Sometimes, when the work ahead will be tough, God seems to issue an unusually strong call. In the late spring of 2015, a well-grounded working mother in Prague told her surprised husband that she felt led to leave the better of her two jobs. She had nothing lined up. She prayed for more understanding. She couldn’t explain her feeling that God was calling her to a new vocation, but it just wouldn’t go away. Trusting that God would lead her, she gave notice. This woman is Petra, a faithful attender of Faith Community Church, which is a church planted and pastored by Serge workers.
As spring turned to summer and summer passed, Petra saw increasingly frequent reports of refugees landing on the beaches of southern Europe, walking north along highways, and streaming off of trains in other European countries. Then, the night before her last day on her old job, Petra saw a report that the Czech Republic was receiving its first wave of refugees. The next day, she went to the Hlavni Nadrazi, Prague’s main train station, with one hundred bread rolls, one very large jug of cold water, and another jug of hot coffee. She held a sign she herself could not read. It said, “Refugee Aid” in Arabic. She had no experience or expertise with displaced people. No one knew she was there except her husband. But she was then certain this was the vocation she should be a part of, a calling she couldn’t possibly ignore.
While all this was happening, I was at a Serge leadership meeting. We had spent the week covering long-term strategies. Then someone brought up the refugee crisis in Europe and suggested we ought to respond. My immediate reaction was: Isn’t this late in the week? I said to myself: We aren’t set up to help—in central Europe, we’re church planters, not relief workers—do we even know anyone with the right expertise? Meanwhile, someone else talked of God’s compassion toward sojourners and refugees. Someone needs to be realistic, I thought.
I have a skeptical heart. It is perhaps a besetting sin.
As a group, we decided to send out an appeal for funds and authorize Eric Brauer, the Serge Area Director for that region at the time, to find opportunities to use them.
Petra sat in the Hlavni Nadrazi train station waiting with her sign day after day for two weeks. The local crowds passed by; some stared, some stopped to scold her for helping those people, a few spit on her and shoved her. Still, she waited and yet no refugees arrived.
Finally, she learned that refugees were being held in a detention center away from the capital. With the names of only two refugees among the many, she took food, clothing, and blankets. Those two gave her 20 more names. With 20 more people to visit, 20 more stories to hear, she began to ask for volunteers to go with her. Petra began to lead.
Petra didn’t know what she could legitimately ask or expect at the detention center. She sought expert advice, but received little. She found herself praying constantly, sometimes before each sentence when talking with circumspect officials.
As the Czech government began to process the refugees, they put them on trains to Prague, underdressed for the cold weather, with no money, little information, and 7 days to find their own way to the German border. As the trains pulled into the central station, refugees pressed against the window, looking to see if, by some miracle, their loved ones had been let go at the same time.
Soon, Petra had a cadre of volunteers, many from Faith Community Church, working in shifts around the clock, standing on platforms holding signs in Arabic, waiting for the bewildered refugees. The volunteers offered food, clothing, overnight shelter, medication, legal help—any aid they could. They began to make lists of names to help reunite families.
Almost a year later, I came to Prague with my wife, Cindy, and walked into the meeting place of Faith Community Church. Rev. Phil Davis, our friend and colleague with Serge, introduced us to a soft-spoken, friendly, and unassuming young woman named Petra. He said she worked with refugees.
Two days later, Cindy and I sat down with Petra at a local coffee shop. Our intention was to explore ways that Serge apprentices might work with her in the future. I started by asking her how she got interested in working with the displaced. She looked slightly embarrassed and said, with a half smile, “I just had to do it.”
She told us about her resigning from her job, watching the refugee crisis unfold on the news, and deciding to wait at the train station. Her eyes darkened as she told us about going to the press when the government turned a blind eye to abuses in the detention center. It was a tough choice. There had already been anonymous threats on her life. Then she paused and began to chuckle incredulously, saying that now the press often calls her for comment about a refugee story.
At another point, Petra looked away. She told us about young men so afraid of ISIS that they’d, quite seriously, rather be executed than sent back. Her eyes filled with tears as she told of one young man she tried to help but was deported. Gunmen killed him as soon as his escort released him in his home country. Petra still wondered what she might have done differently.
She went on to tell us with wonder about miraculous provision of food and housing, about people who showed up to help out of nowhere. She told us about refugees who were amazed and thankful that Christians would care about them. As we marveled with her, she was quick to point to God, how He led her to this work of service, how He had given her a husband who stood behind her despite their mutual fears, how God carried her through long hours and helped her do what she never thought she could, and how He continued to act all around her.
Then she mentioned a conversation she had early on with a Serge missionary couple at the time. After telling them that she was wondering how she could keep up the work, one of them said, “Serge has offered the church funds for aiding refugees. Maybe we can hire you to continue what you’re doing.”
On a June morning in Prague, already awed by this story of God’s steadfast love, I saw the way He had involved Serge—back in September—despite my reservations! In my mind, I had been trying to stay grounded in reality. In my heart, I had responded as if I had no faith and found myself with little compassion. A young woman of no expertise or experience had a much more realistic picture of reality. Her realism rested on the foundation of the love and faithfulness of Christ. That faith opened her heart to compassion and risk.
In a little over a year after Petra made the decision to leave her job, she and her volunteers have helped more than 800 refugees. Besides visiting detention centers and receiving refugees at the train station, Petra has continued to help resettle 21 Iraqi Assyrian Christians—14 adults and 7 children—who fled the persecution of ISIS.
Petra acknowledged her deep grief over the suffering she sees. She still faces difficult decisions with no clear answers and has times of doubt and fear, but she said that when she calms herself, she knows God is with her. “Every day I feel His presence,” she said, then paused before adding “And this has been my joy.”
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Please pray that God would continue to give Petra, in the midst of this gritty work, His amazing strength and encouragement.
You can also consider giving financially to the Serge European Refugee Crisis Fund. We seek partners who can help Petra stabilize these families with tangible experiences of hope in Jesus Christ.
