CampFest 2010

As I type young people from all over Slovakia and central Europe (and even the world!) are arriving at the Ranc.



CampFest 2010 will go from 6PM Today to 8AM Sunday (EST equivalent: Noon Thursday to 2AM Sunday)



Please pray with us for CampFest this weekend.

Oh the places we've gone!!

New York city,


coney island,


the nyc aquarium,



Nick's 1st birthday,


the Bronx zoo,


Altoona,


Jefferson,

Knox,

Manheim,



Altoona,


Railroad museum,


Horseshoe curve


the back yard (like the new fence?)


State college,



Gettysburg, (the love is a battlefield tour!)


(when did my baby brother grow up?)

York,
(and why haven't my sisters?)

Maryland,


Back to State college......
and a few others in between

whew!

Update from the Henrys

> I promised an update once we recovered from out Jet Lag and since
> today is one of the first days that I have not been wide awake at 5
> AM I guess today is that day!
>
> We wanted to thank you all so much for your prayers for us as we
> transitioned and adjusted. Packing and leaving was hard. We found
> out at the last minute that the extra bag we were planning (and had
> already packed) would cost $280 instead of $50! We had a stressful
> few minutes since nothing in the bag was even worth that much. But
> God is good and we were able send one bag with a group of Americans
> who were at the Ranch for an English camp the last week. This was a
> huge blessing! So 1/3 of our luggage is currently on it's way from
> Tennesee to Ohio. It was nice to start this leg of our adventure
> with a reminder that God willtake care of all the details, right
> down to an extra suitcase.
>
> Despite being up for 24 straight hours (naps in airport chairs do
> not count!) the trip was uneventful (besides a little turbulence
> and a chatty German toddler :)
>
> We have already enjoyed visiting with Stasi's sisters, Micah's
> parents and most of his siblings. We are looking forward to seeing
> Stasi's parents when they travel east next week!! We are planning a
> few trips around Pennsylvania in the next few weeks to visit with
> the relatives and supporters we have missed for the past 18 months.
> (more details to come)
>
> Please continue to pray for us as we continue to transition, we may
> be over our jet lag but the reverse culture shock still catches us
> off guard at times. (things are BIG here and it is a little
> overwhelming to understand everything going on around us.)
>
> We are waiting to see what God has next for us. It is an adventure
> to see how He will provide next!
>
> Thank you for your prayers and support.

Home

News...We are in NYC. Safe and sound thanks for you prayers.

A week ago we woke up to an e-mail that Micah's sister's husband had
died on friday evening.

We decided not to fly home. That was so hard for us. I think if we had realized how hard it was going to be when we made the decision we would have been on a plane sunday morning. We stayed because we knew that if we flew home it would be almost impossible to convince ourselves to come back to Slovakia.

I am nowhere near as intelligent or well spoken as Jason was. So I will just share his words with you.


http://www.ilovealtoona.net/jasonswords

We appreciate your prayers. As hard as it been for us to be away form our family at this time, we can not even begin to imagine what Elizabeth or Jason's parents and sister are going through. Please pray for them and for the kids.

Koliba

Here are some pictures of how Micah spent the past few months.
Here are the before images. This was a smokehouse, converted to a small cottage that was only used when it was crowded.



Micah installed a window and added insulation under the floor and ceiling inside and around the walls outside. He laid new flooring and put the wood on the ceiling. Because of some structural thing, the door will stay short though.




It is not quite finished but after the carpet is laid and one or two electrical issues are resolved we will have a nice new office here at the ranch that will fit more than two people at a time.

Weekly update

Hello from Slovakia!Did you all get to see the big game last night? We are so jealous! We thought about seeing if we could find some way to watch, but ultimately decided it was not worth staying up till 5am since the Steelers weren't playing. We checked online this morning. It is a little unreal that yesterday was the super bowl. We haven't seen any football all season :( What we really missed though was the time we would have spent together with friends if we had been home.
We are starting to meet some new people here. Last month we met up with another young American couple living in Banska Bystrica (a 50 minute drive and the location of the nearest McDonald's). We had a great day visiting with them and found out we know some of the same
people in Grove City. We also met for coffee with a British man who is teaching English and ministering in Ruzomberok. It was nice to speak English, share our experiences and hear the stories of how God called other people. God works in different ways for everyone and so
often we can't see what He is doing until we are able to look back.
Stasi attended a women's small group for the first time on Friday night and is looking forward to continuing to meet with them for fellowship and to practice her Slovak. She has dedicated the month of February to tying up lose ends and finishing projects. The past week she finalized much of the Crown Seminar DVD and will hand that off this week. She also has some loose ends with the CampFest Live! DVD and will work toward finishing a 12 minute promotional video for
CampFest 2010. YFC Slovakia got a new digital video camera to record seminars and Stasi is figuring out all the buttons bells and whistles. This weekend is a seminar for people who sing in worship bands and she will be recording it using the new camera. Micah has been working the past weeks on renovating and insulating the smallest cottage here to serve as an office. He is mostly finished with that, just waiting for some detail things to come like
carpeting and shades for the light fixtures. He also spent part of a week working on our car after the fuel gelled and clogged the filter. He is also installing a door and window in the terrace and will be working inside part of this week on some of the trim work that is still unfinished in Marian's Cottage.

Thank you for praying for us. We have seen Gods hand of protection and provision already in 2010, with our car, our finances and I'm sure we have been protected from a thousand things we don't even know about!

Blessings,
Micah and Stasi

God Provides

The YFC Slovakia team

(Please look at anyone but me (Stasi) I was sick last week and thought this meeting was on Thursday not Wednesday)

One of the things that I have to learn over and over is that God is in control and He will provide. I don't know why this is so hard for me. I have seen Him work things out over and over again. And yet, I am always surprised by how He does it.

Last week, our car decided that it did not want to start. I sympathize, I don't like getting started on cold mornings either. But we all have to do things we don't like. The car actually had a more legitimate reason than laziness though.

Did you know that diesel is in danger of gelling in the fuel tank and filter when it gets cold?. Who knew! Fortunately I married an amazing man who not only knew this, he knew they made additive you can put in your tank to remedy and prevent this issue. So we went to the gas station in a borrowed car to buy some of this miracle stuff. Unfortunately this did not fix the car. So Micah took out the fuel filter.

Did you know that it is very important not to let air into the fuel lines of a diesel engine? Something or other about the placement and/or number of fuel pumps. (I start to zone out pretty quick during car talk). Oops, guess what we now had in our fuel lines! The internet suggested a variety of small pumps you could purchase to remedy this problem. We did not want to buy a small pump for this purpose, we never plan to have air in our fuel lines again, and the nearest Auto Zone is in a different Time Zone. Fortunately, waaay back in June, some friends who were moving back to the States gave us a box of various kitchen gadgets including a small turkey baster.

I have never before in my life owned let alone used a turkey baster, I would never purchase a turkey baster and will probably never own one again. Usually when Micah comes in and says, "do you have X that I can have?" I ask what for and them tell him no. Either because I don't have what he needs or because even though I have such a thing I use it regularly for its intended purpose and don't want it filled with wood-shavings, oil, dirt or all thre.. But this time when He came in and said, "Do you have something like a big syringe I could use?" I was glad to tell him I had just the thing and hand him the small turkey baster which just happened to be the exact right size to use on the fuel line.

Last summer God provided a turkey baster to fix our car before we even knew the car needed fixing. Great is Thy Faithfulness.

Please pray with us for YFC Slovakia, God has provided for the ministry here in a lot of amazing ways since it started over 16 years ago. The past year has ben especially difficult though and many of the staff have not had a regular paycheck in over a year. (Through your generous support Micah and I receive our salary through YFC-USA and are not affected financially by the situation here)

Henrys in Slovakia

Happy New Year!

We are still doing well here in Slovakia, We did a lot of visiting with our Slovak friends here over the Christmas weekend and still had time to enjoy the tree Micah cut down and each other's company. We had a nice restful holiday but we missed being at home with our American friends and family. An interesting side note: stores in Slovakia are required by law to close on Christmas Eve by noon. NOTHING is open on the 24th in the afternoon. Or the 25th, or the 26th.... we discovered that the hard way, I think we visited every store in 3 towns on Christmas Eve :).

We hope that each of you had a blessed holiday season and will have a wonderful year ahead! It is hard to believe that we are in a new decade, 2010 here we come. One of the resolutions Micah and I made was to be more intentional about Prayer. We would like to lift you up when we pray. Please send us an e-mail and let us know any specific requests you and your family have.

We have a few events coming up here at the Ranch. The 15 -17th of January will be a seminar for Bass Guitarists in Christian bands and on worship teams. the seminar will cover practical things and biblical basis for worship and service. This is part of a series of Seminars that Youth for Christ Slovakia is holding. We have already held seminars for drummers and worship leaders and seminars are being planned for singers, pianists and guitarists as well. 

On the 22nd-24th of January there will be a conference for Friends of Israel here at the Ranch. There will be times of preaching and prayer.  

There is a meeting scheduled later this month for all YFC Staff here in Slovakia. This will be a time of sharing what each ministry center has been doing in the past year and plans for 2010. Because there are YFC ministry teams working in 5 locations as well as ministries happening in cooperation with churches and other christian organizations around Slovakia, this is a time when we can all get together and really feel unified and seek God's direction for YFC Slovakia. 

We also wanted to thank those of you who prayed for Simon and Angie's baby. They were back in Switzerland for Christmas and had another Sonogram. The cyst in the baby's brain is no longer there! Praise the Lord.

Thank you for your prayers and support,

Micah & Stasi

--

The Henrys

e-mail - MicahandStasi@gmail.com

website - http://micahandstasi.blogspot.com

phone  - 440/499-6126 (this is a US number that is forwarded to our computer)

YFC Ranc 

Svarin 1

032 33 Kravolva Lehota 

SLOVAKIA

--------

If you have recieved this e-mail it means that at some point you gave us your e-mail and asked us to keep in touch or offered to pray for us. If you no longer want to get these e-mails please reply to this (or any future) update and let us know. If you'd like us to change the address this comes to, reply and let us know that as well.  If you just want to say hi or let us know when you are coming to visit, by all means send us an e-mail for that too! :)