Bouda on the run - Romania 2009

From July 26 through August 5, we had our second “Bouda on the Run” where we took a group of young adults from our region in Czech Republic on a camping trip to Romania.  Most had never left Czech Republic and but a few had visited some Western European countries, so this was a first for them to go to another Eastern European country.  This was a good challenge for them to go into another culture where they don’t know the language or the customs and have to make their way. 

Czech parents are so afraid of church groups because of the distrust of the church nurtured in them during the time of Communism.  They were afraid if they let their kids go with us on this trip, they would return as a priest or nun!   It takes months, sometimes years to gain simple trust from our country men. 

Our group of 16 consisted of: 

• Four Christians who help at three other churches in our region but have no opportunity to be part of a group trip and wanted to learn about this type of outreach. 
• Four not-yet believers who know us through our English lessons or school ministry or Tea House. 
• Eight from our church and Bouda Club core who are committed to Jesus. 

We had several goals for this trip for this group: 

• To see another country that is poorer than Czech and learn to appreciate what we have in Czech. 
• To spend intensive time together deepening relationships. Not just to have fun, but also to learn to work together, and for our not-yet believer friends, to see Christians in their daily life; to see our faith in action, our daily Bible reading, our dependent prayers on God. 
• For more mature Christians in our group to learn how to minister to and set an example for the younger believers and not-yet believers. 

We had two serious problems, and our believer-core prayed, and God answered those prayers in a gracious way as a demonstration of His love.  The first was that Petja, a new girl and not-yet believer, lost her brand new camera on a hike.  Several of us went back to the area but couldn’t find it.  On the homeward part of the hike, we passed two young women, strangers to us.  One walked right up to Petja and said, “Isn’t this your camera?” and it was!   This opened up a whole area of conversation for the group when the Bouda core shared they had been praying for the camera to be found. 

Second, one evening as we set up our tents in a field, another not-yet believer with us, Jerka (male) began to bleed from his foot.  We cleaned it and saw snake bite marks.  Everyone was frightened; we didn’t know what kind of snake it was; we didn’t know where a hospital was.  The only thing we knew was to share a story from the Bible (about Paul and the snake) and ask Jerka if we could pray for him.  He agreed!  We had group prayer and then we tried to sleep.   Jerka was really touched and said, “This is the first time anyone prayed for me.”   Jerka was better the next morning—no pain and he recovered. He asked us, “Tell me about your God!”  Since our trip one of his close friends committed suicide and he feels lost, so please be praying for Jerka to accept Jesus and find meaning to his life.