Slovak Students Speak Out for Christ

Thirteen Slovaks belt out a birthday song in a high school cafeteria. A single candle glows atop a chocolate cake frosted with white icing.

Four high school students — Katka, Matej, Sara and Tomáš — celebrate their “first” birthdays. Last year, all four of their lives changed when they chose to follow Jesus — or be “born again,” in Jesus’ words.

Four teenagers celebrate their “first” birthdays, or the first anniversary of their belief in Christ.

The party breaks out around a white table on the gray-spotted, slippery-when-wet cafeteria floor. The 13 Slovaks in attendance, along with two Americans who’ve joined them, lead a session of SpeakOut camp in Piešt’any, Slovakia.

SpeakOut, an outreach of Hlas Pre Krista, translated as “Voice for Christ” — Cru^®’s name in Slovakia — helps high school students learn English while learning what it means to know Jesus as Savior. Coldness toward the gospel is common among Slovak students. But in 2018, this camp gave 15 campers a chance to build relationships of trust with Christ-followers.

The hesitant student

Tomáš Hanuš, a 17-year-old “first birthday” celebrant, went to SpeakOut reluctantly in 2017. When four of his school friends signed up, he gave in.

The oldest of three children, Tomáš grew up hearing the gospel from his Catholic parents (about 65 percent of Slovaks follow Roman Catholicism). Still, he didn’t trust Christ. “I didn’t really listen to them because they were my parents. They tell me stuff, but I’m not interested.”

At SpeakOut, he again heard about the forgiveness Jesus offers and began to understand the message. Two weeks later, he attended SpeakOut Loud, which brings students from SpeakOut who trust Christ or who show interest in learning more to a three-day camp to help them continue their spiritual journeys. There, Tomáš trusted Jesus to forgive his sins.

Now, Tomáš returns as a volunteer.

Tomáš’ reluctance is common, according to Doug Meyerdirk, a Cru staff member from the U.S., who with his wife, Patti, has served in Slovakia for 25 years. They raised five children there. One son, Michael, recently returned with his wife, Alyssa, as part of a Cru team focused on reaching students there for Christ.

“I had a difficult time at the beginning accepting the reality that we can’t just give someone the gospel,” Doug says, recalling his early days in the country. “They’ll listen, they’ll be kind, and they’ll never want to talk to us again.”

Religiously, most Slovaks believe they need to earn God’s favor, Doug explains. And culturally, Slovaks don’t talk about spiritual concerns, even with close friends. Gospel messengers must overcome these lifelong preconceptions and patterns.

“We have to become someone that these people trust in order to really have a hearing for the gospel,” Doug says.

SpeakOut camps build this trust as students make friends with the volunteers and hear about Jesus from them.

Slovakia first hosted SpeakOut camp in 1995, importing the idea from neighboring Hungary, where camps started in 1993. Since then, nine Eastern European countries have hosted at least 94 similar camps.

This SpeakOut brings together five groups of people: high school campers, Christian Slovak volunteers, Cru staff members, an American summer mission team and a STINT team that includes Michael Meyerdirk, Doug’s son. STINT — Short Term International — team members, often recent college graduates, spend one or two years serving with Cru to launch or strengthen ministries.

Typically, campers aren’t yet followers of Jesus. Staff members and volunteers teach English while also discussing spiritual topics, hoping Christ will change campers’ lives.

An eager high schooler

Matej Bělousov, one of Tomáš’ friends who attended SpeakOut last year, grew up going to church, yet he did not respond to God’s offer of forgiveness.

Yet Matej helped persuade Tomáš to attend the camp.

Matej wanted to improve his English and meet people from a different culture. That week at camp, he heard the gospel multiple times, as all campers do. The message made its way into his mind and heart, along with American slang.

“Before SpeakOut, I broke up with my girlfriend and I wanted to find something else that can fulfill me. I was trying drinking and I was trying also marijuana, and it just didn’t work,” Matej says. “After SpeakOut, my life totally turned. I was happy.”

Upon returning to school, Matej, Tomáš and their friends who went to SpeakOut continued to make changes in their lives.

VIDEO: Matej (left) and Tomáš recall how attending SpeakOut led to studying the Bible back at school.

Matej says, “After we accepted Christ, we started to talk about Jesus and about the Bible and about spiritual things.”

At school the next fall, Tomáš says, “We weren’t the guys we were before. Relationships started to be more honest and open.”

The repeat volunteer

Matej understood his need to trust Christ for salvation last year as he spoke with Miška Ihnátová, an art student and one of the volunteers.

Miška grew up with her single mother until the age of 8. Her grandmother took them to church.

In February 2011, Cru staff members visited her campus to help students learn English. Miška Vargová, a Slovak Cru staff member, explained the gospel to Miška, the student. She demurred. The two continued meeting, having tea and cooking together.

“She was discipling me back then, but I didn’t know what she was doing,” Miška says.

In 2012, Miška attended SpeakOut as a camper. She began comprehending God’s offer of forgiveness but didn’t respond. But she saw something unusual in the Christians and how they interacted. “This was different — a living, wild kind of spirit there,” she says.

A delayed response is common, Michael says. Among other reasons, most campers are hearing the gospel for the first time. “It was too much to process in just a week.”

Back home, a television broadcast of a church service reminded Miška of the message. She prayed, expressing her desire to trust Christ: OK, Lord, if you are, I want to give you my life. I don’t have anything to lose.

In 2013, she returned as a volunteer, as she did again in 2016 and 2017, taking Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:18-20 to make disciples — called the Great Commission — seriously. In 2016, she joined a SpeakOut summer mission trip to Macedonia and in 2018, she studied in Poland for a semester.

Now, she returns to SpeakOut as a volunteer for a fourth time.

Inside camp and beyond

In Piešt’any, a city of about 28,000 people known for natural hot springs, SpeakOut takes place on a high school campus that includes dormitories.

After breakfast, the 15 campers — all girls for this camp — gather for “Morning Blast,” a class led by two Americans. Monday morning, as a lawn mower hums outside, the Americans explain slang, like using “buck” to mean a dollar. They move on to vocabulary, including words that will help clarify the gospel to the campers, such as “purpose.”

Camp action moves to the lawn most afternoons. Traffic noise spills over a wall as campers and Slovak volunteers gather in shaded areas.

Volunteers explain the gospel using a different method each day. On Monday, Soularium^® cards — images designed to help people discuss life’s questions — lay atop the grass.

On Friday afternoon, called “decision day” at camp, every camper is invited to place her faith in Christ and to express that through prayer. Each heard the gospel at least five times this week.

Some still push back. Sitting on the lawn, one camper says she understands the message but simply doesn’t see the need to respond.

Usually, the Slovak volunteers and visiting Americans focus on the campers all week. But this week, the volunteers and staff members face a change of their own. Only 15 campers signed up instead of the expected 30 or 40 campers.

On Tuesday afternoon of camp, about two dozen staff members and volunteers joined a pastor at his apartment complex. Basketball, soccer and sidewalk chalk bring children to public areas. In pairs, volunteers asked adults about spiritual interest, pausing to huddle under a balcony briefly as a pelting rain passed overhead.

Most politely listened for a few seconds, decided the message wasn’t for them and rushed on — a typical reaction in Slovakia. One resident complained about the noise.

But Thursday evening, a man in a black hoodie and a woman with green-dyed hair from the apartment complex joined an evening camp event where they heard of Jesus’ offer of forgiveness.

Despite the reluctance from some students this week, seven of 15 campers indicated decisions to trust Christ. Four went to SpeakOut Loud, as did 24 campers from the previous week in Piešt’any and another camp in Eastern Slovakia.

The volunteers and staff members trust that when the four volunteers — Katka, Matej, Sarah and Tomáš — celebrate their second “spiritual birthday,” some of this year’s campers will celebrate their first.

“I want to see lives changed by the huge love of Christ,” Miška says. “And even for the volunteers, if we could experience what does it really mean to be loved by Christ and share that, lives would be transformed.”