Czech Republic Mission Trip Background

Greetings to all of our readers. Thank you for reading. Today, we want to share with you a little background on the Czech people especially the youth that we will be working with in Sedlcany. We hope this background helps so that you can specifically pray for our team as we teach.
Czechs consider consider themselves atheist. In fact 72% of the population would claim that. The background that has led the people to this conclusion was the Thirty Year War in the 1600's. These religious wars were fought on Czech ground but never involved Czechs but other larger neighboring countries such as Germany, Poland, Austria & Hungary. Because of this, Czech's consider God to be a tyrant and would never follow an organized religion. In fact, Czech's loath organized religion and consider it to be oppressive. To them, Jesus is "baby Jesus of Christmas only" and a type of "Santa". They love to celebrate Christmas and Easter but only in the traditional secular sense. The youth and young adults believe in "Jedi"- yup that's right think Star Wars, that there is a FORCE controlling everything around them. They believe that when you die you just don't exist anymore and become non existent. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and dying for our sins means nothing to an average Czech because they don't believe that anythings happens to you when you die. Though Czech's do believe in a "hell" for really evil people but they do not believe in a heaven. Because of this ideology, life for the average Czech is HOPELESS. Czech love Americans and this is where the strategy to plant gospel seeds begins with teaching English classes. Like many Slavic countries, when you first meet a Czech, they are like COCONUTS, hard on the outside but once you gain their trust and friendship they are liquid on the inside and you become immediate family to them. Please pray that Sherry, myself and our team will quickly break through the coconut this week and have wonderful gospel centered conversations with our students, facility and the people we interact with.
Devkuji Vanm (Thank you) for praying
Denise & Sherry