AaronInSlovakia's Xanga

The ending of a chapter

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:37:58 GMT

We have a 2 hour layover in Vienna right now as I head home for the states. The past weeks have been amazing and I'm definitely sad to leave.

Our trip to Belgrade for summer project was amazing. Our four students that went did amazing and went all out in sharing their faith. It was so encouraging for me to see them take those steps of faith and to be bold. I got to be a group leader and I had two Slovaks in my group, a guy from South Korea who is studying in Russia, another Russian girl, and a girl from the American summer project. We went to a few different places in the city to do outreaches and share our faith but the coolest was when I got to go with Jakub to do Soularium on the economic faculty campus.

All semester I had been wanting to do Soularium with him in Presov but hadn't had the opportunity to, do it was awesome to be able to do it in Belgrade. He did a great job with sharing his testimony with the people that we talked to and we had some good conversations with quite a few guys. It was crazy how long our conversations went though. We had assigned outreach time to be like 1pm-6pm in the afternoons and we would maybe get 2 or 3 conversations in in that time because we talked for so long. I don't know what it is, but God always seems to place me in the path of hardcore athiests or people with really random weird theological beliefs but it is always a good challenge to defend my faith.

When we got back from Belgrade we had only 3 days to wrap everything up in Kosice and it was kind of a whirlwind. I was glad to be able to say goodbye to a good many people. Friday was mainly spent taking care of some errands that needed to get done as it was the last business day. I was in for a rude surprise at the internet place when they told me that I had to give them 3 months notice before I switched off the service. Apparently it was in the contract but I never knew it seeing as how it was in a bunch of Slovak legal jargon language. I was able to resolve it later on in the afternoon after bringing in some negotiating help, but it could cost us a total of 104 euro if we lose the appeal we did :-\. We were able to get lunch in Presov with the 4 students that had gone on summer project.

Saturday was mainly spent relaxing/starting in on packing. In the afternoon I had to sort out all the financial stuff from the summer project. For whatever reason in Slovakia for non-profit organizations, when they have to do reimbursements, or deal with stuff like per-diem, they have to keep their receipts for EVERYTHING. What sucks is if you have a place where you buy something small like an ice cream or something, you have to like write down a makeshift receipt for it. All the numbers seemed to add up thankfully though. That night we all went up to this forest area just outside of the city to roast hotdogs and such.

After church on Sunday I was able to go to eat lunch at this family's house that I have been good friends with these past two years. They had been kind of my adopted family while I was in Kosice. Sunday night we were able to get together with all the Kosice staff as well as some students for dinner at a Slovak restaurant.

As I head back to the States I'm still not sure where I'm headed yet or what I'll be doing. That has been one of the harder parts of this year is trying to find direction from the Lord and figuring out what to do next. I would love to stay in Slovakia, but I can't see myself doing teaching which is one way that a lot of Americans(or others) find work there. I decided not to continue with Studentsky Hlas pre Krista because I can't see myself doing campus ministry long term and I don't feel like God is leading me to stay in that area. Right now my plan is to head back to Charleston and find some kind of temporary work and then in October take this foreign service officer test. If I pass it it could lead to work in an American embassy but I'm not sure where. They place you wherever they need you, but I'm hoping the fact that I know Slovak would have them want to place me back there. It's all in the Lord's hands, but if you get a chance please pray for me about it.

It's been a while...

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:14:27 GMT

Sorry about the slackness of updates. I have had plenty of reason to but I have just been lazy lately. God is doing some amazing things here and I want to share with ya'll about them.

To see where this ministry has gone from when I first got here until now is just amazing. We have students who are involved and are stepping up to help out in so many ways with different events that we are doing and just showing a passion for seeing others reached with the gospel. We have an outreach coming up called "Porn Nation" which I wrote about in my last update letter.(If you are not on my email list and would like to be please send me an email at aaron.hassell@uscm.org) Porn Nation is an outreach which opens up discussion with students about the disastrous effects our hyper-sexed culture can have on us. Leahy tells his testimony about how pornography eventually cost him a 15 year marriage with two sons and a promising business partnership and brought him to the point of bankruptcy and suicide. Please pray that as we host this event that God would use this in the lives of students to open their eyes to the forgiveness of sins and the freedom that comes through a relationship with Christ.(this text may look weird, I copy/pasted it from a word document).

Leading up to this event we had a planning meeting in which we invited students to come and help out. We had about 7 students come four of which were guys. It was amazing and such an answer to prayer. The students really took ownership of the planning and came up with some great ideas which they are in the process of following up on right now. I was in Presov the other day and one of the guys Jakub had a giant list out of avenues for advertisement that he was looking into and I was just in awe of God's answered prayer for guys to step up in Presov and help out. We will be hosting this event two nights, one in Kosice and one in Presov on the 18th and 19th of this month. Please pray that many students would be able to come to them(there is a hockey game the same night :P)

Another answer to prayer(although not quite in the way I was expecting) was that we have started a bible study in Presov this semester for guys and girls. We had two guys come out the first night and we had some great discussion from one of the guys' questions. Please pray that God would just use me in the lives of guys this semester in Presov just to set up this ministry for success in the future in Presov. I long to see guys' lives changed for Christ in Presov.

I want to thank those of you who pray for and give financially to my ministry and helping to make the great things the Lord is doing in the lives of students on my campus and in my own life possible. Recently, however, my staff account has become very low. This makes it difficult for me to pay for ministry expenses and everyday expenses. If you are able to give additional support or increase your current rate of giving, it would be very helpful and greatly appreciated. I understand that you may not be in a position to give any additional support, but if this is the case, I ask you to help by praying for the situation. I have 4 more months here in my mission year and I really want to finish the year strong with my team. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

It is possible to give through the website http://give.ccci.org/give/0597385. If you would like to be one of my ministry partners and would like more information about my ministry and what I do here in Slovakia I would love to talk with you more. My email address is aaron.hassell@uscm.org

They took my visa application!

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:43:40 GMT

Sorry it has been so long since I have updated this thing. We've been in and out of town for the past few weeks with different conferences all around Slovakia. We had our winter conference in a town near Bolesov and then our staff conference in somewhere in western Slovakia at the Slovak postal service training center.

After months and months of trying, I finally was able to turn in my visa application to the foreign police. It came none too soon either as it was the last day that I could use my koloks(think money order) for the application. I had bought them back in September with the rest of the team was putting in their visa applications and up until now I hadn't been able to turn in my application because I didn't know what visa classification I was trying to get. Thankfully now its in and all I have to do is get a few more documents together and I'll be able to be here legally until December(dunno if that will happen or not though).

As the second half of the year has been rapidly approaching I've started to have to think about what to do next. As of this point I have no clue what direction I should take. I've been praying about it and no clear answers have come up yet but I have had a few thoughts so far. My options at this point are to go back to the states and find some random job which I think is my least likely option at this point. Another option would be to come here long term doing the same thing I'm doing now. Another option would be to try and find a job here, maybe at the embassy or something. I just know that I do like it here and I like the fact that I can travel fairly easily. But whether or not that would be fun without my team I dunno. Another factor in my mind is do I want to be away from my family for even longer. I just dont know...making life decisions is really hard. God gave me some gigantic neon arrows pointing me towards coming to Slovakia, and I'm hoping that He will give something comparable to that this time around although He may not. If you get a chance please be praying for me as I make these choices coming up.

Tomorrow we leave for our mid-year STINT conference and then we have a little time off for traveling before the next semester starts up!

Awesome day in Presov

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:48:14 GMT

This week we have been doing a candy cane outreach on a couple of the different campuses. Students are in exam mode right now and so they don't really have time to meet one on one and so we decided to do a big outreach and hand out candy canes to students as part of a package. Mikey and Cindy's church sent them like 1500 of them, so we put them in a Christmasy bag that had an article about the candy cane that shares the gospel in it as well as a Knowing God Personally tract. We were in Presov today as a team handing them out and as I was doing it, one guy came up to me and asked if I was with the group that did the www.everyslovakstudent.com website since the website was at the bottom of the article. I said we were...last year we posted a bunch of flyers around campus about the website to promote it and some have still managed to stay up on the boards. As I get to talking to the guy, his name is Jakob, I find out that he is a Christian!
Turns out he is a first year student who is studying to become a teacher. He is from a town slightly north of Presov called Bardejov but he commutes every Sunday morning to go to Kosice to the Apostolic Church there(its kind of like the denomination Assembly of God over here, not like the Apostolic Church in America) which is one of the 3 solid churches in Kosice. From talking with him he was really excited to find out about what we were doing there in Presov and what our goals as a ministry are and he is interested in helping me do a guys Bible study there in Presov next semester! This was a huge answer to prayer and I can't wait to work with him more next semester. He is thinking about coming to Winter Conference so please be praying that he might be able to go!

Illegal immigrant

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:30:44 GMT

Well, tomorrow is officially the last of my 90 day EU visa that all tourists get. As far as I know right now that doesn't mean that I will get kicked out of the country or that anything terribly bad will happen, but tomorrow morning I head down to the foreign police office to still try and pursue getting a work visa. It's in God's hands no matter what, I just have to wait and see what will happen and keep being faithful to try. If you get a chance please pray for this situation that it will get resolved quickly and that I'll be able to stay here without any troubles.

This situation coupled with the lack of progress with guys in Presov has been really frustrating for me. I tried to have the Bible study there for guys last week and only one guy texted me back that he couldnt come, and another came late only to tell me he was going to get drunk with the friends he was with for one of their name days. I really want to have this Bible study to look at the book of Romans with these guys, because there is so much good stuff in there that I have been reading lately that I want to share with them, but I can only invite them to come. They have to make the choice to go. These guys even expressed interest in wanting to be a part of a bible study too which makes it even more frustrating.

In ministry its easy to get wrapped up in the highs and lows and think that that is the biggest thing, how many people you have coming, how many numbers you can put on the stat sheet...but the truth is, I'm here answering God's call to serve and to trust in Him for the outcome. And that is what I will continue to do. So many times I've heard of missionaries laboring their entire lives in places and hardly seeing any fruit. This part of Romans has been really encouraging to me.

Romans 12

A Living Sacrifice to God

1 And so, dear brothers and sisters,^[a] I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.^[b] 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

3 Because of the privilege and authority^[c] God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.^[d] 4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. 7 If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. 8 If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.

9 Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10 Love each other with genuine affection,^[e] and take delight in honoring each other. 11 Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.^[f] 12 Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. 13 When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality.

14 Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. 15 Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!

17 Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. 18 Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.

Thank you all so much for all of your prayers. They really mean so much to me and I am so blessed that God has provided me with that prayer support.

Chuggin along...

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:39:35 GMT

October has flown by and its already November. Before I know it it'll be Thanksgiving and the year will almost be halfway over. This past month has been a blur but really fun. Mikey, Amber, and I all ran the half marathon at the beginning of the month. We all did really well and all completed it. The next few weekends were spent working at men's weekend then the weekend after that, fall conference. My time on campus has been hard this month. The English club that we did was really good for the girls ministry and they were able to have some good fruit from it, but not many guys came out. I have some ideas of stuff I'd like to do to get the guys ministry moving in Presov, but I feel so shorthanded there being the only guy. In the coming weeks I really want to do a bible study I'll just have to see how many guys I can get on board. This month has been rough for me too with a lot of little things bugging me. I still cant figure out how to configure my Mozilla Thunderbird email client to send outgoing emails...even after trying the tech supports advice, my visa situation has still been giving me problems. I am currently waiting on a letter from my boss to be able to even START the process. That will at least buy me some time...I am currently closing in on the end of my 90 days that I am able to stay visa free in the EU. Another key item I need is my original birth certificate to get a Slovak criminal record report. But its been 3 weeks since my dad mailed it, and it's still not here. If you get a chance, please pray that this arrives soon and wasn't lost in the mail. I really need this piece of mail not to get lost.

God has given me so many blessings as well this month. From some American foods that came in...to an amazing whirlwind trip we got to take this past weekend during All Saints Day. Earlier in the month we found a trip to Rome on SkyEurope round trip for 50$ bucks. So that with our train ticket to get to the plane ended up being 100$. We had one of our teammates' mom in town, and she was able to get a hookup somehow and so we were able to stay in Rome for free. Since I had been last year I was able to help out as kind of a tour guide for the team. While most of them spent most of their money on souvenirs, I spent mine on food and oh man was it amazing. I'm excited about the prospects of November, can't wait to see what God's got in store! If you have any questions about life here, or what's going on with me feel free to leave me a message! I'd love to hear from ya'll!

One month down

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:22:51 GMT

       The school year for university students here in Slovakia goes by really quickly it seems with all the holidays and stuff that they have, but it has been cool to see how God has been working here so far this year. This year has been a lot better for me it seems this second year around because of the established relationships I already have. This past week at Presov university I had two really cool meetings.
       The first one I kinda wrote about in my prayer letter was with a guy named Peter who went to our winter conference last year. I was going to follow up with him after the winter conference to see what he thought about it and what he had learned from it but unfortunately he was in Poland for the Spring semester last year. I saw him again one time that semester when he came back for a short trip to visit Presov but just in passing but I was able to get his number and the possibility to hang out that summer when he got back from the semester. Unfortunately we weren't able to but this semester I ran into him while we were at Presov one day. He and his girlfriend were going to be coming to this survival camp weekend that Athletes in Action here in Slovakia were going to be putting on. I was excited that he was coming so I could get a chance to figure out where he is spiritually and to have an opportunity to get to know him better. At the winter conference the year before, I had had a really bad cold and so I wasn't feeling very well the whole conference and didnt get to hangout with as many people as I would have liked. Jeremy Adams, a guy who is going to be staying here long term with his Slovak wife who is on staff with us, Dara, had talked to him a few weeks before at church and he had said to Jeremy that he thought that he had just recently become a Christian or had just started walking with God and so I was hoping to find out more about this from him as welll. Unfortunately Peter got sick for this survival camp weekend and he wasnt able to go, but I did get to finally hang out with him this past week. We went to grab a Kofola(slovak soda) at this nearby cafe to campus and got a good chance to talk.
     From talking with Peter, I believe that he is a Christian but I don't think that he fully understands the work of the Holy Spirit. He shared with me that he had been reading through Matthew and that as he got to chapter 25 and the parable of the 3 servants, that he had been thinking about what he was going to do after he graduated and trying to figure out what God's will for his life was. I was able to share with him about instances in my life where I didn't know what to do and God showed me through his Word and through other people. I asked him what he was going to read after Matthew and he said he was just going to keep going through the whole New Testament. I encouraged him that if he wanted to find out God's will for his life, that the Bible was a good place to look :). He is really excited about coming to Men's weekend though so please pray that he would be able to bring lots of friends with him as well.
     Another cool meeting from this past week was yesterday with a guy named Mattus that I met with some last year. I had ran into him the day before when I was on my way to meet Peter. We hung out pretty much the whole afternoon and I was able to catch up with him and find out how his summer had been. Through the course of the afternoon we were able to have some pretty good spiritual conversation. I had shared the gospel with him once or twice last year and again yesterday I did. He said that he was a Greek catholic and I tried to find out what kind of role that played in his life. I shared with him how I consider myself Baptist, but that doesnt dictate how I live. I share with him how I take God's Word as the authority in my life and about the relationship that I have with God. I invited Matt to come for our Men's weekend that we're doing October 17-19th...please pray that he would be able to come.
    I don't know why God chose me to come to Slovakia for these two years, because as I'm sharing with these guys I don't feel that I'm particularly elloquent or anything. But I pray and know that God by his Holy Spirit is speaking to these guys' hearts and its nothing that I do. I am just trying to rely on God every day that I am on campus to work through me. I am really excited about this year's potential. I am really hoping that I will be able to start up a Bible study in Presov with these guys and maybe a few others.
    As for what else is going on in life here, this coming weekend I am going to be running in my second ever half marathon! Last year I ran it in an hour and 57 minutes and I hope to do an hour and 50 this year. I'm going to be running it with two of my American teammates and one of the Slovak girls that we work with. If there is anything that I can pray for you for, please don't hesitate to let me know!

Medical exam

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:34:53 GMT

Well, today we had to wake up and head by car at 6 AM to the town of Martin which is about 3 hours away from Slovakia. We were taken by the guy who runs the language school that the rest of my team is attending to go have our medical exams done there for our visas. The trip there was relatively uneventful but when we got there things got interesting. It took us a while to find where we needed to go but we finally did. The rest of the team went in first to get their blood taken for tests then it was my turn. They took my blood, gave me a really quick checkup then asked me to provide a stool sample. Definitely was not expecting that in the checkup. Then we had to go get chest x-rays in a building that looked like it was out of the 1940's. It didn't really look too safe to have x-rays in, but we had to get the medical exams done. We are going to be doing an outreach tomorrow at the vet-school campus so please pray that all would go well with that and that we would have a good turn-out of students. Also pray that weather conditions would allow for it to happen as it has been quite wet, rainy, and cold here lately. It was in the 40s today. Thank you for all of your prayers thus far, our team has really been bonding well and we are having a blast serving the Lord together!

In Colorado!

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:47:12 GMT

I started packing at 10:30 pm on Wednesday night and my flight was at 6:19 the next morning. Needless to stay I probably shoulda started earlier, but I love to procrastinate and thankfully I got everything I needed and didnt really forget anything too terribly important. So today at Copper Mountain there was hail/snow looking stuff. It fell for about an hour-ish and stuck for about the same then the sun came out and melted it. Its been good here so far, the team seems to be gettin along really good and clicking. I'm excited about getting over to Slovakia with them next week and getting started! We all hung out last night and watched the olympics. We also got some really exciting news from Mikey and Cindy on our team...they are going to be having a baby in april/may! That will definately be an interesting addition to the team. This week is gonna be cool to be able to get to know them some and prepare them for the coming year. I will update more maybe as the week goes on!

Still in America

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:35:55 GMT

The last few weeks have been fun. I been working on support but have also gotten to hang out with friends that I haven't seen in a really long time. This past Sunday I got to visit a Sunday school class that had some people that supported me even though they had never met me before. What happened was I was out of time and I didnt have any Sundays left last summer because I had to go to Colorado for our briefing. I spoke to the teacher of the Sunday school class and explained to him what I was doing and he went and spoke to the class on my behalf. He called me while I was in Colorado and told me that there were some people in the class who were doing a total of 275$ in monthly support which was enough to put me over the top in what I needed to go. It was so cool how God did that, and so this past Sunday I finally got a chance to go and speak at their class and meet some of the people who had supported me. It was so cool to see their fellowship and the way they interacted with one another, you could really tell that they were rocking it out for God. This coming Sunday I get to speak at another church and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm loving being able to tell people about how God is working in Slovakia and encouraging them in the Lord by telling how He has worked in my life as well. It's good being home, but I also feel restless. I want to meet my new team and hang out with them. I also can't wait to get back to Slovakia. I've gotten to speak Slovak with some people online and that has been fun, I really miss that. I've still got 3 more weeks here, so if you want to hang out, just give me a call. If you shoot me an email at aaron.hassell@uscm.org or get my # off facebook, thats the best way to get in touch with me. Also I need some help while I'm back. If you would be interested in supporting me, or know of anyone who might be and would want to meet with me to hear more about my ministry, please let me know! I have a one time gifts goal that I have to reach as well as a monthly total that I must reach as well.