On Friday, November 16, sixteen girls and five adults headed up to the DPB House in Severin for a junior high girl's retreat.  Many were making the trip for the first time. The idea and planning behind the retreat came from Ema and Miriam Kreko, daughters of our pastor from the Malesnica church. 

Miriam and Ema

The focus of the weekend was on self image and relationships with boys.  Ema and Miriam had noticed that these two areas of struggle often came up during their time together with the girls.  Here is what Miriam had to say about the weekend.
"We had a small retreat for girls from 16-18th of November in Severin.  For quite some time now, we've been thinking about ways to connect all the girls from our different small groups.  We saw a great need to open the subject of self esteem so we decided to join two groups from Zagreb, a group from Rijeka and Cakovec.  Our goal that weekend was for every girl to feel special, smart, pretty and above all to become aware of how much God loves her.  The verse that we based our talks and discussions on was Psalm 139:14.  It was so amazing to see how the girls connected and opened up to us.  We want to continue with our small groups and hopefully have many oportunities to bring girls together and closer to God.  We see how important it is to invest in the next generation, so please pray for persistance, patience and love in our ministry.  We would like to thank Sarah, Bonnie and Jenny who helped make this retreat possible."

Listening

Smores over candle light

The theme of the EBS camp this summer was “Going Bananas” for God.  Each day we took a look at a Biblical character that, according to the world’s standards, went “bananas” for God – Abraham, Noah, Gideon, Zacchaeus and the woman who poured a jar of perfume on Jesus’ feet. The goal of the camp was to use the Bible to inspire the campers to know God and draw closer to Him.

Getting into the Word

Each evening the campers came together in a big group to sing praises, watch the “drama” about the plane crash survivors on Banana Island, hear different leader’s testimonies pertaining to the daily theme, and listen to a story about a person from the Bible who did something crazy for God.  The story was followed by a small group time where questions like, “Who is God? What is He like? Who went “bananas” and why? What did God do?  What does God want and not want?” were discussed. The campers were also encouraged to memorize a daily Scripture, pray, and respond to what they learned.  In between the two sessions we climbed on the new rock climbing wall, played ping pong, volleyball and soccer, did archery and crafts, went swimming, and played lots of UNO.  The days were full!

EBS Leaders

Personally, it was an exhausting but amazing week.  Going into the week I was feeling inadequate to the task and overwhelmed with all the newness – new people, new environment, new responsibilities, and new situations.  Even though it was an English camp, some of the kids had a very limited knowledge of English and my Croatian was even more limited – how would I communicate if there were problems?  In addition to learning everything I could for next year, my roles at camp were diverse- photographer, teacher, nurse, mom, actress, speaker, rock climbing instructor, maid, dishwasher … I was definitely stepping out of comfort zones, but God met me where I was.  He stretched me, strengthened me and used me.  I was able to share my testimony about choosing to follow God to Croatia during an evening session when the theme was “Two ways to live”.   I took hundreds of pictures, shared some peace making skills with some campers during a conflict, prayed for and with the girls in my room, and met some great kids, whom I hope I will see again next summer.  When the week ended, I was sad to say goodbye to Janet, Ruth, Maya and Daniel, but excited about the camp, the campers and the future possibilities.  I was also exhausted and it took me about a week to recover!

Dobar Dan (Good Day)!  We are doing well, but have not been able to communicate very much as we still do not have internet access at home.  Things work differently here.  We were supposed to get internet today, but it was delayed for “another” day.  We would love to tell you when we will have internet and communicate a little more, but we don’t know ourselves.

Our time has been a rush of many different activities mostly centered around getting set up in Croatia.  Week one involved registering at the police station, waiting for about 4 hours to get all our documents in order and stamped.  Then we went to order phone and internet.  The remainder of the week involved getting our home set up.  We are mostly done, but need to run to Ikea in Austria to get a computer cabinet that works well in a smaller space.