Speaker 1: Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Today we are going
Speaker 1: to be talking missionaries, and I know that's something that
Speaker 1: we don't get to talk about every day. But on
Speaker 1: Sunday I was at church and this amazing guy was
Speaker 1: at church talking about his life story and an organization
Speaker 1: called Josiah Venture, and I was it really resonated with me.
Speaker 1: This is a gentleman who had the call to mission
Speaker 1: to be a missionary. He's a second generation missionary. He
Speaker 1: had the call to Central and Eastern Europe. And as
Speaker 1: I was listening to the story, I'm like, man, not
Speaker 1: only you know the Bible is timely, but not only
Speaker 1: is this timely when it comes to faith in the
Speaker 1: rising faith in the United States, but also with everything
Speaker 1: that's going on in the world stage. So I'm glad
Speaker 1: that Dave Patty agreed to join me today on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Dave, thank you, Thank you so much. It's a proven
Speaker 2: to be with you.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. So I want to go a little
Speaker 1: bit through Josiah Venture because I was listening to your
Speaker 1: story on Sunday and I'm like, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you know, And I thought it was interesting because you
Speaker 1: said you just felt this moment where you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: being called to go to Central and Eastern Europe and
Speaker 1: you talk to your wife about it, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I love that you're being called not sure, I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Well I was involved that.
Speaker 3: My first experience in Central meaisingup was right after communism fell.
Speaker 3: So if you can imagine six months from the time
Speaker 3: the wall fell, I was in Budapest in high school
Speaker 3: talking to Hungarian young people about God, which would have
Speaker 3: six months earlier been just absolutely legal. And I came
Speaker 3: home from that trip with just this huge burden on
Speaker 3: my heart for a whole region of the world that
Speaker 3: had just opened to freedom, just come out from communism,
Speaker 3: and have been under incredible oppression. So every year for
Speaker 3: the next couple of years, we did these short term
Speaker 3: trips into the region, but we had small kids, so
Speaker 3: my wife never went with me. And then there was
Speaker 3: a spot when the Soviet Union started coming apart that
Speaker 3: I just actually I heard someone speak and they said,
Speaker 3: we're a hinge of history. This kind of change only
Speaker 3: happens in a region once in a generation. That you
Speaker 3: imagine the number of countries that came free during that time,
Speaker 3: And they said it's important for us to just make
Speaker 3: as much progress as possible in rebuilding these countries and
Speaker 3: rebuilding the spiritual foundations of these countries. So I came
Speaker 3: home and said to my wife, I think God is
Speaker 3: calling us to Central Messa in Europe. And she did
Speaker 3: not respond very enthusiastically. If you can imagine, well.
Speaker 1: You grew up, I mean you grew up as a missionary.
Speaker 1: Your parents were missionaries. You said you came back when
Speaker 1: you were five, but you had to have grown up
Speaker 1: with that knowledge and understanding. Was that her background as well?
Speaker 3: No, that wasn't her background. She grew up in Oregon
Speaker 3: and her dad was a salesman. So I had more
Speaker 3: of that ethos in my personality. And I guess even
Speaker 3: from when I was about twelve years old, my dream
Speaker 3: was to be involved overseas in countries and hard places
Speaker 3: and dark places where the opportunity to tell people about
Speaker 3: God and teach the Bible in those places.
Speaker 1: Hard places, in dark places. And sometimes I feel like
Speaker 1: we are in that situation here. But you went someplace
Speaker 1: that is considered an atheist country. But tell me about
Speaker 1: that moment, because I think that it's very I always
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating to hear about that moment when God
Speaker 1: lays something on someone's heart and they're unsuspecting and it
Speaker 1: hits them very hard. And that happened for your wife, right,
Speaker 1: I really did.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So sometimes when we talk about God's call, where does
Speaker 3: that come from? And sometimes it comes from seeing a
Speaker 3: need and just sensing you want to respond and dreaming.
Speaker 2: About how God could maybe use you to make a difference.
Speaker 3: And then there's sometimes where it's just it's almost like
Speaker 3: a supernatural moment. I really believe that God speaks to
Speaker 3: us in different ways, and there are times he just
Speaker 3: grabs us. And so we actually we were talking about
Speaker 3: this move and it created so much tension in our
Speaker 3: marriage that I finally told my wife we're not going
Speaker 3: to talk about it because it was I said, I'll
Speaker 3: just pray and if this call is from God, that
Speaker 3: he'll change your heart. And her response was, oh, good,
Speaker 3: this is over. We're not going to move to Central
Speaker 3: Eastern Europe. And then something really strange happened. It was
Speaker 3: over Christmas and we had given our young kids to
Speaker 3: her parents to take care of and we got a
Speaker 3: couple of nights away, and at that time they were
Speaker 3: the tryouts for the Olympics were on TV and the
Speaker 3: Romanian gymnasts, which if you remember the Armanion gymnasts, were amazing.
Speaker 3: They were on and I walked out of the room
Speaker 3: to go down the hall to get a bucket of ice,
Speaker 3: and came back in and just noticed my wife just
Speaker 3: staring at the TV. And she turned and she said, now,
Speaker 3: what did you mean about Central Eastern Europe and young people?
Speaker 2: And I just sat down my eyes.
Speaker 3: And you're like, here, it has happened. Oh no, And
Speaker 3: then I said why and she said, well, I was
Speaker 3: just looking at those Romanian young girls and I thought
Speaker 3: I could love them the same as I've loved American teenagers.
Speaker 3: And something changed in my heart, and something did in
Speaker 3: just a moment, and it was just it was amazing
Speaker 3: that God changed her heart.
Speaker 2: And she said, I think I'm ready to go.
Speaker 3: So in nineteen ninety three we moved with our young family,
Speaker 3: this is not long after the revolution, into a corner
Speaker 3: of the Czech Republic, and we felt like we.
Speaker 2: Moved to the end of the world.
Speaker 3: Now there's ends of the world that are much more
Speaker 3: desolate than that, but everything was gray. We were the
Speaker 3: only Americans in a broad area. It felt like everything
Speaker 3: was just covered a layer of soot, including the people.
Speaker 3: You would never see someone smile, They wouldn't catch your eyes.
Speaker 3: If you greeted someone on the street, they thought you
Speaker 3: were about ready to rob them because you never talked
Speaker 3: to a stranger. And I remember my wife going into
Speaker 3: the store for the first time that the best stores
Speaker 3: were like low grade, much worse than a seven eleven.
Speaker 3: And she came back home and she said, I don't
Speaker 3: know how I'm going to feed this family. We're going
Speaker 3: to buy things. So it was a huge step of
Speaker 3: faith for us to make that move.
Speaker 1: But it hasn't been easy. And that's the thing that
Speaker 1: I loved about what you said on Sunday. It's like,
Speaker 1: this has been a challenge the whole time, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? Because I think it's so easy,
Speaker 1: especially now in the United States, because we are a
Speaker 1: spoiled society. When it gets very hard, we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me find something else. But you guys have stayed.
Speaker 1: You created Josiah venture. You had a vision. The vision
Speaker 1: was a movement of God among the youth of Central
Speaker 1: and Eastern Europe that finds its home in the local
Speaker 1: church and transforms society. And that's a big vision because
Speaker 1: there wasn't that much of a local church there. But
Speaker 1: you knew going to the young people was the answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Czech Republic is the most atheist country
Speaker 3: on earth. And so I remember I started teaching in
Speaker 3: the high school and I asked my students do you
Speaker 3: believe even in the existence of God? And there was
Speaker 3: only one student in a class of thirty that even
Speaker 3: believe God exists. Now this is this is not even
Speaker 3: someone who has active faith in God. So we were
Speaker 3: really moving to the what we felt very different, different area.
Speaker 2: But we had this vision.
Speaker 3: And part of it was as you look at these countries,
Speaker 3: they were trying to rebuild economically, they were trying to
Speaker 3: rebuild educationally, but you've got to rebuild the soul of
Speaker 3: nations as well, and you don't have if you don't
Speaker 3: have spiritual foundations in a nation, Really, most of the
Speaker 3: other things don't work. I remember reading a quote from
Speaker 3: Votsof Hovel, who was the first president of the Czech Republic,
Speaker 3: and he said, the worst thing is that we live
Speaker 3: in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because
Speaker 3: we became used to saying something different than what we thought.
Speaker 3: Concepts of such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness
Speaker 3: lost their depth or dimension. And so it was really
Speaker 3: interesting that the first president was saying, we have a
Speaker 3: soul crisis in our nation. That's really where things come from.
Speaker 3: And so we had this vision to be part of
Speaker 3: rebuilding these nations by rebuilding the spiritual foundations of young
Speaker 3: people and basically helping local churches reach young people and
Speaker 3: create communities of young people that are centered around the
Speaker 3: Bible and around faith in Jesus Christ. And we felt
Speaker 3: like that would change countries. Now, that was a big vision.
Speaker 3: We just had two couples, four people in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: three and we moved in and I remember thinking, there
Speaker 3: is no way this is going to make any difference,
Speaker 3: No way anything's going to happen for this. Our church
Speaker 3: had a youth group of five people and the youngest
Speaker 3: was twenty three and the oldest.
Speaker 2: Was seventy one.
Speaker 3: In our little small youth group, and we were in
Speaker 3: a town of one hundred Yeah, we are a town
Speaker 3: of one hundred thousand, and how in the world are
Speaker 3: we going to make any difference here? So it was
Speaker 3: slow and tough in the beginning, in those early days.
Speaker 1: So I love the fact that you had these kind
Speaker 1: of miracle moments where there have been leaders who have
Speaker 1: said there's a crisis here and have kind of let
Speaker 1: you fill in those spaces, because there certainly were doors
Speaker 1: open that didn't have to be opened in your story.
Speaker 1: I think what was most interesting to me was your
Speaker 1: story in church started with a young video of a
Speaker 1: young man named Pavel, and it was so powerful to
Speaker 1: me to see him because we saw him as like
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old and then he was a young
Speaker 1: adult and at thirteen, he said, I was angry, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do with my anger. But I went to
Speaker 1: this place. And what struck me about what he said
Speaker 1: was I saw these people that had this sense about
Speaker 1: them that I wanted to be like them. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the joy of Christ, you know. I think
Speaker 1: what he saw was the joy of Christ. And to
Speaker 1: have somebody who is in a culture, as you said,
Speaker 1: that is beaten down, that people have been beaten down.
Speaker 1: Communism has taken over the region. Everybody is depressed. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of war. They are now hungry. Everything's gray.
Speaker 1: You talk about you set the scene very well for
Speaker 1: what the community is. It's almost like those I mean,
Speaker 1: the way my mind's eye sees it is those videos
Speaker 1: where everybody's in like a dark and dingy scene. It's
Speaker 1: almost black and white, and then they walk into a
Speaker 1: room and it's filled with rainbow of colors. It's almost
Speaker 1: like that's what his soul felt when he walked in there.
Speaker 3: Well, that's right, yeah, yeah, you were saying, Pavel, And
Speaker 3: he's one of thousands of young people who've come to
Speaker 3: faith in Jesus Christ through our work in local churches there.
Speaker 2: And it's so interesting because I.
Speaker 3: Love lighting a match in a dark place because you
Speaker 3: really see it, and you really see the difference. And
Speaker 3: we've just you know, when you think of someone who
Speaker 3: who has no faith in their background, he didn't have
Speaker 3: a single relative in his extended family who believed in
Speaker 3: God or had any connection with church and so and
Speaker 3: when I think coming from a Christian background, I think,
Speaker 3: what would it be like if that was missing in
Speaker 3: my life? If life was just going to work, making money,
Speaker 3: retiring and dying and I didn't have any higher meaning
Speaker 3: or the spiritual dimension of my life was just empty
Speaker 3: because I had no relationship with God. I can't imagine
Speaker 3: what life would be like. And yet so many of
Speaker 3: those young people, they don't even one of the things.
Speaker 3: When I asked in my class do you believe in God?
Speaker 3: All of them said I'm an atheist. And I would
Speaker 3: ask why, and they couldn't tell me why. They were
Speaker 3: cultural atheists, which is really interesting, and they never really
Speaker 3: had they'd never met someone who had living faith. And
Speaker 3: I remember one of the teachers, we had a teacher's meeting,
Speaker 3: and she leaned over and she said, I was the
Speaker 3: first Christian teacher in the history of this school, right
Speaker 3: in the very beginning. And she leaned over and she said,
Speaker 3: I always thought that Christians were either really weak so
Speaker 3: they needed a crutch, or very old.
Speaker 2: And she said, you seem.
Speaker 3: To be pretty smart and you're young. Why in the
Speaker 3: world do you believe in God? And so that was
Speaker 3: kind of the background. But then when you saw young
Speaker 3: people come to faith in Christ, it's like you said,
Speaker 3: it just the lights came on. Changed every aspect of
Speaker 3: their life, change their sense of hope, their sense of meaning,
Speaker 3: their purpose, how they approached like what Pavel said, he
Speaker 3: said got removed anger from his life, gave him different relationships.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty exciting for us to see that kind
Speaker 3: of transformation happen in really thousands of young people.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
Speaker 1: a Tutor Dixon podcast. One of the interesting openings that
Speaker 1: I think you had is you mentioned that people said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're teaching English, my parents will let me come
Speaker 1: because they believe that that's the key to so many
Speaker 1: more opportunities. So you got to here, you are in
Speaker 1: the United States, you get this call, you get to
Speaker 1: go there and use your language, your life, what you
Speaker 1: know to reform an entire country's youth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was I didn't expect that.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things about when you're following
Speaker 3: God's call, he often has a lot of lands that
Speaker 3: you don't know anything about, and he opens them up
Speaker 3: as you go.
Speaker 2: I was learning Czech, and I speak fluent Czech.
Speaker 3: I thought it's you know, it's breaking the rules to
Speaker 3: use English and when you're working overseas. But I found
Speaker 3: that all the young people, that's their ticket to the
Speaker 3: world is English. So we began teaching English and then
Speaker 3: did an English camp and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: the young people from that camp were interested in joining
Speaker 3: the youth this little youth group in our church, which
Speaker 3: all of a sudden became a youth group of about sixty.
Speaker 2: With a bunch of young people.
Speaker 3: And we really found these camps were one of the
Speaker 3: keys to drawing in young people and exposing them to
Speaker 3: a community of believers and to what I mean to
Speaker 3: have faith in Christ because they would come to learn English,
Speaker 3: and we would teach them English, but we would also
Speaker 3: talk to them about what it meant to have a
Speaker 3: relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And so we did
Speaker 3: one camp that first year in nineteen ninety four, three
Speaker 3: the next Since then, we've done two thousand week long
Speaker 3: camps in partnership with local churches across the region, with
Speaker 3: over one hundred and twenty thousand and young people. So
Speaker 3: that that was, you know, what started just with four
Speaker 3: people in the beginnings has blossomed. And that's just one
Speaker 3: of the ways that we use to reach young people through.
Speaker 3: We also go into schools, we have a whole music
Speaker 3: ministry or sports ministry. It's really about how do we
Speaker 3: gather young people into community, healthy communities that are very
Speaker 3: different than what they've experienced before, and then then over
Speaker 3: time they begin to learn about faith in God and
Speaker 3: and what a relationship with Jesus Christ can do to
Speaker 3: really transform your life.
Speaker 1: So over one hundred thousand in a country of how many, Well.
Speaker 3: Actually that's in more more countries than just just Check.
Speaker 3: But but we also I don't know how many it's
Speaker 3: been in Check. It's it's uh, it's a lot in Check.
Speaker 3: But we also have been face to face with over
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty thousand people in schools. There's just
Speaker 3: a there's a lot. We were able to a TV
Speaker 3: program on Check Television that so all kinds of doors
Speaker 3: open to really.
Speaker 2: Talking about change.
Speaker 1: That was fascinating because that's that moment where there is
Speaker 1: almost a government push to bring culture back. And I
Speaker 1: think that there's something here that we kind of want
Speaker 1: to touch on is that the Czech Republic is very
Speaker 1: into preserving what the Checher Republic is. They don't allow immigration,
Speaker 1: they're very cautious about who they let into the country.
Speaker 1: The culture is important. But in that I feel like
Speaker 1: when you were talking about that, it seemed like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that was a moment where the country said we need
Speaker 1: a healing. We need hope. This man is bringing hope.
Speaker 1: They saw you as bringing hope to their country, and
Speaker 1: they're very particular about what they let in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they certainly are. Yeah, they're very competent, very proud people.
Speaker 3: They're they're very capable, and they aren't easily manipulated. They're
Speaker 3: pretty strong. So what happened was we were working with
Speaker 3: young people and we had an intern and one of
Speaker 3: them is We had the graduation for our interns and
Speaker 3: I met this intern's father and I said, what do
Speaker 3: you do And he says, I produced television shows for
Speaker 3: check Television. And I said, what's your dream for the future.
Speaker 3: He says, I wish there was a way that we
Speaker 3: could have some kind of spiritual content on TV because
Speaker 3: there's none of that. They're not getting anything about about
Speaker 3: something that would build a moral foundation.
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, wouldn't it be.
Speaker 3: Great if there was a Christian show for young people
Speaker 3: on TV? And he looked at me and he said,
Speaker 3: you're not serious, are you? And I said, well, I'm serious.
Speaker 3: It's a great idea, but something like that's not possible.
Speaker 3: And he said, well, would you pray about it? And
Speaker 3: I said yeah, yeah, sure. He said if the door opens,
Speaker 3: Would you do it with me? I said, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 3: And so about six weeks later he said, I've just
Speaker 3: contacted Czech television. They actually are concerned about the moral
Speaker 3: slide among young people and they're open to doing a
Speaker 3: Christian show and they said, if you will produce it,
Speaker 3: they'll air it for free. And so then we asked, well,
Speaker 3: how many do they want, and they said, we did
Speaker 3: a pilot and they said, why don't you do seventeen episodes.
Speaker 3: So we began to broadcast on National TV a show
Speaker 3: called Exit three sixteen, which is just basically stories of
Speaker 3: young people's lives who've been changed by Christ and changed
Speaker 3: by learning how to live like the Bible tells them
Speaker 3: to live, and we just would tell these stories on
Speaker 3: National TV. Well, it was going so well that they
Speaker 3: said wanted to do another thirteen episodes, and then they
Speaker 3: said to another fifteen episodes, and we aired twice a
Speaker 3: week on National TV and in the most atheist country
Speaker 3: on Earth, stories of young people's lives who've been changed
Speaker 3: by Christ. So that was pretty exciting and it was
Speaker 3: reaching hundreds of thousands of people every week. So I
Speaker 3: became the producer of a TV show in the Czech
Speaker 3: Republic and I don't have any TV background, but then
Speaker 3: they said, then they said, would you do it again?
Speaker 3: So we broadcast twice a week on national TV for
Speaker 3: two full years in the Czech Republic and it was
Speaker 3: like it was like it just was changing the whole
Speaker 3: moral environment of the country to hear those stories.
Speaker 1: And I love that because it's young people sharing their story.
Speaker 1: You put together young people's stories so that they could
Speaker 1: reach out to other young people. Now there's been kind
Speaker 1: of this phenomenon of TikTok, so I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about that because you talked about these young TikTok ministers.
Speaker 1: And we complain about TikTok so much because of the
Speaker 1: content that is crazy and taking kids in bad directions.
Speaker 1: But there is a lot of faith content out there,
Speaker 1: and you are finding that people in Eastern Europe are
Speaker 1: able to use it to reach hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: So if I fast forward today, I started about their
Speaker 3: story in nineteen ninety three, it was just two couples.
Speaker 3: Now we're working in sixteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Speaker 3: So I live in the Czech Republic, but we have
Speaker 3: staff in sixteen countries. We have three hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: full time staff and we're working with we'll train about
Speaker 3: seven thousand young leaders in a typical year. So what
Speaker 3: we try to do. The reason for our name Josiah
Speaker 3: Venture is because Josiah was a king in the Bible
Speaker 3: who was a young king and he followed some really
Speaker 3: bad kings before him, but he charted a different direction.
Speaker 3: He really brought his nation back to God and it
Speaker 3: changed the whole nation, and he did it as a
Speaker 3: young person. And so we said, how do we find
Speaker 3: the young Josiahs, those young influencers who will influence in
Speaker 3: a different direction, will influence by their faith in God
Speaker 3: and influence their generation for Christ. Because we feel like
Speaker 3: they can make changes in the entire country. And so
Speaker 3: we're always looking for those young people that are making
Speaker 3: a difference. But one of those is in Serbia. His
Speaker 3: name is Alexa, and he had a radical experience with
Speaker 3: God as a fifteen year old and really came to
Speaker 3: faith in Christ, started reading the Bible. It totally changed
Speaker 3: his life. And then he looked at all his friends
Speaker 3: and they went there. They're on these all the time,
Speaker 3: but there's no one who's giving any different message. So
Speaker 3: he propped up his phone on an Orange he had
Speaker 3: an old Android phone and put it on an Orange
Speaker 3: and recorded one TikTok just talking about his faith in
Speaker 3: God and put it away five views, six views, eight views,
Speaker 3: and then he went, this doesn't make any difference. Came
Speaker 3: back a couple of days later, and it had blown
Speaker 3: up because another famous TikToker in the nation had absolutely
Speaker 3: made fun of him, but it drew everyone's attention to
Speaker 3: his TikTok and so they.
Speaker 2: Started watching him.
Speaker 1: So he started works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he started posting tiktoks every day, and these are
Speaker 3: straight up he talks about how here's what the Bible
Speaker 3: says about this issue, and this is why faith in
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ will change your life.
Speaker 2: Just totally straightforward.
Speaker 3: This young now he's seventeen years old, Serbian guy, but
Speaker 3: he has hit regularly. His tiktoks will reach a half
Speaker 3: a million people. So if you can imagine this young
Speaker 3: seventeen year old who just is boldly proclaiming a message's
Speaker 3: very different than what's normally out there on tikio.
Speaker 1: Talk, is that dangerous in that area?
Speaker 3: And well it can be because some people, yeah that
Speaker 3: Serbians are pretty hot blooded and but I think they're
Speaker 3: also curious about a young Part of it is when
Speaker 3: you get a young person's voice, it's different. They're not
Speaker 3: quite as threatening. There's a vulnerability to it. But but
Speaker 3: he's regularly reaching half the warning people. And in a
Speaker 3: country also with that doesn't have a strong church, you know, future.
Speaker 1: I love this story because we keep hearing that Christianity
Speaker 1: is losing ground, and I don't think that we have been.
Speaker 1: My dad used to always tell me, advertise your progress,
Speaker 1: because nobody else cares unless you're telling them what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we do that enough in the
Speaker 1: Christian world, is to advertise our progress. And I know that.
Speaker 1: You know, we have a big Arab American community in
Speaker 1: the state of Michigan, and in the Muslim community, they
Speaker 1: are strong about advertising their progress, and so I think
Speaker 1: a lot of Christians feel like, well, we're kind of
Speaker 1: falling behind. And when I hear these stories. That's why
Speaker 1: when you were at church, I was hearing these stories,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, we need to share this because for
Speaker 1: those of us who this matters deeply too, it's important
Speaker 1: to know that there is progress being done and that
Speaker 1: people like you have created something from four people to
Speaker 1: go to over three hundred people across multiple different countries.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing feat. And there is God's God's fingerprints
Speaker 1: on every part of this. But it hasn't been easy.
Speaker 1: I think that's the one thing that you said. The
Speaker 1: wind of spiritual opposition is constant where you are, and
Speaker 1: yet you stay, you stay doing it. So tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about what the opposition is like.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting because one of the oppositions.
Speaker 3: One of the things has been where my family has
Speaker 3: been sick most of the time we've been there, and
Speaker 3: with crazy things that you wouldn't expect us. It's not
Speaker 3: like we live in the jungle where you would catch
Speaker 3: malaria or something like that. But it felt like every
Speaker 3: time we would head into something new, my wife would
Speaker 3: get sick or my kids would get sick. I stayed
Speaker 3: healthy most of the time. But then also there's opposition.
Speaker 3: I you know, I've had I've had my life threatened
Speaker 3: by parents whose whose kids come to faith in God
Speaker 3: and they, you know, they're afraid of what that's going
Speaker 3: to be and have threatened our lives and that. But
Speaker 3: then the other thing is there just is a sense
Speaker 3: of darkness and you know, I think that's that's true
Speaker 3: in the United States too, but in areas of the
Speaker 3: world where there's small faith in God, you actually feel it.
Speaker 3: You know, you sometimes just feel that you're you're pushing
Speaker 3: into a headwind. The darkness of discouragement and hopelessness really
Speaker 3: presses in on you. And so we've been at this
Speaker 3: for thirty one years and and but it's not easy.
Speaker 2: We just keep going.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
Speaker 1: a Tutor Dixon podcast. So in the time that you've
Speaker 1: been there, suddenly you have this war breakout in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: which is right next door to where you live, and
Speaker 1: you took a turn in your ministry to provide relief
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. And that was something that you, again didn't
Speaker 1: have any history with, but God provided. So tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the amazing things about serving
Speaker 3: God and the call of God is again he has
Speaker 3: plans that we don't know about, and I always feel
Speaker 3: like we get invited into his work and it's always
Speaker 3: surprising to see what he has. So we have twenty
Speaker 3: seven staff in Ukraine and also staff and all the
Speaker 3: countries around it. And so when the war broke out.
Speaker 3: We were deeply affected because the refugees were pouring into
Speaker 3: the countries where we live in and pouring from the
Speaker 3: country that this war was happening in, and so some
Speaker 3: of our staff evacuated in the first couple of days,
Speaker 3: and then we went, wait, we've got to help with this,
Speaker 3: and so we strategizing. Within five days, we were sending aid.
Speaker 3: We found that the border was a very difficult place
Speaker 3: because the men couldn't but they would come and just
Speaker 3: drop off their wives and kids at the borders and
Speaker 3: sometimes stand there in the middle of winter for three or.
Speaker 2: Four days, then try to get across.
Speaker 3: Then they don't yeah days and with young kids in
Speaker 3: a plastic bag of everything that they own, and then
Speaker 3: they'd get across the border and then try to figure
Speaker 3: out where they were headed next. They didn't speak the language.
Speaker 3: So within five days we began sending tour buses across
Speaker 3: the border to pick up refugees and bringing them back
Speaker 3: and then connecting them with local churches in the country
Speaker 3: surrounding them. So we were taking them into the hands
Speaker 3: of believers who would care for them and really cared
Speaker 3: about them. And we did brought fifty one buses of
Speaker 3: people across the border and then we would send them
Speaker 3: back filled with aid. Now we're not an aid organization,
Speaker 3: we're a use minister organization, but we had to pivot
Speaker 3: and within five days we basically reorganized our whole team
Speaker 3: around helping the situation. But the advantage we had over
Speaker 3: large aid organizations is we know the people everywhere. We
Speaker 3: could pick up a phone and call this past or
Speaker 3: contact this person, and so we were able to get
Speaker 3: aid right to the place where it needed the most.
Speaker 3: We'd get a phone call from someone on the front
Speaker 3: front lines and they'd say we need diapers, and we
Speaker 3: could have them to them in one day. By we
Speaker 3: became the largest buyer of kind of the costco version
Speaker 3: in the Tech Republic, and within in a period of
Speaker 3: a year, we were able to provide seven million dollars
Speaker 3: of aid to Ukraine. And we're not an aid organization
Speaker 3: for the Ministry organization, but we were just channeling that
Speaker 3: to people and we're still very engaged there. We're not
Speaker 3: doing as much aid right now, but actually I talked
Speaker 3: to our team this morning and they're getting ready for
Speaker 3: their summer of ministry. One of the staffs, she's a
Speaker 3: twenty three year old and lives in Nipine, which you've
Speaker 3: seen on the news, and I just talked to her
Speaker 3: about what it's like to be there right right now.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that maybe you don't hear
Speaker 3: about is believers are really stepping forward and the church
Speaker 3: is making a huge difference in Ukraine right now.
Speaker 2: And she talked about she said.
Speaker 3: Last Sunday they had the anniversary of their church in
Speaker 3: it Opine and she said a thousand people were there.
Speaker 1: Wow, Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: She said.
Speaker 3: She said, the church is making such a difference in
Speaker 3: that area. And we'll do thirty seven camps with young people,
Speaker 3: with Ukrainian young people this summer, all the way from
Speaker 3: the front lines, and there'll be thousands of several thousand
Speaker 3: Ukrainian young people in camps that were leaving this summer
Speaker 3: in these next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: As you were telling this, when I was listening to
Speaker 1: this on Sunday, I was just thinking, God knows everything.
Speaker 1: He already saw that before it happened, you know, he
Speaker 1: knew that was where you needed to be, and he
Speaker 1: knew this war would happen. And you tell such a
Speaker 1: different story of the war than we know because we
Speaker 1: know the higher level negotiations, but when you said that men,
Speaker 1: I mean, it brings a tear to my eye when
Speaker 1: you said that men are dropping their wives and children
Speaker 1: at the border. When we hear the people in government
Speaker 1: in the United States saying we want the killing to stop.
Speaker 1: We don't want to lose five thousand men a day,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. We've got to stop this. I think
Speaker 1: about how many of those people were dropped off in
Speaker 1: the cold for three days and never saw that man again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he brings a lot of emotion to
Speaker 3: me as well when you hear that. Just the impact
Speaker 3: on my families. We just we need to pray and
Speaker 3: do everything we can to bring this war to an end.
Speaker 3: It's impacting people every day. So when I talk to
Speaker 3: our staff, they say, yeah, every night, we just hear explosions,
Speaker 3: you know, all through the night, and they're right out
Speaker 3: there in the in the midst of it. Two of
Speaker 3: our team members, well, when one of our team members
Speaker 3: was driving a he's a man in his mid twenties
Speaker 3: with his wife and one and a half year old kid.
Speaker 3: He gets stopped at a police checkpoint and pulled into
Speaker 3: the Army you know, because they have to get the
Speaker 3: men out there to defend the country. So his wife
Speaker 3: is up, she doesn't have a driver's license, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden she's left in the car alone with
Speaker 3: her one and a half year old child, and her
Speaker 3: husband's gone for the foreseeable fewtre sure she doesn't know
Speaker 3: if she'll she'll even see him again. Uh So, And
Speaker 3: and these are men on our staff that are now
Speaker 3: serving in the military. Another one is just walking down
Speaker 3: the streets of the town and got stopped and pulled
Speaker 3: and couldn't even go back to his apartment building. So
Speaker 3: there's there's both the the death and destruction, but there's
Speaker 3: also the ripping of families and uh and in the
Speaker 3: sense in these young families of will I ever see
Speaker 3: my dad again? So as we're working with the young people,
Speaker 3: many of them their fathers are gone, their their their
Speaker 3: fatherless homes, and and they don't know even if they're
Speaker 3: going to get pulled into the military. So really caring
Speaker 3: for the soul of that young generation in Ukraine is
Speaker 3: is crucially important. So we've got seven churches that are
Speaker 3: right on the border, uh right on the front lines,
Speaker 3: and they're pastors who stayed there and their their youth groups.
Speaker 3: Youth group is the only place where young people can
Speaker 3: gather together because their school is all online and all
Speaker 3: the communities are shut down, and there's these there are
Speaker 3: these pastors who are who are shepherding these young people
Speaker 3: right on the front lines. And we'll do seven camps
Speaker 3: with them. And they just said, get us as far
Speaker 3: away from the noise of the bombardment as possible. So
Speaker 3: we're taking them into the mountains in the far West
Speaker 3: and going to give them a week of camp together
Speaker 3: and create community, but also talk about a hope that's
Speaker 3: bigger than just this life, and a hope that's rooted
Speaker 3: in a relationship with God that is independent of what's
Speaker 3: going to happen politically. You know that you have a
Speaker 3: foundation that's deeper than just the circumstances around you.
Speaker 1: I mean, truly truly amazing work that you're doing. I
Speaker 1: just want to before we close this is you are
Speaker 1: second generation, but you've raised a third you're wondering what's
Speaker 1: going to happen with the fourth. But your kids are
Speaker 1: also missionaries, correct, that's right.
Speaker 3: My kids are missionaries, and so we're in third generation missionary.
Speaker 3: So I have a son that serves in Albania, another
Speaker 3: son that serves in czech and a daughter in Germany,
Speaker 3: in the eastern portion of Germany. So yeah, it's in
Speaker 3: the third generation and maybe we'll raise a fourth.
Speaker 1: So tell us tell everybody. I know, as they've listened
Speaker 1: to this about Josiah Venture and everything that you're doing.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of people out there that
Speaker 1: will want to help out. So tell us where they
Speaker 1: can go to find out more about it, how they
Speaker 1: can contribute to what you're doing over in Eastern in
Speaker 1: Central Europe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could down.
Speaker 3: We have a website www dot Josiah Venture and it's
Speaker 3: not Josiah Adventure, it's Josiah Venture. So think of the
Speaker 3: name the King Josiah and then just venture dot com
Speaker 3: and there you can see our different teams. You can
Speaker 3: go in search one of the countries. You can see
Speaker 3: all our Ukraine staff. There's different projects there. But one
Speaker 3: of the things I would just say is if our
Speaker 3: strength is in our national staff, is in our Ukrainians,
Speaker 3: our polls, our checks, our young leaders who are really
Speaker 3: serving on the front lines, and if any of any
Speaker 3: of your listeners wanted to just adopt one of those
Speaker 3: young people that are making a big difference. You'll see
Speaker 3: all all their pictures on our website, or you could
Speaker 3: just write you can write me a note through our
Speaker 3: website and just be a part of what God's doing there,
Speaker 3: which is really exciting.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I love it, I love your story, I
Speaker 1: love what you're doing, and I'm so glad you came
Speaker 1: on to share it today. Dave, Patty, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much as well, and thank.
Speaker 1: You all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon podcast
Speaker 1: for this episode and others. Go to the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 1: make sure you join us next time and have a
Speaker 1: blessed day.