March Newsletter - Kristen in Slovakia

March Newsletter


Easter in Velky Slavkov

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia. Happy Easter to everyone! The highlight of March was Easter. We really did not do much here related to the season of Lent until the week before Easter. On Palm Sunday, Kvetna Nedela, we went through a series of readings from the Old Testament with the boys, which is used in the churches here. Then on Good Friday, Velky Piatok, we had a service here with the boys where we read through the passion of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew. Following this we watched the movie “The Passion of Christ” which was a really good visual representation for some of the boys who weren’t quite as familiar with the Bible and the crucifixion story. It really made an impression on some of them.

On Saturday, Jessie and I decided to bring some American traditions to Slovakia and dye Easter eggs with the boys. In Slovakia they decorate egg shells after they have the egg inside blown out through a small hole, so the boys were amazed that the eggs were still full when they were decorating them. We had a lot of fun playing around with the crayons and dye and ended up with about 50 decorated eggs. On Easter, since Jessie and I had weekend service(meaning we did the cooking, planning of activities, and general watching over of the boys), we went to the Lutheran church next door earlier on Sunday morning and enjoyed the service there. Afterwards, we finished cooking lunch, resin (schnitzel – pork which is breaded and fried), potato salad, and chocolate for desert, while the boys had an Easter service upstairs.

Surprisingly, Easter Monday here is also a big holiday. The tradition is that the boys drench the girls (we are talking about with buckets of water or dragged over to the bathtub, not just a little cup of water) and all week the boys were excitedly telling us about this. We were a little worried, especially since when we woke up and heard a girl outside screaming, but since we still had service we were busy making lunch and managed to remain dry. Along with this, it is also a tradition for the boys to spray the girls with cheap perfume which the stores carry especially for this occasion. We did manage to experience this when one of the boys sprayed us.

Also, to carry on sharing American traditions, we planned an egg hunt for the boys on Easter Monday morning using both the dyed eggs we made as well as some plastic eggs filled with candy. Unfortunately it snowed a lot the night before and that day, so we had to have it inside, but this is a big building so we made do just fine. The boys had a good time finding the eggs and eating them.

Everything else here is going pretty much the same as always. On our Monday night Bible studies we are still working our way through the book of Acts. Some of the topics of our recent Bible studies were anger management, spiritual gifts and how to apply them in our lives, prayer, and temptation and how to deal with it in our lives. Our Bible studies start and end with us singing praise songs and praying together. In the middle we read the passage from Acts and then have a discussion. Jessie and I have started asking and answering the questions in Slovak that we have prepared ahead of time, so that is an added challenge. It is a good chance for us to have discussions with the boys in a smaller group so that they are more willing to be open and share.

English lessons are also going well. This month we have learned about rooms in the house, clothing, parts of the body, and morning routines. We have done activities such as designing their own house and labeling the rooms, writing sentences about the clothing they are wearing, labeling parts of the body on pictures cut out of a magazine, crossword puzzles, word searches, dialogues, singing “head, shoulders, knees, and toes,” playing Simon Says (Kristy or Jessie Says), worksheets with matching and fill in the blank, and much more. We have a few students who are working very hard to learn English and are enthusiastic for the lessons as well as the others who wander in and out randomly when things look interesting. It is fun to have lots of hands-on activities for them.

Well that is a small taste of life here in the month of March. As always, I enjoy hearing from all of you. I hope that everything is going well for you and your families.

God’s blessings,
Kristen