Our team of six has now been to the Czech Republic and back to support the ministry of Nathan and Vera Beck, and we have returned with a conviction to share the gospel in our context and continue in fervent prayer for those who don’t know Jesus. Our team was able to engage middle and high school students in spiritual conversations in three Czech schools and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, many were ready to listen.
Our team’s work always began and ended with prayer; we were trusting that God had already been working and revealing Himself to Czech students. We were asking Him to help us meet these students and connect with them. We went into each English classroom beginning with a game where we could talk with each person in the room and have a short conversation. Nathan then led the class by inviting the students into longer, deeper conversations in small groups led by one of our team members. He invited the students to talk about their family, values, stories about their life and more. Throughout the trip, Nathan and Vera taught our team how to look for open doors to ask spiritual questions. We were blessed to see many open doors and walk right through them. Carolyn Walter, one of our team members, shares about what this was like:
Without a doubt the greatest highlight of the trip was to hear students respond to the message of Jesus, to express a desire to know more and heartfelt gratitude to us for sharing with them! To hear how God had been preparing them for our conversations and beginning to work in their lives before us was such a powerful experience! One student told me he had tried praying to “God” for the first time just days before as a result of his grandfather’s death. Another student told me that he was “half-way to becoming a Christian” (after the rest of his classmates in our small group had all just told me they were atheists). When I asked him to explain what he meant, he told me that his bus driver (public transportation to school) had been telling him about the Bible and Jesus and a lot of it made sense to him. He wanted to learn more, but the bus driver found a different job and he hadn’t seen him in several months and wanted to find someone to tell him more!
Each member of our team has numerous stories like these where God brought us to a student who was spiritually interested.
Another opportunity we offered in the classes was a special small group that would read a Bible story and talk about it; a Discovery Bible Study right there in the classroom for students who chose to go to that group. I got to lead these Discovery Bible Studies alongside Czech believers and watch as students’ eyes were opened to what we can know about God, what we can know about people, and how these words would change your life if they were true. When asked how this process went, one student shared,
I think this was good. My mother is a Christian and my father is an atheist. I always hear them fighting and I don’t know what I believe. I think it would be good for me to find out what I believe.
At the end of each class, Czech believers invited the students to come to a youth group event that week and an English camp in the summer. Some students attended the youth events and others even chose to meet one-on-one with a Czech believer. This is where our team continues the work in prayer. We are praying for the Czech believers to grow their relationships with these students, for the students to continue to feel open and hungry for truth, and for students to engage in Discovery Bible Studies so they can meet Jesus. The final question in Discovery Bible Studies is, who needs to hear this story? Who will you tell? We are praying that many Czech people would choose to follow Jesus and continue the Disciple Making Movement by sharing the message in their communities. Please pray with us!
Finally, our team is so thankful for our experience of joy and unity among our team members and with the Beck family as we did this important gospel work together. We have all grown in our understanding of what God is doing and how we can be a part of it. God wants every person from every ethnic group in the world to know Him, and we are asked to be a part of the process by sharing our faith. We have returned with so many praises for God’s tangible love and power in the Czech Republic. Partnering with the Becks in their ministry was a blessing, and we have come home with a conviction to pray and look for open doors to share the gospel in our context.
We invite everyone at College Church to engage with our global missionaries through prayer and consider going on a STAMP trip in the future.
