Praise God, the Lord, our strength and our salvation!
2 people accepted Christ tonight, asking him to be the Lord of their lives!
But it was a long road to there so I will start at the beginning. We woke up this morning around 6:00 am to have breakfast together and be devotified, receive devotification, (have devotionals for those of you who have not been on a mission trip with me) done by Tom. It is easy to see why his Sunday School class loves his teaching so much. Immediately, we divided into groups for presentations in the school and invited people to our "American Week" activities which included sports and conversational English.
After sharing in 2 different schools for 3 or 4 hours, we went to another massive lunch provided by our Czech Christian brothers and sisters (the sisters did the cooking to be fair). Then we had some time where each team leaders spoke with their team about how to lead a person to Christ and the sinners prayer as a refresher. Our team leaders are Nate (Dr. Solc's son-in-law), Tom, Cheryl, Joy (Dr. Solc's wife), David and myself. We then went to a huge sports facility that had been rented out.
Tom, Gordon, Melissa, John Stone and Kelly taught a bunch of youth how to play American football. There were about 15-20 kids from Sokolov that played and they invited them to the evening tonight. They really got the kids involved and you could tell they had a blast. Over at the Baseball section, we had a great crew of our youth teaching the kids.
Baseball takes a little while to learn and our 2 baseball players (Mitch and Christian) were great, patient teachers...they even purposely missed several catches to make each player feel good. Dr. Solc, Trevor, Maria (Dr. Solc's daughter) and Joe had a pretty good sized crowd at the tennis clinic. But what drew them in, which acted as a great ice breaker, was our resident cowboy, David, and his lasso. It was the first thing that most of them tried and it really served to get the kids comfortable with us. Taylor and Ann Marie were our photographers and Conrad hung out with the skater kids at the skate park.
Of course, what shocked us the most was a Czech kid who had never played baseball before, cracked the ball clean across the field into the adjacent skate park, literally shattering the biggest metal bat we had. We gave it to him as a souvenir.
After that, we headed to the church for another meal, some more training, and conversational English. Several people came who played sports with us. Melissa gave her testimony which really hit home to people. The band played, again doing phenomenal. Then a man who had been saved after serving time in the half-way house gave his testimony which brought many people to tears, including our translator.
We talked to the people individually for about an hour. During this time, a man gave his life to Christ. We came back for anothers one and a presentation on the Gosple, then proceeded to more one-on-one time. We then learned that another man had accepted Christ! Dr. Solc, Melissa, Maria, and Kelly spoke at length with 3 girls who were very open. They used an evangelism tool called the "Evangecube" to explain the plan of salvation. We pray that they will be back to tomorrow.
God is moving! Hearts of solid stone are being crushed by the penetrating message of Jesus Christ. Keep praying!
In Christ,
Matt
Plymouth Haven Baptist Church • 8600 Plymouth Rd, Alexandria, VA 22308
(703) 360-4370 • fax (703) 360-4132
