What a historical day for me.  I did my first full sermon in Slovak!  I have spoken a number times before youth in Slovak, or just an announcement in church, but every time I do a sermon I have it mostly translated.  Last Sunday, I spoke for the first time, a full sermon, in Slovak!  It was for me a very important bench mark in my Slovak, which is an incredibly hard language and even harder to talk about theological ideas in.  

What I did not realize, was the effect it was going to have on my church.  When I began, I announced that I would do it without translation, the church family began clapping.  My church is a very reserved church and seldom claps about anything, in fact maybe never.  This is pretty normal for Slovaks.  I had many people come to me afterward and say basically, you are our now apart of our family, finally.  Apparently, speaking in Slovak, convinced those who didn’t believe I was more then a visitor, that I intend to stay and be a part of what God is doing here.  I was surprised that people were so impacted and our pastor even mentioned that something changed in the community of our church, weird huh?  Well I also didn’t say I was sicker then I have been in a number of years during this time.  I almost cancelled, but God confirmed to me that He wanted me to do it sick, that it was important to Him and that He wanted me to go through this, to know that it was not my talent or ability, but HIM!  Praise God!