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Our ministry focus is evangelism, with an emphasis on serving others with the love of Christ, believing God will open up opportunities for sharing the Gospel in word as well. Our teachings focus in the following three areas: deepening a passion for God, learning to live together and work together as the body of Christ, and developing a vision for the harvest. Small group discussions are held after many of the teaching sessions to help the students apply the biblical truths to their lives. Rick teaches about half of the sessions and Polish pastors teach the other half. All of the local ministry is coordinated with the local church in Lwówek and many of the church members work alongside the youth in ministry everyday. Ministry areas include: teaching English with an evangelistic Bible study, teaching German with an evangelistic Bible study, work crews cleaning up the city, visiting the hospice unit of the hospital, visiting an old folks’ home, visiting orphans, visiting at a home for handicapped, free car washes, door-to-door lending library of Christian literature, Kids’ Klub, week-long, outdoor VBS, organizing sports days for youth in the city, manning a Christian coffeehouse and serving the customers, English conversation evenings and more. Rick has 3-4 Polish leaders, usually ages 25-30, assisting him in the camps. Just organizing the daily ministry schedule, which typically is in a dozen or more areas, is challenging. The results of the camp have been extraordinary—greater than what we had anticipated. We have seen significant, lasting fruit in the lives of the youth and significant, lasting fruit from their ministry in the city. We run a “graduate” camp each summer for 8-10 days in the summer. We want to continue to keep contact with our graduates, continuing to invest in their lives and also helping them build deep, lasting friendships with other graduates. Together they will be the future leaders of the church in Poland.
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Clowns at work |
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Marlena at hospice |
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Dance Troupe |
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Kids praying |
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2008 |
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Jr. Discipleship Camp —July 5 - August 16 Discipleship Camp—July 19 —August 16 Graduate Camp—August 20-28 |
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Discipleship Camps |
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Third Junior Discipleship Camp was held in Summer 2007 ! Graduates from our six-week discipleship training camp lead our discipleship camp for younger youth (ages 13-16). This camp runs for 4 weeks and has about 16-20 youth. Its format and focus is modeled on our six-week camp. This camp was being set up to respond to the many requests we have had to do some sort of similar camp for younger Poles. Internship Program (began in October 2005) Our internship program is designed to train up youth to effectively reach out to the community and as people come to Christ, and to plant house churches. Similar to in the discipleship camps, interns will daily go out and serve the community in practical ways. Through this many relationship will be built and they will have many opportunities to share their faith with others. Those who are seeking spiritual answers and true community will be invited to home groups which will be developed into fully functional house churches (at least that’s what our plan is).
Our first four interns joined us in October 2005 - all with a minimum of a one-year commitment. After a year, Estera left to return home to her home church to take over the youth work and to coordinate all outreach for her church. Asia left for England where she plans to work and to do outreach among the many Polish people there. Monika (from Warsaw) joined our team in Sept 2006 and Marta (from Koszalin) in |
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Peter and Gosia Freza |