Czech Republic Mission Trip Preparations

March 16th
On Sunday, our Czech Republic Mission Team met each other for the first time. What joy to see God answer prayer and bring a team together in such a short amount of time. From a plea in January to have at least 8 people say yes, to the answer of 12 people confirmed in March, we were all encouraged and inspired that God is moving and His desire was for a mission team to go to the Czech Republic. We also love that three different churches in our area are coming together as the big "C", the church as one body to go and serve with Matt & Patty Schonhoff in Prague, specifically Sedlcany ("seve chana") about an hour south of the capital.  We spent some time getting to know one another & shared why we wanted to go on this specific mission trip. We also learned more about the organization, Teach Beyond. The goal of this mission, is to use English to spread the gospel specifically within the public school system. We will be working with Middle School students during our week. Our team will be headed into the local public school in Sedlcany which has a community population of 7,000 people.  Our team got "all the details" in this meeting, from itinerary, packing, meals, room & teaching classroom assignments, english lesson schedules & details. We even learned some helpful Czech greetings and common words.
Probably the most sobering detail was learning that religion in the Czech Republic is that roughly 2/3 say they "do not believe in God" and 72% believe that when you die, nothing in particular happens to you- you just don't exist anymore. This broke our teams heart and helped give us a better understanding of the students we will be serving. The verse we meditated on that will be our team's theme verse is John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."
Please join us in praying that we will share and show God's love for these middle school students for the week that we are there. Sherry and I are excited to partner in the classroom for this mission trip.