Klaipeda: Overview.

This summer institute is the most exciting and craziest time of my year. I'm surrounded by 16-18 year olds who are all excited to learn English and many of whom are sorting their beliefs about God and the world. I spent almost all my afternoons and weekends hanging out with students, playing games, and doing spiritual life events. I was in charge of three events:

1)Soul Outpost, where we sang worship songs twice a week during lunch and I interviewed some amazing people about their testimonies! My last interview was my sister Kate, who shared a bunch of wisdom about life and God and her experiences, it was really awesome to interview and work with her! We also heard from Gražina, who with a degree from Duke, gave up loads of money to be a Pastor back home in Lithuania. Songwise, the crowd favorite was once again "Prince of Peace."
2)Crossroads: A discussion group where we talked about relationships. We talked about parents, friendship, marriage, sex, dating, and God. We had some great conversations and testimonies and debates over the first five sessions, but the last one was the coolest by far. Last year we had an intellectual debate about God, and that was lame. So this time, I shared my story, and then we went around the room. Agnostics shared why they didn't believe anymore. People who thought they weren't religious shared about miracles and answers to prayer they'd seen. It was awesome!

3)I also lead a weekly worship night where we sang songs in English, Lithuanian, Russian, and Polish. It was very exciting to sing in Polish for the first time, although I didn't do a very good job, we had five Polish girls who helped us out and taught us. During our final worship night, two Catholic twins shared an awesome testimony about how God had changed their life and relationships, and we had a very cool time of prayer and worship, with a lot of participation.

Skaiste, my "unofficial" sister, was an amazing sidekick throughout SLY. She was always pushing me to play one more game, and single-handedly invited a good ten people to church. We also took students to church, for many of them it was the first time to go to a protestant service, and I think through the three weeks Skaiste and I brought about 15 students. I also put together a very fun little version of a Russian song "Eto bsyo," that I performed with 10 friends from different countries for the Talent Show. I also narrated Mafia games (with 30 players), introduced Pit with Spoons, Signs, and Honey I love you (this is a game where you hit on people and try to make them smile)

The last night, after most of the students had left, we stayed up all night to see some of our friends off, and played Charades and Sardines. Other highlights were my friend Masha helped me translate a worship song "Tower" into Russian, and some great conversations with SLY students from last year who are now some of my close friends. One friend, Greta, has started going to the orphanage in her hometown inspired by our "baseball" trip with Kel!

On Wednesday after SLY, I shared three songs I had written and testimony that went along with them with Vineyard Klaipeda, the church that Kel, my boss, my favorite Kiwi, and my mentor in Lithuania, pastors. It was really cool and well-received, and three of my songs are now in Lithuanian!!! One of the girls commented that she was happy when she heard about my Mexico Peso story again, because she had already heard it on Grace Community Church's website! (Shout out P'cola!) (You can listen to that testimony here, and to save you the trouble of counting, I say "Umm" 65 times in the first five minutes: http://gccpensacola.org/2010/08/29/testimony-of-james-metelak/)
Although I know I made a difference in Lithuania last year, this year I had about ten students come up and tell me that they found God or that I helped change their life through what we did at SLY. Others said things like "I've never met someone who believes like you, I don't know if there's anyone in my school who does." It was very humbling, so cool to see how God moved. I can't wait for next year!