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According to a news report that I just read, the Slovak news magazine “.tyzden” has won 11 prizes in the “Best of Photojournalism” contest organized by the National Press Photographers Association. That means that .tyždeň brought home the most number of awards, beating out Newsweek and The Seattle Times who won eight and six awards respectively. And that’s not to mention Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, New York Times Magazine…).
We’re starting to be optimistic about the possibility of purchasing property for Narnia Elementary School. This last week we received two pieces of good news. One came as a result of the end of the third round of public bidding and the other was news about loan approval.
I’ve talked about the growth of our attendance in previous posts. Baptism and church membership are some of the best ways that we can see the fruit of evangelism. In our church, this is the time of year for both of those.
Recently I read this blog post by Greg Strand, the Director of Biblical Theology and Credentialing for the EFCA. In the post he challenges us to reflect on the dichotomy of theological academia and ministry. In my post dissertation phase of life–teaching at a seminary and serving as an elder in our church, that tension between theological academia and ministry is where I live.
Our latest update is our annual beginning of the new year januflection when we look back to 2012 and ahead to 2013. It seems like for the past few years every year we look forward to new and exciting things. This year is no exception.
Starting in the fall of 2011 Jana has been trying to start up a Music Together class here in Banská Bystrica. Unfortunately there were never enough kids signed up to meet the minimum requirements for a group.
Last May I introduced you to Project Submarine, which is a sort of debate club organized by students from our youth group. The debates take place between students from the seminary and students from the Department of Applied Ethics. The goal of the project is really to build relationships with students and share the gospel. This school year we’ve been continuing the debates and we’ve had some exciting developments. In June our university fellowship went on a weekend retreat and we invited our friends from Project Submarine. Three students from the Department of Applied Ethics came, including Marek.
I started noticing little by little. When we got back from the States in August there were a couple of families in church on Sunday that I knew from Narnia Elementary School but were not attenders of our congregation. I also noticed a few teenagers that I’d never seen before and a few more kids that were attending with families from our church. As the weeks went by I noticed that these families and kids were coming back. And then I noticed there were some other families I’d never seen before. These were mostly families that are new to the area or who are from Banská Bystrica but are looking for a strong fellowship where they can grow in their faith. Where are all these people coming from?
Narnia Elementary School has begun raising funds to purchase a campus in Banská Bystrica. The desire is to purchase the entire campus where we have been renting since the school was founded in 2006. In this post I will be explaining how Narnia plans to fund the purchase of the school and how you can help make sure Narnia continues to share the gospel in our community.
The city has now closed the second round of bidding. During the second round the minimum bid was set at $1.7 million. That was still too much for us and so we decided to wait and see. (For more on Narnia see this series of posts.) You might think people would be nervous. After all, if someone had made an offer during the second round then the campus would likely have been sold to them. That means Narnia would then have to move, probably even in the midst of a school year. Can you imagine moving a school in the middle of a school year? |
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