Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Around the World Wednesday: GUEST POST from Spain.


Our missionary journey began in October of 1999 in Russia.


We spent almost 2 years there, learning the language in Moscow and had just moved to the city of Bryansk to begin our ministry work in church planting when the Lord decided to change our direction of ministry.


In July of 2001 we moved to Prague, Czech Republic to become the first team members of a media team for our region of the world, Central & Eastern Europe (CEE).

Our goal has been to make our area of the world known by using media. We create media pieces to be used and shown to churches and partners in the States, giving them an insight into the work going on among our missionaries and people groups in Europe as well as helping our missionaries use media in their church planting efforts.

For the past 10 years we have been working in the realm of media/communications. Our team and work has changed and evolved and in 2003 Jerry began leading the team. Changes were made in our organization in 2008 which expanded our area of focus from not only CEE, but now including Western Europe. Jerry now leads the Forward Communications Team for the European Affinity of the International Mission Board.

We’ve seen our team grow from 2 units to having as many as 9 units. Right now we have 5 units working in 4 different countries, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Germany and Spain.


Working on websites, videos, writing stories and shooting pictures aren't the only things we do to stay busy. Our family has had the chance of being a part of 2 different church plants in Prague.

There are many Russian speakers from places like Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Russia that move to Prague to start a new life. Most of them learn Czech very easily, but still desire to worship God in their native language. We also encountered many who were seeking not only a new start in life, but a spiritual one as well. We had the opportunity to see many come to know Christ in a personal way and follow in baptism. We began by meeting in homes, but the group outgrew that option after 2 years and is now meeting in the evenings at a local Czech Baptist Church with several Bible Studies meeting throughout the week in various homes as well as its own church plant in another part of the city.


The second ministry opportunity was joining in with several other missionaries to start Bridge Community. A socially conscious organization designed to bring hope to the city of Prague. Some of the ministries through Bridge have been project hands events (picking up garbage, feeding the homeless),


educational classes and seminars (one being a cooking time that I hosted in my home),


English classes, sports outings, etc.


Bridge started out in a hotel breakfast room and has now moved to a new location where another church was once meeting. A much better location for doing ministry!

The Family

In the nine years spent in Czech Republic our family did a lot of changing and growing. We adopted our oldest daughter at 5 months old in October 2005 and then in June 2006 we gave birth to boy/girl twins in Prague.


The Summer of 2010 brought a move to Madrid, Spain for our family. We are still in the same role as before, but having a desire to better know Europe and the missionaries, our team spread out moving us to Spain. It's been a huge change from living in Czech Republic, but a change that we have enjoyed greatly. Our first 6 months here was filled with getting to know our neighbors, introducing ourselves to Spanish culture and food, Jerry attending Spanish classes full time, getting our kids enrolled in preschool and finding ways to be a part of a new community. And we are loving every bit of it.



For more about Tina and her adventures in Spain check out her blog at http://lifeofamissymom.blogspot.com/.

3 comments:

  1. I LOVE your "Around the World" guest post idea! I've been following Tina's blog for a little while now and it's such an inspiration to me. I have a son who is looking to do that type of ministry work one day....it'll be a while...he's 16 now ;)

    I look forward to reading more.

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  2. Thanks Lynn!! I'm glad you are enjoying it! And that's great to hear about your son who is already excited about ministry at 16! That's awesome!!!

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  3. Oh yeah...I nominated you for the Stylish Blogger Award. If you'd like to accept, just go to my blog to see instructions :)

    ReplyDelete

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