Cleaning Day

Nearly ten years ago the Lord blessed JV and KAM (our partner organization here in Czech) with this office building here in Frydlant.

It was a dilapidated, crumbling, graffiti-filled building badly in need of renovation when we first took ownership of it. But after many hours of labor by teams from the States, teams in Czech, our own JV and KAM staff, as well as the help of a construction company, it became one of the prettiest buildings in town.

Back in the early days there were so few employees that everyone could have their own office, and someone even rented the upstairs as an apartment.

Not anymore! The office is completely full these days, buzzing with activity for all the different ministry that happens here in Czech, and across the region. I haven't counted lately, but I think there's easily 30-40 people that work in the building on a daily basis.

To keep it looking nice and working efficiently, we have an annual day of cleaning in the month of May where everyone pitches in to help make order of that space. And today was that day!

As the KAM staff worked in and around the building, the JV international team worked over in our garage that stores things for camps and conferences...which ends up being a lot of stuff packed into one little garage!

Our task today was to take everything out in order to put up new shelves to make better use of our storage ability.

While the guys worked on putting those together, the ladies sorted through all the boxes, categorizing, labeling and discarding when necessary. Then it was the fun of putting it all back it in as neatly as possible!

A well organized garage will be much easier to find things in, and make for less hectic days when staff are trying to get in quickly to find what they need for all those activities!

Having a clean office building is great. But what's even greater? Seeing lives changed by the Gospel.

We're just about to start another round of summer camps where young people will again hear about Jesus all across this region. Seeing them come to know Him as their Savior is what makes everything we do worth it, even a day of cleaning!


Changing Lives (short) from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.