Work has begun at the youth center! It's been refreshing to breathe new air into an old building that has sat empty and vacant for the last three years.
Jernej, Ty and Tilen were busy scraping a moldy wall in the back room. While Ziga, Anja, Mike and Tjasa were busy peeling, scraping, chipping at and pulling old stickers off the windows and cleaning the glass and cob webs from the corners. Joel has been there off and on all week getting things prepped and ready for projects for the students to help out with. We're hoping to have painting started this weekend!
The students have been more than willing to help out to get the room ready. One of the guys, Aljaz, was there one day helping and the reality of the place hit him and he said, "When we get this place finished we have to start meeting here every week!" It's encouraging to have their enthusiasm to help fuel ours.
On February 3rd, we celebrated our third year of being here in Slovenia! During the month of January, Joel's time is filled with getting paperwork filled out, translated and filed in application of our residential visa. This year when we applied we were requesting a two-year, hoping for a three-year and were granted SIX-year visas! It's such a blessing considering the time, money and energy it takes each year. No one has ever heard of anyone being given a six-year visa, we are very grateful recipients!
Tomorrow night we'll be finishing up the four week Bible study of characters from the Bible. It's been great to have a handful of students here each Friday at 6:00 to learn about someone new from the Bible and then to have more students show up at 7:00 for game time. We invited our Pastor, Drago, to come teach the students tomorrow night so that they can get to know him a little bit. And a favorite game on Fridays has been Apples to Apples which was first introduced at English Camp. It's a great game for both the guys and the girls. And I'm (Amy) doing a Bible Study with three girls, Nika, Anja and Tjasa. This fall, Randy Alcorn donated his book, The Purity Principle, along with the study guide. So we started going through that together. They are 15 and 16 years old and have grown up in the Catholic church here in Sencur. I've been amazed at the simple truths that they're hearing for the first time through doing this study together and am so excited that I get to spend an hour and a half each week speaking with them about the things the Lord is teaching them. I would appreciate your prayers for them as they open their Bibles at home and read God's Word, that it would speak to them and shape the young women they become. I wish you could spend time with these girls...I just know you'd fall in love with them as I have! (Picture to the right is Julia Stager with Tjasa, Nika and Anja)
Thanks to your prayers and the Lord's grace, the pregnancy continues to progress. I'm in the 4th month now and we're hoping to find out what we're having at our doctor appointment next week. Many people ask us what we're hoping for and we always reply that at this point, just A BABY would be nice...boy or girl. I'm feeling so pampered over here, between Joel taking extra care of me, missionary friends here worrying over me, praying for me and helping out and students offering me the better chairs on Friday nights, I'm not sure if I'll want to get over the pregnancy part! I think it's going to hurt coming back down to reality!
Building His Kingdom in Kranj,
Joel & Amy Woodard
Stranska Pot 5
4208 Sencur, Slovenia
jwoodard@josiahventure.com
awoodard@josiahventure.com
And! We have a new phone number! It's an Oregon phone number but calls us here in Slovenia. 503-207-5653. We're 9 hours ahead of Pacific Standard time.
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