Video from my Slovenia Trip

A Trip to Slovenia

A week ago I was in Slovenia leading a BFA missions trip!  We took seven BFA high school students to the city of Bovec (pronounced Bo-vets).

Slovenia is a famously beautiful place!  The whole week we were surrounded by towering mountains, thick forests, and crisp clean air.  But very few people in the country know Christ.  They need the gospel!

While we were there, we got to see the Soča river.  Does this picture look familiar?  Remind you of anything?  Maybe…

Yes, this scene from the movie “Prince Caspian” was filmed here right in the town where we were staying.  Pretty cool!  At least if you’re a geek like me.

One project we assisted in was to help weatherize benches that the missionaries there have placed throughout the area.  The benches all have a verse of Scripture carved into them.  The villages are happy to have these benches even though the country is quite secular.

We painted them with a sealant to help them last longer.

Before

After

We worked with a school there which goes up to 9th grade.  We entered the English classes and helped with lessons, played games, and talked with the students.  Because they were just starting this new unit, I spent one class explaining everything I knew about American Indians!

Our students broke the ice by giving presentations about themselves.  Most of them included something about their belief in God or faith in Jesus.  The goal was to build on this later.

We invited the kids to join us after school to paint a bench or play soccer or basketball.  We just wanted to give them something to do together so they could continue getting to know each other.The point of the trip was for our students to build relationships with the students there to open up an avenue for the gospel to be shared.  They were able to start to build a foundation of trust and have some good conversations.

Many of them are now friends on Facebook where they can continue to invest in the relationships.  For a lot of the Slovenian kids, these BFA students are the only Christians they know!

Pray that these would be meaningful relationships and that our students’ love for these kids would outweigh their fears!  Pray for boldness to share the good news of Jesus Christ!  Also, thank you to those of you who prayed while we were in Slovenia and to those of you who gave financially so I could get there!  We had a great trip!  The Lord is at work in our students, the students in Slovenia, and in my heart as well!

Serving Christ at BFA,

Brandon (and Lizzy)

Middle School Olympics

We recently had what we called the “Spring Party” for the middle school.  During our planning meetings, the Student Council kids brainstormed about what the theme for the party should be.  After a couple ideas were thrown out there and considered, someone suggested doing the Olympics because of the Olympic games coming to London this summer.  Immediately, I could tell this idea was going to be the winner because all of the kids started chattering with excitement.  So based on this vision, I helped the Student Council put together… the Black Forest Academy Middle School 2012 Olympics!

We debated about how to split the 50-some middle school students into “countries” to compete against each other.  Splitting them up by grade wouldn’t work because the teams would be too big and too unbalanced.  We could just create random teams and assign them all a random country.  But I wanted the students to have a reason to cheer each other on, a reason to take pride in their own team, just like at the Olympics.  Then the thought hit me: why not divide them into countries where they have actually lived?  This is one of the great things about this school.  Because their parents and families have lived and worked in so many different places, we can have Olympic games where kids actually represent their own countries!

Now we did have to combine some countries with others on the same team.  And some kids ended up representing some U.S. States.  And a lot of them could have represented a handful of different countries.  But they were all playing for and cheering for places they have actually lived, and the final teams were very interesting.  We ended up with six teams.  Team 1 was Germany.  Team 2 was Canada, France, and Oregon.  Team 3 was Switzerland, India, Austria, and Hungary.  Team 4 was the Southern United States (Texas, Arkansas, and the Carolinas).  Team 5 was Russia, all of Africa, and Moldova.  Team 6 was Sweden, California, Pakistan, and Ohio.  The setup of the teams really made me laugh.  I hope you like it, too!

Some of the best quotes from students when I was researching potential teams were these:

Me: “Would you enjoy representing Germany at the Olympics?”  Student:  ”YEAH!!!”  Me:  ”Would you enjoy representing India?”  Student:  ”YEAH!!!”

Student:  ”I don’t get why I got put on the Switzerland team.  I’ve only lived there for three years!”  Me:  ”Well umm, that’s a quarter of your life, and plus, that’s where you live right now!”

Student:  ”You could put me on the team for Canada… or France… or England… or Germany…”  Me:  ”Umm, don’t you live in Switzerland?”  Student:  ”Oh yeah, or Switzerland…”

The party started with an opening ceremony where the eight Student Council kids walked into the gym holding a couple flags each to the roaring approval of the other students.  They loved cheering for those countries!  There also was a torch (an upside down plastic cone with an orange foam ball on top) carried around the gym with pride.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Team Germany

The Fitness Ball Shot Put

Pizza Box Ping Pong Curling

The Equestrian Race

Gymnastics

Chariot Races

Other events were the Paper Plate Discus Throw, the Plastic Baseball Bat Javelin Toss, Rubber Band Archery, Fencing with “Battle Sticks,” and a Hot Dog Relay Race.  We gave out prizes for first place finishes, and the overall winning team got lunch at the school the next week!  The whole thing turned out awesome.  I couldn’t have expected such an enthusiastic response.  The kids loved it!  Hope you get a good laugh out of it, too!

Sadie Hawkins Event

 Last week I (Lizzy) helped the High School Student Council plan a Sadie Hawkins event and it proved to be a very entertaining afternoon!

The girls had to ask a guy to be their date, but what they didn’t know was that each couple would have their wrists tied together during the activities! We split all of the couples into small groups and then they rotated around to different stations and played games.

Here’s some pictures:

There was a game that tested of how well each couple knew each other.

Another station was the classic game of Musical Chairs…except their wrists were tied together!

This guy was trying really hard to win by pausing diligently at each chair! I should have disqualified him.

My personal favorite to watch was Duck, Duck, Goose!

Fun times!

Class Parties

Well, it’s been quite a while since our last post on this blog.  We enjoyed a nice three-week Christmas break this year, and my parents were able to come and visit for part of it!  Now we are about a month into the second semester.

The last few weekends have included some events that Lizzy and I are responsible for: class parties!  Both the high school and the middle school have two or three class parties a year, which means that a Friday is set aside for each class (freshmen, sophomores, etc.) to get together and have fun as a group.  The parties are planned and carried out by the Student Council, which is where Lizzy and I come in because we help the students (Lizzy in high school and me in middle school) brainstorm and bring their ideas to life.

The middle school’s parties took place two weekends ago, and here are some pictures of what took place.  The 6th graders played a game called “Body Body.”  If you know the game “Mafia,” it is basically a version of that except acted out instead of taking place in a circle.  They ran all over the school in the dark before returning to the student center to guess who the baddies were!

The 7th graders watched a movie together in the auditorium.  Bonus points to you if you can tell what movie it was from this picture.

The 8th graders brought in tons of Nerf guns and had a Nerf war in the gym!  This is the party I spent the most time at.  It was awesome!  Look at all these guns and darts!

That is a summary of the middle school class parties.  The high school’s class parties were a weekend earlier, and Lizzy helped plan and supervise those.  No photo evidence from them, but they were successful as well.

That is a glimpse into just a few things we have been involved with in parts of our jobs here at BFA in the last few weeks.  Thanks for reading!

-Brandon and Lizzy

P.S. It was “Cool Runnings.”

An early Christmas Eve

Last weekend was the annual High School Christmas Banquet at BFA. As the Student Council Adviser, I am responsible for leading the Student Council members in planning this event. It’s a formal dinner for grades 9-12 and any staff members who wish to attend (approx. 320 people total). This was my second year tackling this project, and I have to say that it was A LOT more fun this year!

So last Friday night, I and my 17 Student Council members descended upon the school cafeteria and auditorium in hopes to bring about a miraculous transformation. Our theme was “Christmas Eve”, so we had fun wrapping lots of presents (aka: empty boxes:), decorating Christmas trees, and sewing stockings to hang on the tables and on the stage.

Here are some pictures from our preparations:

Measuring over 155 meters of table cloth

Meticulously folding napkins...

...and more folding! We had over 280 place settings.

Some of our fake presents waiting to be placed under a Christmas tree.

We brought in a huge Christmas tree! It was so big that we had to tie it to the rafters so that it wouldn't fall over!

The finished product: a view from the back of the Auditorium.

Another angle...you can see that we made a living room scene on the right side of the stage.

A full house!

 The evening went smoothly and there weren’t any major problems. I even had time to sit down and eat the meal! It’s really a privilege to work with my students from Student Council; all that we did for the Banquet were their own ideas, I just helped them in the process of seeing those ideas turn into reality. Fun!

The MacGyver of Costumes

With Halloween coming up, I thought I would cast a spotlight on some of the costumes that I have put together and worn over the past month or so.  Why have I been wearing so many costumes?  I don’t know.  I guess my job as middle school chaplain just gives me a lot of opportunities to get creative and dress up for stuff along with the students.  Yep, just give me a day’s notice (or a couple hours) and I will show up to any costume party or themed event looking fabulous and interesting and theme-relevant.  That’s why I have dubbed myself the McGyver of costumes.

In September we had a “spirit day” at the middle school where you were supposed to dress up as whatever you wanted to be when you “grew up” when you were a kid.  I never wanted to be an astronaut, but it sounded like fun to try.  The highlight of my day was playing a game of tetherball at lunchtime against two 8th grade girls while I was in full costume.

 

My next attempt was at the middle school fall party at the beginning of October.  The theme of the party was “Movies” so everyone was supposed to be a movie character.  The party took place the day Lizzy and I got back from the Senior trip.  That morning I found out that the middle school staff were all dressing up as Toy Story characters, and I was Buzz Lightyear!  Here is what we put together.

 

The most recent time I disguised myself was not for a middle school event but for the high school fall party, which Lizzy and the high school Student Council were in charge of.  The theme of the party was “Cartoons and Comics.”  This resulted in me making a mess of our living room for several days but engineering probably the most interesting costume I’ve ever made.

 

I know a lot of people out there probably wouldn’t enjoy doing stuff like this or might even think it’s a little odd!  But I thank God that He has given me some creativity and a job where I can have some fun and also the ability to laugh at myself.  How did God make YOU “more than meets the eye”?  Thanks for reading!

Love,

Brandon and Lizzy