The last months have been more than blessed in VMY Slovakia! So many events, camps, meetings, weekends, spiritual renewals and so on, and so on.

At the beginning of July, after 5 years, we organized Animazlet, a national gathering for young animators. This meeting took place in Plavec in the north of Slovakia, lasted 4 days, and was visited by more than 100 participants! A few weeks later, at the end of July, a group of more than 90 young people from VMY Slovakia set off on a trip to Portugal, where we participated in both the Vincentian gathering in Felgueiras and the main World Youth Day event in Lisbon. It was a gracious time and we all took away not only deep spiritual experiences, but also new friendships and lifelong travel experiences.

At the turn of August and September, a traditional camp for our disabled friends awaited us, which took place again at the Zemplinska Sirava Lake. It was attended by 11 participants and 20 assistants from VMY Slovakia. We created an incredible team, helped each other, experienced many joyful moments, simply heaven on earth! During the month of November, we followed up on this camp with nice meetings in two cities in Slovakia – Kosice and Dolny Kubin, where we personally visited our friends with disabilities and not only spent Holy Mass with them, but also spent time having a lunch all together with a lot of interesting discussions.

Another amazing recent event was the spiritual renewal for the members of VMY Slovakia, which took place in Hronsky Beaadik at the beginning of October. The spiritual renewal was led by the director of VMY Slovakia, Ondrej Skocik, CM, and in addition to deep spiritual topics, young people in this wonderful place also sketched the rare history of monastic life in the past.

In addition, many residential camps, animation courses, weekend camps and other gatherings like Johnyfest have been held since the summer, and our young members have also participated in various initiatives such as Fight Against Hunger, One Million Children Praying the Rosary, or Day with the Poor. Simply put, in 2023, it was and it is still so much going on in VMY in Slovakia, and we are already planning how to start and make the best of 2024! May the Virgin Mary help us with everything and we will also ask for many blessings from God.

Milan Kovac
President of VMY Slovakia

Source and more images: https://jmvinter.org/