and music for
outreach on Friday.

Friday I traveled with Curtis, the team leader to a really sad Gypsy slum
called Lubeck 9. It is a village in kosice of high rise apartments that is
full of trash, broken glass and poor people. but awesome things is there is
a small church there (i will preach here on sunday) and there is a plan to
build a church there as well.

Then we traveled to the square for our first public outreach. We were
amazed when we got there, because the Slovak translators had been hard at
work setting up major sound system for our team. luckily this year we have
such a talented team, that we acutally have a full band...with two guitar
players, bass, violin, trumpet and myself on the drums. we sounded pretty
darn good for only 2 hours of practice.

well i will give you full details of this outreach and our weekend next
email...but please be praying for us and especially for my sermon at this
gypsy village, that it would be full of hope and power for the gypsy
believers there.


scott