JV Winter Academy: Walking the Hill

This beloved place, Malenovice. For over twenty years God has been working in people's lives here. It never gets old, walking up the hill in anticipation of what he's going to do this time!

The snow continues to fall this week, which makes it even more enchanting as we're here for JV Winter Academy, a training and staff development conference for all JV missionaries.

The road up to the hotel is much too icy for anyone to drive, unless they have chains. So we're all hiking this week!

This afternoon, while our group was still in session, I hiked back down the hill and headed over to our meeting room down at the cabins for a different session.

I got there just in time for the last part of Casey Yorman's session on personalities, which is just so excellent. When he taught it to our class the other day, I learned so many new things about how to explain people and myself!

But I didn't come down just for his session.

I got to do another session on the Prayer Room for all of our national missionaries who are here for their orientation this week.

We get so excited about this group of people! They are following God's call on their lives to serve in their own countries. And there are 40 of them here this week who are beginning the support raising process, trusting God to provide so that they can jump into ministry among their own people.

How I loved sharing the story of the Prayer Room with them, and what our vision for it is this year. They were very responsive to it!

I hiked back up the hill with my long time friend Lina, and a young woman who is British, but already serving in Germany with another organization. She came to be a part of our Academy since she will be partnering with Jim and Lina in this coming year.

The connections with everyone this week are so very rich, and I'm enjoying every bit of our training as we get better equipped for doing ministry here in Central and Eastern Europe.