Two Graduations and a Wedding

The last month has seen the schools that most of ICP's young people attend come to the end of their year.  And for final year students, that means graduations.  Simon is on the board at CISP so attended the graduation o there a couple of weeks ago.  The Christian International School of Prague is not a large school, so there were only seven students graduating.  It was very encouraging, though, to hear them speak of their time at the school and of the importance of their faith to them.  Terry Chumbley, the High School Principal and deacon at ICP gave the address, using the life story of a US baseball coach as an encouragement to the young people to always place their faith first in their lives.  The graduation ceremony was held in the same building that ICP uses every Sunday for its services.

The second graduation was for Riverside School.  As some of you will know, Simon's brother, Trevor and his wife, Ali, both work at Riverside and have done for the last 5 years.  Ali had been form tutor for this year's graduates so was very involved in the graduation itself.  Simon was asked to give the address, the first graduation speech he has ever done.  It was great to be able to do it though.  He took the school's motto "Come here, son, and learn to be wise", a quotation from the Czech educator and pastor Jan Amos Komensky as his starting point, reminding the students that true wisdom can only begin with a knowledge of God.
Like CISP this year's final class was quite small;, only 11 graduating.  But they came from at least 8 different countries, from the Czech Republic to Mongolia.
The ceremony was held in one of Prague's many fantastic old churches, Saint Simon and St Jude.  But, like many other churches in Prague, this is no longer used as a church but as a concert hall!  Still, there were some very impressive paintings and statues around making it a fitting venue for a graduation.  Definitely better than the old Leas Cliff Hall were the Harvey Grammar School used to have its prize giving!!

The Riverside graduation was last Thursday (June 24th).  The day after, Dorit and Simon were in the town of Lysa nad Labem to the north-east of Prague for a wedding.  Two young people from ICP, Manny (a Greek-Canadian) and Sarka (a Czech) were married in this small town where she, Sarka, grew up.  Simon had the joy of being able to conduct the service which was held in both Czech and English (though Simon only did the English bit!!).

The church was a small, Hussite church next door to a small school and the pastor's house.  To reach it you had to go through the garden of the manse!  We had fantastic weather and I think everyone enjoyed the occasion.  Dorit and Simon were then invited to the family reception immediately afterwards which was a great honour.  As Manny's parents had been unable to make the trip to the Czech Republic, we ended up on the top table as his parents for the day!
Please pray for Manny and Sarka as they start their new life together.  Sarka became a Christian through Manny and was baptised at ICP last November.  It has been a joy to see her grow in her faith over the past year.

Courses, summer...

This coming Sunday sees the last session of the Study Centre's course, "What is the Church?"  During this course, we have looked at some of the biblical images used to describe the church; what God expects the church to be doing now; as well as look at three of the important eras in the church's history: the first three centuries, the Reformation and the rise of modern Evangelicalism.  We finish this Sunday with a look at the future of the church.  This has been an interesting course to be part of, with the historical part being led by Jim Barnes, an American missionary in Prague who runs the Christian Library here.
Simon will also be preaching at ICP on Sunday, the first in a series on 1 John. The reason for this is that John Waldrop, the senior pastor, is on leave and then taking a short sabbatical.  During that time, Simon will be acting a senior pastor.  Please do pray for him over this period as he not only performs ordinary church tasks but also prepares for next year's Study Centre courses.

Dubuque

I have just got back from a week in Dubuque, Iowa on a conference organised by Emmaus Bible College and Tilsley College, Motherwell about setting up and running small scale training centres.
Emmaus are probably best known in the UK and the rest of the world for their correspondence courses, the head office being on the site of the college.  The college itself has about 250 students who study a range of subjects but with an emphasis on Biblical Studies.
There were about 60 of us at the conference, from countries as far apart as Zambia, Peru and Papua New Guinea; to say nothing of the Czech Republic!

It was an excellent time.  The people at Emmaus were wonderfully hospitable, running the conference for free for all participants.  The campus was built in the 1950s by the Catholics as a seminary but sold to Emmaus in the 1980s.  This means that the main building has at its heart a large, marble-clad church with stained glass windows of various saints!!  Not quite what you expect from a Brethren-based college!

I expect for anyone not involved in training and equipping Christians for service, most of the week would have seemed remarkably tiresome with workshops and papers on curriculum development, accreditation of courses and funding of centres.  However, I found it not only interesting but also very helpful for the situation we find ourselves in here.  Most of the participants are further along the line in setting up and running their centres than we are so it was good to be able to hear of their experiences and - hopefully! - learn from their mistakes.  Perhaps the most exciting - because it has been running only a few years but seen real growth in that time - is the GLO centre in Zambia.   There is a video here which gives some idea of what they are doing - made even more interesting for us as a couple of Faroese girls are on it.
Please continue to pray that we will be given the wisdom we need as we seek to plan and then start our first residential course in September 2011.