- Enjoying the art in our midst (4/16/24)
- Lives touched across thousands of miles (4/9/24)
- Funerals and other happy times (4/2/24)
- Blizzards, tornadoes and Easter traditions (3/26/24)
- From making our bed to making democracy work (3/19/24)
- Biden's speech, a missed opportunity and theater triumph (3/12/24)
- From Plain Jane to high tech: Nostalgia vs. modern conveniences in automobiles (3/5/24)
Opinion
Mission trip
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Slovakia? Never heard of it. Well, that is the common reaction.
Now understand I grew up with neighboring farmers whose family had emigrated from Czechoslovakia. Brothers John and Joe bachelors. On clear and frosty mornings as we walked to school I could hear them yelling at their half broke team of horses as they were handpicking corn. Czech cuss words unintelligible to me as the words were to their horses but no mistaken the intent to go or stop. Take four rows, snap each ear off, clean of shucks, and throw each against the “bang board” to drop into the body of the wagon. A well-trained team would go and stop on command. Probably it took a while to get the team trained each fall so Johnny was speaking to them in a language that made him feel better until they learned the art of stop and go by the spoken command.
I caught the notice that the newly formed Hayes Center Community Church was to meet for their regular service and the featured speaker would be Larissa Wach describing her yearlong mission trip to Slovakia. Grannie Annie and I were not about to miss it!
The Hayes Center Community Church is a growing congregation of young families led by a dynamic minister with a young family of his own. Many of the attendees have been unchurched and are seeking fellowship with like believers in the area where they live. All are welcome.
Now the Wach family is rather special to this old couple’s hearts. Loran and Nancy farm and have raised an extraordinarily successful family of five children. The eldest is Lance whom I initially taught to fly and is now piloting an F-22, the world’s premier jet fighter out of Anchorage, Alaska. It was Lance’s sister Larissa who had recently returned from Bratislava, Slovakia where she had spent a dynamic year attempting to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Larissa was a proud graduate of the Hayes Center High School. She went off to UNL and joined in a campus ministry group which eventually inspired her to overseas mission work.
Back home Larissa’s presentation met all expectations. Her brother Wesley managed the audiovisuals as only a freshman at UNL could. First off pictures of where in the world Slovakia is. In central Europe bordered by Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine. Then pictures and Larissa’s narration of the people she worked with, the Slovakians she met, their activities, the city where she lived and worked, I spied the Golden Arches of a McDonald’s restaurant, the bureaucratic frustrations encountered and just life in a society so different from where she grew up.
Quite a solo journey by a 20 something attractive young lady traveling halfway across the world to a new culture, language some seven time zones away. Brave! Through prior arrangement, Larissa met a married couple and a few other missionaries her age to welcome her in the big adventure. Larissa and three other young women shared a large open glass windowed loft apartment where they lived and shared group activities with those whose lives they touched.
Slovakia, the now democratic country, has quite a history. It is primarily an agricultural society yet boasts a variety of splendid medieval castles. Its history reads much like the Old Testament, warring tribes conquering each other hence the castles with walls and moats. Walls work! Mongol hordes passed through and later conquering Greeks and Romans. After WWI the country of Czechoslovakia was created with the Czechs being largely Catholic and the Slovaks not so much.
At the start of WWII, Marshal Tito was the dictator in charge and he allied with Nazi Germany. His forces helped in the capture of Poland and on into the fighting in the Soviet Union as part of the Axis Powers. Then in 1944 the Czechoslovakian army and some 18,000 guerilla forces rebelled against the Nazis. Initially, they were successful but then the tide turned and the Germans wreaked havoc on the country in retaliation.
With the fall of Germany marking the end of the war in Europe the guerilla forces continued to fight the Germans remaining in the area. Then the USSR moved in and installed a Communist regime. Years of miserable life under Soviet rule until the USSR collapsed. Again Czechoslovakia elected to become an independent country which didn’t work well until what they call a Velvet Revolution, bloodless, enabled each ethnic group of peoples to separate and become the Czech Republic and the independent State of Slovakia. We are talking as recent as 1992. Slovakia is now a member of NATO, the European Union, and has a Parliament patterned after the English and is quite Western-leaning, I am sure that they keep a jaded eye on the present Russian aggression against neighboring Ukraine.
When I asked Larissa if the people that she encountered welcomed outsiders she replied: “No but they do like Americans.” Her group touched many many young people and for sure they were an enthusiastic body of inspired Christians working for the Lord. Was her endeavor to make new Christians a success—only time will tell?
Ah, young people stepping out of their comfort zone and going out into the world to do good. It works both ways as they also learn how people in other countries live and develop understanding and ties that bode well for our future. Larissa is now back in Eastern Nebraska studying for a Master’s Degree. She and the many great young people like her are indicative of a healthy future for our beloved United States.
That is how I saw it.
Dick Trail