GERMAN COASTGUARD SKETCH

This clip is one of the favourites of a lot of our staff in Europe.

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/sinking-p1.php

IRRECONCILABLE HOSTILITY

Sorry to be blogging so much at the moment, but being just back from a trip I'm trying to catch up on mail, and there is so much good stuff in here to share. This is another brilliant quote from A W Tozer. Forgive the American reference - it's equally-applicable across the world, in my view. What do you think?

"In the early days, when Christianity exercised a dominant influence over American thinking, men and women conceived the world to be a battleground. Our fathers believed in sin and the devil and hell as constituting one force, and they believed in God and righteousness and heaven as the other. By their very nature, these forces were opposed to each other forever in deep, grave, irreconcilable hostility. Humans, our fathers held, had to choose sides-they could not be neutral. For them it must be life or death, heaven or hell, and if they chose to come out on God's side they could expect open war with God's enemies. The fight would be real and deadly and would last as long as life continued here below. People looked forward to heaven as a return from the wars, a laying down of the sword to enjoy in peace the home prepared for them . . .

How different today. The fact remains the same, but the interpretation has changed completely. People think of the world, not as a battleground, but as a playground. We are not here to fight; we are here to frolic. We are not in a foreign land; we are at home. We are not getting ready to live, but we are already living, and the best we can do is rid ourselves of our inhibitions and our frustrations and live this life to the full."

NO COWBOYS YET?

This is what the new camp facility at Ranch Svarin in Slovakia looks like.

"TIMOTHY" TRAINING SCHOOL IN SLOVAKIA

YFC Slovakia held a youth leader training event at their new ranch facility at Svarin, 28 September - 1 October. Jean-Jacques Weiler, Chaplain to the Eastern Europe Region, Jozef Gabor, new Regional Director for Europe Central, and Marian Lipovsky, National Director of YFC Slovakia, were among the teachers.

EUROPEAN COUNCIL MEETING IN GERMANY

This is what the bunch of us look like! There are National Directors or National Co-ordinators here from Ireland, Britain, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Poland and Serbia, together with Area staff and the International Director of Youth Alpha, with whom we are having discussions.

NEW REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR CENTRAL EUROPE

Regionalisation, one of the biggest shake-ups in the way YFC works in this Area of Europe, North-Africa & The Middle-East, has been in the drafting and consultation process for most of this year, and, having received the assent of almost all our active programmes, our European Council meetings in Germany last week were examining what the implementation will look like. The plan calls for seven Regions within the Area, each one served by a Regional Director, and I am delighted to report that Jozef Gabor, Chairman of YFC Slovakia, a resident of Vienna in Austria, former staffer with Trans World Radio (which grew out of YFC), lecturer in Media, and speaker of seven or eight European languages, has accepted the position of Director of the Central Europe Region, which comprises Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia and Croatia. I hope that Jozef will be able to start in January.

BIKE ACROSS THE USA - IT'S ON!

We have been talking about it for a while. Now we are committed. No doubt almost everyone has dreamed of climbing aboard a bicycle at one side of the United States and getting off, sweating only lightly, a mere 4,250 miles later at the other side. No - not everyone?
Well, if you are one of the possibly-certifiable people who have, this is good news. The European, Middle-East & North Africa Area of Youth For Christ (YFC EMENA) is planning a sponsored ride starting June 17 2008 from Anacortes, Washington, finishing August 15 (hopefully still 2008) in Bar Harbour Maine.

More details will be available soon on our website, but basically, once you get yourself to the start line with your bike and sponsorship money, we will organise all the logistics of food, accommodation and bike repairs, etc, and aim to get you to the finish line in one piece. Single bikes and tandems will be accepted, but only riders aiming to ride the full distance. We are accepting no more than 60 registrations, from people between 16 and 70 years, with two-thirds of the places reserved for people from the EMENA Area, and the remaining one-third for riders from the other three YFC Areas.

If you like you can register an interest now by commenting on this blog, and we will get in touch with you as soon as we have a registration form. At that point we will ask for a reg fee of $250, which will be your commitment, and which, if you are accepted, will be non-refundable except in circumstances so remote that we can't even imagine them! This will be a huge project for us, so we need to know that people will be totally committed to following through on it.

But exciting or what?? Let us know ASAP if you are interested.