festival united

you may remember how a few years ago i was able to go to a hillsong united concert while i was interning in czech for the summer (or you could read about it here)...this week i returned to the same town for a christian music festival and got to experience all the delights of sharing a room with 20 giggling girls and 4 showers with about 200 girls. oh, and the music.

matous on the main stage at the festival

i wrote in that post from four years ago about how cool it would be for czechs to experience HUGE communal worship in a language they understood, and last week i got to take part in that.

there were maybe 1500 people there altogether. i didn't understand much of anything (speakers/worship/concerts), but it was really good because that meant that leaders in czech had stepped up to lead the seminars and concerts.

plus i got to spend time with some pretty cool girls from the pardubice youth group AND see friends from every single other youth group i've worked with! it was a good time of reconnecting and seeing czech leadership.

Pardubice girls: me, Terka, Tessa, Jana, Petra, Johanka

one highlight is that i got to hear "God of this City" performed by Bluetree. this song has been a kind of theme song for Czech. so hearing a bunch of czech people in czech republic singing this song was really sweet.

i also got to experience several other really cool bands in Czech and Slovak. so great seeing how in the past couple years czech christians can now experience new worship songs that weren't just translated from english. (some cool bands: eSPe (this song we sang a lot), BCC Worship)

my friend, matous from pardubice is a rapper. he and his best friend radek were there too, rapping for Jesus in Czech. it's even better to see how czech christian worship has reached so close to home.

matous and radek tearing up the stage

even though i didn't know what was going on most of the time, i was so glad to be part of the festival.