Czech Mate Ministries International

Ken and Linda Stapleton's news site. Send tax deductible contributions to; CMMI, PO Box 46068, Seattle, WA 98146

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Location: Liberec/Seattle, United States

are missionaries living in the Czech Republic since 1997. Their support comes from individuals and churches in the United States and the Czech Republic. Send tax deductible contributions to; CMMI, PO Box 46068, Seattle, WA 98146

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

END OF THE YEAR CELEBRATIONS FOR OUR EIGHT ENGLISH CONVERSATION CLASSES

During the school year Ken and Linda had eight different English conversation groups in four different towns. All of them were held at the request of the local pastor and were an outreach into the community with a mixture of believers and not-yet-believers. We talked about everyday life (from a Christiian and a non-Christian perspective), developed friendly relationships and showed that Christians were ordinary people; not weirdos. We really enjoyed all our classes. In the month of June we were sad to break for the summer but we ended each one with a celebration that included food and games. Pictures of these parties follow.

Unfortunately, we do not have photos of our Liberec group of older adults. We were too busy having fun to take photos. Although we had the weekly meeting in our home, we held the party at the F-Klub (the meeting room in the church office building - see Happy Thanksgiving Liberec Jan 2008 for pictures of F-Klub) It was a much bigger space so we could invite more people including friends of the ladies who were interested in joining us next year and some of the students' children who were present or past English students of ours, as well as some other members of the church family. People loved the American hamburgers and English speaking games. Everyone really had a good time and this group that were strangers at the beginning of the year now agreed to be informal friends (tykat) instead of a formal relationship (vykat). This was a great cultural breakthrough!!!!

We also hosted a weekly meeting in our home called "Congregation" which introduced Christian topics to those interested to know more. Different members cooked dinner each week so we got to know each one on a personal level and we also ate dinner with them. Then, as we cleaned up the kitchen, Martin Vlasek (Liberec youth group leader) took them into the living room and presented either a Christian topic or a guest speaker. Sorry, no pictures of this group either.

As an end of the year project for the Christian School in Liberec, Ken volunteered to roast a whole pig for Children's Day. He spent eight hours basting the pig and stoking the fire but the end product was well worth the effort.
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