I was born in the Czech Republic in 1992. My father’s family is traditionally Evangelical and my mother’s family is traditionally Roman Catholic. A few years into their marriage my mom began attending church with my father and was converted eventually. We were part of the Moravian Brethren Church. Growing up, I knew about God and His Word but I did not put faith in His Son. When I reached my teenage years I had the simple desire to live as I pleased. Somehow I knew there is God, but I tried to ignore Him, striving to imitate the lives of my non-Christian friends. During my early teenage years, I would hang out with the wrong crowd and be engaged in a worldly lifestyle. The scary part, as I’m thinking about it retrospectively, is that I was doing all these things with the knowledge that there is God. It is obvious to me now, and I must admit I sensed it even back then, that if something would happen during this time of my life and I died, I would not be in the eternal presence of God but eternal separation from Him.

            My older sister, whom God saved out of this lifestyle earlier, saw where I was headed. She had the desire for me to know her Savior and invited me to an English and Sports Summer Camp organized by an evangelical parachurch organization. Since I have always enjoyed sports and this camp was packed with sports and all kinds of activities I agreed to go. There I saw a different kind of Christianity: young people, who were filled with joy and lived very differently from my worldly friends. They lived for Jesus Christ and served him passionately. Each morning and each evening we heard something from the Word of God and it started to convict me of my sinful lifestyle and a rebellious mindset. Under this influence, I repented of my sins and trusted Christ for my salvation around the age of 14 and God began to redirect my life. It took a couple of years, however, to get rid of some sinful habits. It was especially hard for me to get out of the unhealthy, secular environment that I was part of.

            By God’s grace, I was delivered from it during my high school studies. There I began to grow more steadily in holiness and faced opposition from my classmates. Since I have never met any other Christian at school, I began to study Christian literature so I could defend my faith. Virtually every day I had discussions about evolution and the Bible with my classmates.  Even though there was no youth group in my former church and even though I did not know any other Christians in my school, God used this adversity to strengthen my faith. After high school, my idea for the future was to get a good education, a good job and have a nice life and a nice family, and in my free time minister in a local church. I was accepted to a technical university but I decided to first spend a year at a Bible Institute to strengthen my faith and build a solid foundation for my career. God has used that year to redirect my ideas about the future and at the end of it, I began to pursue full-time ministry.

My wife and I were married in October 2014 and since then we have been serving together in a local church in Kroměříž, Czech Republic.