In the half term holiday we flew to Prague in October to visit Tima and Yulia at IBTS. Both are well and send their greetings to the church. They’d just returned from a whistle-stop tour of North Yorkshire. North Yorkshire is sponsoring Tima’s candidacy for the ministry, and Tima and Yulia had been invited to visit a number of churches in the area to see the types of church work that was being carried out.
IBTS itself is set in wooded hills about five miles to the northwest of Prague. In the autumn the IBTS campus is really beautiful with all the trees and the changing colours. The site is set in acres of forest and open land and is quiet and peaceful. We stayed in the Hotel Jeneralka, part of IBTS, in an apartment just two floors below Tima and Yulia. The accommodation was excellent, as were the huge breakfasts – enough to keep even two small boys happy! Each day there was a short morning devotion, and on Wednesday there was a communion service, and we were able to attend these. We also went to morning coffee where we were introduced to the staff and students, and we bring back greetings from these to Bristo. We met just about everybody at IBTS, even the four legged ones (the goats who are supposed to keep the grass short – but instead eat the trees!), and we had a tour of the EBF facilities on the site.
