JK Games Weekend

Friday night I walked Tim part-way to basketball, stopped to get groceries, then hurried back to help Beth do some shopping in Oklahoma via FaceTime!  For those who don't know, she will be starting her first official job as a P.A. in October, so she was down there apartment-hunting and shopping for things she'll need once she moves in.  One of the drawbacks of being in Europe is NOT being around for things like that, so once again, we are so grateful that technology allowed us to be in on some of the action for Beth's move.  She's incredibly self-sufficient, but it makes the Mama happy to feel like I'm at least in touch while Beth is handling everything on her own.  LOL!!  

Saturday we attended the JK Games in Paludzka, an area of Liptovsky Mikuláš.  In America, JK may stand for 'just kidding', but here in Slovakia, it stands for Ježiš Kristus, or Jesus Christ.  This was an annual day-long event that is held in our town and sponsored by our church, and it involves hundreds of Christian young people from the region.  The organizational aspect was amazing in pulling it all off so successfully!  

There were two really good speakers giving witness/sermon type talks, one during the opening program and one after lunch.  Vicki translated for us, which was great!  

The kids were packed into the gym for the opening program before the games began!

The praise band was awesome -- first time we've seen one with twin cellos!!  So cool!  They sang several American songs we were familiar with, and the lyrics were up on the video screen, so we could even sing along in Slovak with them!!  

There was one skit that reminded us of the Riverside Mime - just music and acting with no dialogue.  It was short, but effective.  The girl on the left with the red pants is an American who has been working with youth in the church here for 3 months.  

This is my student, Roman, who was part of the program.  The theme for the day was "One for all", so we are assuming the 3 Musketeers theme (one for all and all for one) was also tied in somehow for Roman's part of the gig!!  

Each year's JK Games has had a different theme, and the banners since 2007 were hung up at the side of the gym.  

After the opening program, the games began - there were different skill categories for  four different sports - volleyball, futball (soccer), floor ball (like gym-floor hockey), and street ball (half-court 3-on-3 basketball).  For some reason our "Old Schol" team was put into the more advanced group of volleyball players, so we were pretty much fodder for the young bucks on the good teams, but it was still lots of fun!!    :-)   

The participants all got wristbands when we registered for the games, and lunch tickets were distributed.  We were bussed from our site to the big public high school in town, where goulash and bread were provided for lunch.  

The T-shirts for this year were really sweet.  The J in the JK Games title also goes with the word that looks like "Eden" --- the word for ONE in Slovak is Jeden  --- so, "One, for all" --Jesus, our savior died for us all!!  (We were all supposed to wear our T-shirts to school today.  Can you guess who did, and who wore a shirt & tie instead????   LOL!! )  

We played 3 games in pool play, but only the top 2 teams from each pool made it into the semi-finals.  It was a fun day for sure, seeing many of our students participating, volunteering in some capacity, and even watching the competitions.  We were really impressed by all the work and preparation that went into organizing such a big event.  

Sunday we went to church as usual, and this time Zuzana was there to translate for us - she always does such a wonderful job!!  Then I actually cooked a big Sunday dinner for the first time in a while, since we've been gone so much lately.  While things were in the oven, we listened to our online sermon over hot chai tea lattes.  We kept waiting for the temperatures to warm up a little (they didn't) and the sun to come out (it didn't), but we wanted to get outside and get some exercise, so we finally went for a long walk through the town center and down along the Vah River in the afternoon.  We enjoyed it despite the weather!!  We also watched some DVD's that friends had loaned us, which was a first for us here - it was nice to have some down time to do that.  

Today at school, the first and second year students were all gone on a field trip, which meant we didn't have to teach many classes.  It was a relaxing day to get caught up with, and even ahead on, some school work.  At 5:00 we walked to church choir (in drizzle - ugh), got a ride home from one of our singers afterwards, and then hurried over to volleyball at our school (in drizzle again - it's so annoying!!)  We're still optimistic about the arrival of that "Indian Summer" around here!!  Any time now would be terrific!!   :-)