News from Slovakia
Dear Supporters, Friends, and Loved Ones,
We send this letter with gratitude for your friendship and partnership with us as we continue our ministry in this country. We hope that wherever you are, you are experiencing the joy that this season brings.
Worship lies at the heart of any congregation’s ministry, but among the most important work our international congregation does are to provide a sense of community and connection for people who are far from home. The following story illustrates how this recently happened.
This is a story that comes out of our congregation’s choir. We have been successful in building a nice choral program this year. (Since much of our membership turns over every year, we often have to start from scratch in the fall to build a new choir.) Like our entire congregation, our choir is very diverse. At any given practice we have singers from places as varied as the United States, Great Britain, Slovakia, the Ukraine and a couple of different African nations. As we were preparing for an Ash Wednesday service a little over a month ago, one of the songs we practiced was the hymn, "Abide with Me."
At the end of our practice, a woman from Cameroon, who happens also to be a refugee in Slovakia, said she wanted to share something with us about this song. This is what she told us: “When I was a girl my younger brother became very sick and passed away. Very often in the years that followed, I would hear my mother singing ‘Abide with Me’ as she went about her work. When I finally asked her why she did this, she told me ‘Abide with Me’ is the song that was sung at my brother’s funeral. After that, whenever she was feeling weak or sad, this is the song that would give her tremendous strength, because those words, ‘abide with me,’ reminded her how close God was in her moments of sorrow. Because of my mother this song became a symbol for me of God's presence. And when I had to flee my country and ended up here in the refugee camp in Slovakia, I was often so lonely and in such despair. In moments like that I began also to sing this song to myself, and I found it gave me the same strength that it had given my mother. That is why it has meant so much to me to sing it with all of you tonight.”
As we listened to her story, we were touched by the wonder of this night. Here we were, a diverse group of people from around the world sitting in a church in Bratislava, Slovakia, singing an English hymn and connecting with the sorrow and struggles a woman and her family many years ago in Africa. It is an amazing thing to belong to God's global family. We pray that the same comfort that our friend found in this hymn may be yours as you journey once again to the cross and the empty tomb during this season. We close this letter with the final verse of this great hymn. As you read these words, may you again know the victory of Easter.
Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
Pastor David & Carla Schick
About the mission
Slovakia was once part of Czechoslovakia but became an independent nation in the early 1990s, several years after the end of communist rule under the influence of the Soviet Union.
Pastor David and Carla Schick are missionaries in Slovakia, a country attempting to regain its Christian identity. The Rev. Schick serves as pastor of the International Church in Bratislava, teaches religion classes at the Lutheran High School (Lyceum), provides supervision and pastoral care to ELCA missionaries and leads weekly chapel services. Carla Schick works for the theological library at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Bratislava.
The Global Mission Communication Team made contact with the couple in an effort to form a partnership and to share their experiences with All Saints’ congregation. They shared some Slovakian cultural Christmas traditions in the following excerpt from a December 2007 e-mail:
| I would, however, like to add a little to the information about the Christmas Eve dinner. The soup that we've always had is cabbage soup and the fish that is traditionally served is carp! Just before Christmas, Slovaks buy a huge carp (live) from a vendor on the street (the carp are swimming in a vat of water.) The carp is then brought home where it swims in the family bathtub until it is served on Christmas Eve. The drawback to this, as you might imagine, is that the children tend to get attached to the fish! |
Carla Schick added information about their Columbus connections. She wrote:
| It was good to hear from you in Worthington, Ohio. You probably do not know this, but for seven years David was the pastor of a German-speaking congregation in Columbus (just west of German village). That experience has been a great help here in Slovakia, where German is often understood and spoken by many as a second language. When we lived in Columbus I worked first for the Columbus Public Library (Reynoldsburg branch) and then later at the Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center, where I ran the art resource library for all of the art teachers in the Columbus Public School system. |
The Global Mission Team here at All Saints, look forward to continuing to bring you information from our missionaries in Slovakia and hope that we can find ways to create a better partnership with them so we can support them in their missionary work.
David Ozvat
