I am about to travel to the Eastern European country of Slovakia for the third time and I’m very excited! I will be traveling with a group of people from my church, Our Saviour’s Lutheran, who are going to work alongside our partners in ministry at the Christian Center for Education (CCE) in Martin, Slovakia. I have visited our friends in Martin on each of my past two trips and I can tell you first-hand, they are doing God’s work there in amazing ways! The CCE is a private school working towards offering classes from Kindergarten ages through High School and they are just a couple years from that goal!

When I first visited Martin, Slovakia in 2004 we were on a “mission trip”. It really felt like we were the Americans with solutions coming to “fix”. Today that could not be farther from the truth! What makes me so excited about what God is doing at CCE is that we are no longer on a “mission trip”. We are on a trip to visit our Partners in Ministry in Slovakia! The amazing team at CCE and their students have cultivated an environment where young people get fired up for Jesus and spreading the good news. This trip is a builder’s trip. We are going to put some serious sweat equity into some new buildings at CCE. We want to be clear that we are going to be working alongside our partners in ministry next week. Painting walls and doing some cleanup around the site. We aren’t doing this for them, we are doing it with them.

I am excited to bring updates about the trip through my blog and am launching a new ‘blog series‘ called Ministry Slovakia! Make sure you subscribe to my blog so you’ll be guaranteed to be updated!

Below is a list of all the posts for this series!

• Builder’s Trip Agenda – This post is exactly what it appears to be, the schedule!
• We Got a Little Bored on the Airplane – Check out our funny face pictures and learn how to properly sip coke while flying!
• Where Is Nitra Slovakia Anyways? – A little bit about Nitra and some maps of the route we took to get here.
• Sunday Worship at Holy Spirit Lutheran - I love spending time at my home congregation in Slovakia.
• Lutherans Throw Potluck’s in Slovakia – A great time with friends at Holy Spirit.
• Mayor of Naperville, George Pradel meets Mayor of Nitra, Jozef Dvonč – Reflections on the meeting written by Mayor Pradel.
• Bohdan Hrobon Meets with Reps of the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Bohdan explains his meeting with the Slovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• Will Work For Food – The builder’s trip participants are actually working!
• Bohdan’s Calling and the Story of how the Bible College and CCE Began – Bohdan shares his story and his heart with us.
• Will Work For Food – Part 2 – More pictures of the work site at CCE.
• Future Buildings and Programs for the Center for Christian Education – Video of Bohdan giving a presentation on the dream for CCE that will, with prayers and support, become a reality!
• Slovakian News Covers Naperville Builder’s Trip - Video from the Slovakian news channel that covered the work we did at CCE!