To Czech with Love

I can honestly say that I never thought I would visit the Czech Republic—never. Not because I have anything against the Czechs, but because they were behind the Iron Curtain for most of my life, and it is an very small country—smaller even than our small state of Arkansas. What would ever take me to an obscure place like that anyway? God would, and God did. (I never thought I’d go to Russia either and I’ve been there three times—again, at God’s bidding.)

Anyway, here’s the deal. A couple of years ago a missionary to the Czech Republic named Harold attended our church’s annual mission celebration. He and I talked a good bit. He was discouraged. He was hearing other missionaries at the celebration talking about the people who were coming to Christ and the churches that were being planted. And Harold had no such stories. The Czech Republic is not exactly primed and ready for a Christian revival. After enduring a long, bitter history of religious war and then forty years of atheistic communist domination that seemed like 400 years (the Czechs aren’t too fond of Russia), hearts have hardened to Christ and the church. Czech is one of the most irreligious countries in the world. Our Prague tour guide, Klara, told us that Czech is 60% atheist, 30% Catholic (most of whom never darken the door of their magnificent cathedrals), and 10% Protestant. Not exactly fertile soil for the gospel, huh?

I couldn’t help but think about the shoe company who sent two representatives to scope out the market in central Africa. One sent back his report, “Nobody here wears shoes so no need to send them. I’m coming home on the next flight.” The second representative sent home a different report: “Nobody here wears shoes. Send me all you got. I’m sure I can sell a boat load.” It would be easy to look at Czech and say, “What’s the use of sending missionaries or helping the local church? Nobody much here believes and they probably never will.” Thankfully, Harold, Ginger, and their kids take a different view: “Nobody much here believes. With God’s help, we think we can lead many to Christ.” And so they stick it out and plow away at the blade-dulling soil, believing that sooner or later seeds will go down and a harvest will come up.

So our church decided to help them. We like going to hard places. They wanted English teachers. Along with a very small Czech congregation in a neighboring city, Harold and the church (pastured by Vladia and Zdenek) are trying to plant a church in Hradec Karlove, a city of over 100,000 that has no evangelical church that we know of. And they believe English classes are the way to build relationships and find doors for sharing the gospel. Heck, everybody in our church can speak English (Arkansas English anyway), so were rounded up thirteen folks and went to the Czech Republic to lead English classes.

We didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t. The country is a beautiful place. I thought it would look like Russia (something of an arm pit in terms of color or beauty or pizzazz and you can’t even drink the water). But no, Czech is a beautiful place: well-maintained and colorful buildings, lovely gardens and rivers, good roads, modern water system. And best of all: wonderful people. Our team and those who came to the English classes warmed to one another quickly. We had all ages and we hit it off fabulously.

Most of the people who came to the English classes consider themselves unbelievers or atheists (which I discovered to the Czech mind is really more agnosticism than classic scientific atheism). We did what we came to do: teach English. But when asked why we came, we were quick to tell them that we are Christians, followers of Jesus, and that God loves them and that we serve God by serving them. Harold was afraid this might put off Czechs and cause them to drop out of the class, but it didn’t. In fact, many signed up for follow up English which uses Bible stories to teach the language. Yea, God!! So we’ll see what comes of that. And by the way, the Czechs and the missionaries want us to come back. We’ve already got to future dates to go.

Near the end of the English camp, a Czech veterinarian, George, an unbeliever, told our trip leader that he never liked Americans. He said that Americans are typically arrogant and think the world revolves around them. Who can argue with that? But then he added this, “After being around your team, I feel differently now.” You know, George wasn’t drawn to us because we’re good Americans; he was drawn to Christ in us, the hope of glory. By being salt in that spiritually parched land, we were helping George get thirsty for Christ. He doesn’t understand that yet, but that’s what’s going on. The “Hound of heaven” is on his heels. And I pray George and the other wonderful people it was our pleasure to serve will one day recognize God’s great love for them and their great need for God and find the life that is really life in Jesus.

So we went to Czech with love, some English lessons, and not much else. And we found that God had gone to Czech with love long before us and was already there doing His thing—preparing, wooing, loving Czech people toward a relationship with Him. I wouldn’t have said this before I went there myself, but you know what? I believe God is up to something big in the Czech Republic and I can’t wait to see it happen.

One Tough Persistent Saint

One more saint story to tell as I wrap up my tribute to All Saints' Day 2010. This saint has no fame that you would know her. Her name will not ring a bell. Nor does she come from some time past in our Christian history. But she is a saint all the same—a present day, on the job, serve the Lord saint.

Her name is Taryn Blocker. Taryn is a young lady currently serving a two-year term in Spain as a journeywoman missionary through the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. That in itself is no uncommon thing. Lots of college graduates have done and do that even today. They serve all over the world. "So why highlight Taryn?" you ask.

Well, a couple of things. First, I know her. I've known her since she was in junior high, I think. I know her family. I had the joy to watch her grow through her teen and college years. And second, what she had to endure to get to the field and what she endures even now is what sets her apart.

While Taryn and Brook, her partner in the mission, were getting their training and orientation in Richmond, they were involved in a terrible car wreck. Both were injured: Taryn had significant injuries: broken jaw, two broken legs, conditions that required surgeries. And then, after the surgeries, months of painful rehab just to be able to walk again. What always amazed me most is that in spite of the pain (a constant companion even now), in spite of the fact that she wouldn't be able to go to Spain when she was supposed to go, Taryn never lost faith and never lost her sense of call to go to Spain and reach out to immigrant Hispanics from Central and South America. Hers was one long and winding road just to be reapproved by the mission board. Needless to say they were concerned with her well-being in light of her injuries and weren't sure she would be up to the rigors of mission work. But Taryn hit all her benchmarks to get the clearance to go. It wasn't easy, but she pushed herself and leaned heavily upon the Lord for His strength that was and is made perfect in her weakness.

So today Taryn is in Spain, serving God and extending His kingdom in that part of the world. I wish I could say that she finally is pain free and her injuries from the wreck are just a part of her past, but I can't. She hurts every day. Most every step is painful. But she takes those steps, determined to fulfill the mission to which God called her. She continues to get medical attention. She continues to pray. She continues to serve. And I find that so very saint-like.

No one would have blamed her if she had given up this dream after the accident and after the rehab. No one would have been critical if she had said, "I thought God wanted me to go, but I guess these injuries are God's way of shutting the door on my mission." In fact, a number of folks figured that might be what was going on. But not Taryn. She was called. She was committed. And car wrecks, wounded legs, and pain nothwithstanding, she was going to go fulfill her calling. Taryn believes that God is larger than her challenges, that her mission is more important that her pain, and that she can do all things through Christ who strengthens her. The young woman is an inspiration to all who know her and blessing to those whom she serves in Spain. She is an example worth noting and following.

In His Revlation letter to the persecuted church at Smyrna, Jesus said, "Be faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life." Taryn hasn't been asked to die for her faith; she's been asked to live it in a foreign culture and with significant pain. And she is being faithful in the midst of all that. She is marked by the life of Christ, and she is bringing that life to those in Spain. So in my book, this young woman bears the markings of a saint.

So Happy All Saints' Day, Taryn! Your parents, your pastor, and your church family are more proud of you than you know. And even then, nobody has a broader smile when he thinks of you than your Friend and Savior Jesus.

Small World, Big God

In 1992 my family took our one and only trip to Disney World. Our kids were pretty much the perfect age for it: twelve and ten. And we had a great time—saw some neat stuff, rode some cool rides, ate some incredibly expensive food. (I don’t know what it is that increases the value of a hamburger to 8 bucks just because it’s served in the Magic Kingdom … but I digress.) Anyway, back to the rides. Some were a lot of fun, but one was really annoying. If you’ve been there you may have found it annoying too. I think it’s called “Small World.” It’s just a little boat ride through a meandering stream with small characters hanging out along the route. That part was boring. This part was annoying: over and over and over and over and over and over they played the song, It’s a Small World After All. Talk about engaging lyrics: “It’s a small world after all. It’s a small world after all. It’s a small world after all. It’s a small world after all.” Profound, huh? Did I mention that they played it over and over and over and over and over? It’s a trick, I think, to drive parents crazy. Not only do they bore you to death, they weld that squirrelly little song to your brain so that it keeps playing there long after you’ve exited the ride. It’s been eighteen years since I heard it and it’s still in my head. Maybe I need medication. Maybe I just need to punch Mickey Mouse in the nose. But the song is still rattling around somewhere in my head. I will say this, however: the message of the song is spot on. It is a small world after all.

That was once again brought home to me a couple of weeks ago. Every year our church holds a mission celebration—five of my favorite days of the year. We invite missionaries from all over the world to join us. We try to encourage them and learn from them. We get them with as many of our people as possible during those days. We mingle them with our young and our old and every age in between. It seems they are all stricken with a serious case of mission fever, so we mingle them with our folks in the hope that we'll catch the fever too. Jesus told the church to go into the world and make disciples of all nations; our church is under the impression that He was talking to us. So we go on lots of mission trips, do a lot of mission work in our own city, and spend some quality time with our missionaries. When you go on mission trips and when you spend time with missionaries the world gets smaller. You can’t hardly look at a map anymore without thinking, “That’s where Rusty and Lori live. And Harriet lives there. And Rodney and Diana live in that country.” It makes the world smaller.

So we enjoy having the missionaries with us each year. I always get a kick out of listening to them describe crazy things they have had to eat on the mission field. This year one of our missionaries from East Asia talked about being served something kind of nasty. Not wanting to offend his host, he ate it. He said he kept thinking as he was trying to choke it down that it tasted just like poo. Come to find out, he was eating animal rectum. (Pause here while you go throw up.) Another ate this fermented crud (something like rotten potatoes) that these South American Indians bury in a hole in the ground and leave there until it would knock a buzzard off a gut wagon. They call that mess a delicacy, but if you’ve got a delicate stomach, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot fork. Some food, huh? And I’m only scratching the surface here. Many of our missionaries work in impoverished cultures where, unlike we wasteful Americans, the locals won’t waste one thing on any animal they kill for food. How about eating the fat out of a cow’s horn? Yes, they do that too. I’ve been served some interesting things on the mission field, but nothing quite like what I’ve mentioned here. And honestly, I’m not sure I love Jesus enough to eat some of the stuff that our missionaries have forced themselves to chew and swallow. They do it in an effort to gain credibility for them and the gospel. I'm embarrassed to admit it but I don't think I could do that. I’m so picky with American food that I didn’t start eating broccoli till I was 30, and here in my 50s I just started eating mushrooms and asparagus and red peppers. Still, listening to them talk about these crazy foods seems to make the world smaller too. You look at a map and think, “That’s where Jim and Linda eat animal rectum.” Yum, yum! The more we know about cultures the smaller the world becomes.

But while it’s entertaining to hear missionary menus, the most compelling thing we hear is their God and people stories. Let me tell you one that made a deep impression on me. I can’t tell you the real name of the missionary because he serves in a dangerous area. We’ll call him James. Much of James’ job is to develop strategies to reach groups untouched by the gospel. Some of that includes training local believers to reach their own people for Jesus. James was invited to provide this kind of training for a particular group in a particular city. Due to another commitment, James was unable to go. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, however, James sent a couple of local believers who work with him to go in his place and do the training. Somehow word got out about the meeting and when James’ friends arrived there, they were met by a fundamentalist group of the local religion (not Islam by the way). This group brought baseball bats along. They broke up the meeting. They broke up James’ friends too. They clubbed them with baseball bats. They cursed them and spat upon them and dragged them through the streets. Then they separated them, moved them to different parts of the city, stole their cell phones, and abandoned them in those isolated spots beat up, alone, and unable to contact anyone who could help them.

When James heard this story, he was both sad and angry. As James put it, “It’s a hard thing to know you sent someone to take the beating that was meant for you.” When James finally got to speak with one of his friends who had been persecuted (we’ll call him Hadji), James said, “I told him that I was praying that God would drop hellfire and brimstone on those men who brutalized him.” But Hadji didn’t concur. He said, “Remember, James: before Paul was a missionary, he was a persecutor of the church. I’m praying that God would save them and make them followers of Jesus and lovers of the church.” Needless to say, James felt duly put in his place by the trajectory of Hadji’s prayer compared to his own.

Just a couple of weeks before James came back to the States for a break, Hadji gave him a call. It seems that Hadji was going back to the same city where he had been beaten and persecuted. He was going back to offer the training that had been so rudely interrupted the first time he tried it. And guess what Hadji told him. “James,” he said, “I’ll be training one of the men who beat me up.”

For some reason, hearing a story like that makes the world smaller for me. I have read numerous persecution stories but to listen to a man who lives it draws me closer to the action. Now, when I hear other stories of persecution, I’ll think of James and Hadji and pray for all our brothers and sisters who pay a sometimes severe price for following Jesus. See what I mean? It sort of makes the world a little smaller.

But listening to missionaries does something even better: it makes God a lot bigger. What a large God we serve—big enough to work both sides of this story. God gave Hadji the grace to forgive the men who brutalized him. And God gave one of those persecutors the grace to save him from his sins and draw him into faith and life and the very church he tried to destroy. That’s some big God. Small world? Yes. Big God? Absolutely!

It sort of changes that Disney tune rolling around in my head: “He’s a big God after all. He’s a big God after all. He’s a big God after all. He’s a big God after all.” And I don’t know about you, but I like that tune much better.

A Baby's Cry in Africa

We pulled into Taiba about 4:30 in the afternoon. There is no easy way to get there. As we made our way over a road that often required us to drive off-road just to make it there I couldn’t help but think of correspondence between missionary doctor Stanley Livingston in Africa and some potential helpers back in England. They asked, “Dr. Livingston, is there a good road to where you are?” And Livingston replied, “I don’t want people who will come only if there is a good road; I want people who will come if there is no road.” If you look at a map of Senegal, it shows a highway from Dakar all the way to just north of Taiba (which is a mile or so off the road). But what looks good on a map doesn’t always translate into reality. There was a road all right, but only in the loosest definition of the word. Still, we made it.

And our Taiba friends were there to meet us. They are warm, wonderful, hospitable people. They helped us set up our tents in the small sandy courtyard of the clinic in which we’d be doing our work. They brought us food. And they shared some news: the population of Taiba had increased by one about an hour before we arrived. A new baby had been born right there at the clinic. And you know what else? That very night a second new baby was born at the clinic—a real population explosion before our very ears. This clinic is a rather dilapidated, open-air facility. The baby was born not twenty feet from our tents so we heard all the usual sounds associated with birth—a mother’s groans and a baby’s cry. That was baby number two.

And there would be one more—born on our last night at the clinic. The mother came in just as we were bedding down for the night. And this birth was more difficult than the one on our first night there. Mom had a hard time—groans and a scream or two. Whoever chose the word labor to describe this experience chose wisely. The lady labored. And we labored with her. This went on for a few hours until one last hybrid scream/groan … and then a baby’s cry. And this baby cried for awhile. I got out of my tent about four in the morning to make my bladder flatter—you've got to drink a lot of water in the desert, you know. The mid-wife was coming out of the room as I passed. She smiled at me and said, “Deux-heure trente-cinq.” She was telling me the time of the birth: 2:35 in the morning. I looked in the open door to the clinic room and there was the new grandmother mopping up the blood off the mattress upon which her daughter-in-law had given birth. She smiled at me. I smiled at her and put my hands together in a congratulatory gesture. She didn’t speak French; she spoke Wolof. I couldn’t communicate with her except by gesture. But she understood my gesture and, with bloody rags in hand, smiled all the more broadly. And in the background the baby cried again.

I stretched my legs a bit before I climbed back into my tent, but I was too wide-awake to sleep. Mom was trying to nurse the baby, and the baby was still crying now and then. A light sleeper finds sleep elusive in such conditions. But that was okay with me. It gave me time to think and reflect on our trip. And while there is much I could say, I want to focus on that baby’s cry in Africa.

Upon reflection, three births in our five days in Taiba became more than a census figure for me. I believe those births to be a prophetic sign that God is at work in Taiba, that God will one day bring new birth to Taiba—not the birth that comes from the love of a husband and wife, but the birth that comes from above; the kind of birth about which Jesus spoke when he told Nicodemus (at night, by the way) that if he wanted to enter the kingdom of God he must be born again.

This was our second trip to this village. We have worked with their immigrants in Paris once and now two times in Taiba. We are building relationships. In our time with them in Paris last September they told us that our friendship was becoming more like family—as if we had the same mother and the same father. And this time in Taiba they allowed us to show the Jesus film twice and to show an evangelistic film twice as well. We were able to pray with most of the 1000 or so we treated in our medical, dental, and eyeglass clinics. We were able to exalt Jesus in new ways. And in that same conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus also said these words: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” We lifted Him up as high as we could this time around. And I believe with all my heart that in God’s good time in days and months and years to come, many, many of them will find eternal life in Jesus.

A baby’s cry in Africa—three babies to be exact. And those births on the first and the last nights of our stay become a kind of parenthesis of hope around our efforts there. There was a groan and a cry and there was blood. It reminds me of another baby’s cry in Bethlehem—a baby born to save us from our sins. It reminds me of a cross and a groan and a cry and much blood. And it reminds me that while God often speaks and works in unusual ways, He continues to be busy about His purpose of seeking and saving the lost. I believe that’s what He’s up to in Taiba these days, and I can’t wait to see it come to pass.

Hmm. A baby cries in Africa … and I can’t help but smile.