EOY 2022 - Personal Update

In March, we lost Natalie’s maternal grandfather, Karel. And just after midnight on Dec. 24, we lost his wife, Natalie’s grandmother, Jitka. For the past several months, Jitka has been in and out of the hospital dealing with a lung tumor. At the end of the November, Jitka went back to the hospital and we were told she would not be leaving.

The last several weekends we have been making the 8 hour round trip back to Cesky Tesin to see her as much as possible and to support Natalie’s mom and brother with the situation. We thought she was going to pass a few weeks back during a day when Jitka was having a particularly hard time breathing. Natalie has been having many spiritual conversations with her grandmother and we felt that she confessed her faith, but in this moment of doubt, Natalie pulled me to the side and asked if I thought she was saved. I told her only God truly knows her heart.
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We went back to the bedside, and as Jitka was wheezing, I quoted John 11:26 to her: “everyone who lives and believes in Jesus shall never die.” I really said this more out of comfort to her and the family than a genuine attempt to evengelize to her. Without a beat she stopped wheezing looked directly at me and said “Yes! True.” I was taken aback by the force of the attestation from this dying woman and looked at Natalie and said, “I don’t think we can get more confirmation than that.”

Losing both maternal grandparents in the same year has been very hard on the whole family and has been a huge preoccupation for us as we are dealing with the loss as well as trying to help manage logistics from Prague. We are comforted by the knowledge that both grandparents confessed Christ as their Lord and savior before their death, and pray for opportunities to continue to present and share the Gospel with the remaining family who have yet to believe.

In the time she can, Natalie continues to study German as she was encouraged to do by several contacts she has through the embassy as the combination of German, English, and Czech is desperately needed by governments and businesses alike right now. She plans to take her B2 fluency exam in March. You can pray for focused time to study before then and for her performance on the test itself.

I have been working steadily on a personal media project with some media connections back in the states. We hope to launch the project in the first quarter of 2023 and I am excited to share the details soon.