The McClures: Following God's Calling Together Pt. 2

What happens when a Spanish class, a watchful RA, and a missions conference set your life on a course you never planned? We sit down with Heath and Jessica to unpack a story that moves from dorm-room discipleship to a two-year Journeyman assignment in Krakow, Poland—complete with the tensions, prayers, and providences that got them there.

If you’ve wondered whether two focused years overseas could reshape your faith, your career, and your courage, this conversation offers a clear path forward. Whether you’re a student, a young professional, or a church leader, you’ll find concrete insight on discerning calling, aligning a marriage around mission, and serving in a way that strengthens both the global church and your home church. Listen, share with someone wrestling through next steps, and consider what obedience might look like for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

And thanks for listening to the From Every Nation podcast, the official podcast of the Tom Alexander Permissions at Oklahoma Baptist University. I'm Kyle and I'll be your host as we learn to live as those sent out to spread the gospel. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the From Every Nation podcast. Today we've got part two of Heath and Jessica's interview. And so if you guys didn't catch part one, make sure you hit pause, go back, and listen to that. We talked about their time growing up in uh Oklahoma and Texas and time at OBU and how they ended up on the mission field. And so we're going to jump in right now with today's episode with what was it like landing in Krakow, Poland, and going to your apartment, figuring things out, realizing, hey, this is it for the next two years. So talk us through that experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Yeah. I mean, the only word that you can use to explain that situation is overwhelming. It is just you are overwhelmed by the people you're meeting. Our team was incredible, really gracious, picked us up from the airport, but you walk out, and there's 15 people there who are all just so happy to see you.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

Children.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

And children. And you just got off this crazy long flight. You're jet lagged. You are looking disgusting. And they're talking to you. And then uh then we met uh Kirsten and Albert, and they drove us back and just talking to them. Like, where am I? Like, I've never been to Europe. I've never been to Poland. They're so barely been out of Oklahoma. Yeah, barely. I'm just like, what? What is going on?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

They're so excited to see you, though. They're so excited you're there. And you're like, I just I want to sleep. I don't know where I am.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

I can't handle your excitement right now. I need you to tone it down.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Yeah. I need less from you. And then we ended up going out. Our team leader, Matt, he's great. And he was like, you got to stay up. So he's like, we're going out to dinner with the whole team.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Well, but before that, they took us to our apartment. Remember?

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Well, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

I just remember walking into our apartment for the first time. It was like a communist cinder block building. And our key was probably, I don't know, six inches long. Like it looks like it goes to a castle. And I just was like, this is where I'm living. It's like all wood, just concrete everywhere. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

You walk in, you're like, welcome home.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Were you guys in the same apartment the whole time? Yes. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yes, we were.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Yeah. But we got lucky.

unknown 2:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

But it, yeah, it was it was a lot just to come in, put all your suitcases down, and you're like, all right, this is home. Like normally you get to choose, but they just tell you. So that was it.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

And then yes, we went to dinner.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah. So then we went to dinner with the whole team. And our team at that point was massive because at that time it was right after the war in Ukraine had started. And so all the units in Russia, uh, Ukraine had been funneled elsewhere. And so we got a massive influx of those units. And so our team had doubled uh a couple months before we had landed. So we go to dinner and there are people everywhere, children running around. It is just mass chaos. And so from there, we had to go to the mall and get our phones worked out and get those basics. And our team leader had to head out from there. So he says, You guys got it from here. And we're like, You can get home from here? You're good, right? You dropped a pin, right? Yeah. We're like, no. He's like, well, just get on the 179 bus and it'll take you right there. I'm like, I've never ridden a bus before. Like, what are you even talking about? So have you ever been to Oklahoma? We don't have Yeah. We have cool. We barely use public transportation. Yeah, like, come on. So we eventually get on the right bus. We take a couple wrong turns, but we make it home.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

And it seems like the mall is so far away though from our apartment.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

I just remember feeling like we went around the whole city to get back. And realistically, it was like a seven-minute bus ride.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Yeah. It's really not bad. After two years, like did that in my sleep. But that first day, it was just pure chaos. And like you're scared. You're like in this different place you don't know about and got to figure it out. But we did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

So what was orientation like? So you're you land as a journeyman, you know you're gonna be there for two years. You understand, I guess you understand your job description, but like walk us through what you understood your job description to be, and how did you get started doing it? What was orientation like?

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Well, so there's a lot to it. Basically, I would say we had our team leader and his wife. They oriented us. They, you know, they do the best that they can to help you understand the team, their expectations of you, the job itself, all these types of things. And so they were very helpful, very supportive. Um, but basically they did that, and then we're like, all right, go out and kind of learn the city. Uh, they teach you a lot at FPO with IMB, is you do a lot of entry. And so just go and do entry, learn about the place you're in, figure out uh where you're living and what God is doing in these different pockets of the city. And so we did that for a bit, but as we really started to dive into ministry, we had an expectation from the beginning that this was an established, almost BCM type ministry with a lot of students already involved, and that we were gonna be focused more on discipleship. Uh, if you know the missionary task, that it was later on that we were gonna have believers discipling them, uh equipping them to go out and do the work. Well, we showed up, and that was not exactly the case. Uh, we were in fact doing more pioneer ministry, that there were not very many believers at all. I think we had one regular believer, uh, and then two, another one that came occasionally, but most of our students coming were non-believers, no uh relationship with Jesus, were not involved in the Protestant churches that we had there. And so a lot of our work was just finding students and sharing the gospel and uh getting them to come to faith.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Yeah, I think some of it too had to do with the time that we arrived. Our team was in a lot of transition, lots of new people showing up, but also the the unit that had primarily been leading the university ministry had just left. And the people that were still there, I think were kind of wanting to change some things a little bit, to change some direction and things, but everybody was in full-time language that was doing university ministry. And then we showed up, and then also there was a professor whose classroom our team had been going into, but then she was on sabbatical for that next year. So we couldn't go into her classroom. So there was just a lot of transition with the main people leaving and all of that stuff happening in the background. And so I think that just created an environment of like, we're gonna have to figure out what to do because the students that had been coming stopped coming. And then we just had to go out and find new students. And so I don't know that we had, we didn't have any sort of orientation in that regard of like, this is how you can go find new students, like this is what you're supposed to do. The job description was work with university students and share the gospel with them. And I don't know that we really had anybody tangibly saying this is how you can go do this practically on a Tuesday. We had lots of help with lifestyle things in Poland. I don't know if you felt that way.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

But when we first landed, we had lots of people take us, like grocery shopping. This person took us to the post office to teach us how to pay rent because you pay your rent at the post office in Poland. And yeah, taking us to IKEA, I think just helping us with small lifestyle things, just learning how to live in Poland, which you definitely need that when you land in a foreign country. Um, so we had lots of orientation on that side. But as far as like how do you practically do your job today, I think we kind of just had to figure it out. But not all of that was due to lack of orientation. There was just a lot of change happening, and we just kind of had to pioneer it and figure out how to do it.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

I don't think anyone on our team had the answer at that point. So we had to go figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

And most of our team was in full-time language when we landed. So their their capacity, and and especially with having tiny children in the home too, like their capacity to help us figure out how to do every day was just a little different.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

So how did you figure it out?

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Well, it took I'd say about six months for us to really figure it out. Uh, we landed end of March, like Jessica said, and then we went to uh basically a Europe-wide conference in Amsterdam in uh late July, early August of 2023. And there we met this couple, and they are truly amazing. They are the university catalysts um for Europe. They lead the work in reaching university students all across the continent of Europe. And so we met them and told them that that was our job, what we were doing, and they said that they were going to do a cohort in the fall and go more in depth on the work of university ministry. We're like, that sounds good. Because at this point, we didn't know what we were doing. My days consisted of going to parks, playing basketball, just trying to meet people. We didn't have that many students coming at that point. It was also the summer, it was the summer, but even before that.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, at that point we had a few rhythms set up, like we had had some university meetings within our team, and we had established the weekly rhythm of going prayer walking on university campus.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

But that was the first time that had started.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yes, that was the the first time, and so we were at that point, we were already kind of dreaming and talking through what university ministry could look like. And then yeah, we went to that conference.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah. And so through talking to them, uh, we said, put us on the list. We want to be part of this cohort. And so it started up in October, and so that's when we really started to figure out what to do on for reaching university students. This cohort was so beneficial, and none of it is just like groundbreaking, like light bulb type stuff. It's very simple, and yet I think they just gave us permission to do things that we didn't necessarily feel empowered to do before. So a lot of it was just go on campus. They asked us, like, are you going on campus? Is anyone on your team? We said, No, hadn't really thought about this. Like, well, then go try it. And so we began to just go on campus and to talk to students. Uh, we would engage them with um, we would do Instagram surveys, have a tiny mic and go around and just like do these little videos. We would uh just try different things. Like, actually, uh, Kyle, when you came, we went to a campus and played spike ball out there and uh just got students to be interested in that. We were out there, actually, y'all were some of the first ones uh incoming that we began to just experiment with. We brought a backpack full of hot chocolate. Yep. And we would just pass out hot chocolate to students and just try and talk to them that way. We uh, and then one of the big things was we also just began to share the gospel on campuses. Um, I wouldn't say that we had full permission to do this, but there also wasn't just a huge gate blocking us from doing this. So we'll just walk on and be somewhat discreet and actually engage students with uh we did a lot of surveys, like spiritual surveys of uh in the last 90 days, have you Googled spiritual things? Have you uh prayed more, these types of things, or uh what do you believe gives you hope in life? So these types of questions, we would use that to start conversations with students and lead to um being able to share the gospel with them. And it was just, I think it really just gave us a sense of purpose of wow, this is what it looks like. Uh a lot of times people didn't want to talk to us. It was hard. Um, the conversations didn't go well, but it gave us a sense of this is the hard work necessary to actually reach university students to go to where they are to engage them in the places where they are already congregating. Um, and to not just expect them to come to us, which I think was the real shift for us in early on.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Yeah, we just started to put some tangible things in place that we could write down, I think, just on a sheet of paper for the week. Like we uh up to that point, our team had mostly engaged with one campus, maybe two. And there's like what, 10 universities in Krakow? And so we started like we made an Excel spreadsheet of like, this is how we're gonna rotate which campus we're going to just to engage different students. But then the cohort talked a lot about the difference in inviting students to come to your English club, but also sharing the gospel. And so we like set aside a separate day for like on this day, we're gonna go and purely advertise, purely just try to talk to students, invite them to come to English club. But then on this day, we're gonna go and share the gospel. That is the intent. We're not talking about English club, we're trying to get to the gospel. And so, and then we continued with prayer walking as well. So I think just having those tangible things of like, this is what we're gonna do this week, this is where we're gonna do it, and this is how we're going to do it was really helpful to give some sort of order to what we were doing because the task of just go and trade the gospel with university students with Polish people is such a broad task.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Like we had to take it down to You need some drill downs to like put a pin in and say, this is how we're doing blank.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yes, how to do it. And then on our side too, like just to have some accountability to say that this is what we are doing, this is the way that we are seeking to fulfill the Great Commission in Krakow.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Yeah, we really just developed a plan, I would say is the way to summarize it is that we came up with a plan of how we're gonna do what Jessica said, the Great Commission in Krakow with university students.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

So what well, I want to know kind of what those tangible things were. I'd love to walk through like what your rhythm was. You know, we were prayer walking and we were sharing the gospel. How'd you share the gospel? What worked, what didn't work, uh, those different things. Talk to us specifically about the English club. Like what did you all do? What did you all talk about? How do those work? I want to get to all that, but before we get there, I think it's fair for our listeners for us to talk briefly about the status of spirituality in Poland, the status of Christianity, the political history of Poland, like what makes Poland what it is, and this current generation of college students who they are.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yeah, the legacy of Poland is honestly a very sad history in that they border Germany to their west and Russia to their east, and have basically been taken over by both countries uh back and forth through for the last three, four hundred years. And uh some of the most notable times were in World War II. Germany took over, um, set up concentration camps and uh systematically committed genocide against Polish people, Jews. So that happened, but then right after that, the Soviet Union, Russia, came and took over and essentially set up a puppet state of communism that lasted until 1989. So it's a sad, very sad and depressing history in Poland. And the people are shaped by that. You can't show up um to Poland and go in without understanding at least some of that history because it really helps you to understand why people are the way that they are. For instance, uh the first week when we landed in Poland, I, being from Texas, living in Oklahoma, I'm just used to walking down the street saying, Hey, how are you? How's it going? And I learned those words in Polish. And so I was just trying to practice it with people, and I got the weirdest looks. People would just glare at me, people would keep their head down, like not even say anything back. And I thought these were the rudest people I had ever talked to. But as I began to understand the history, I realized why they wouldn't say that. Because during communist times, you you could be viewed as suspicious or reported to the police if you uh talk to your neighbors or um talk to a stranger. And so that has continued in the culture that they just keep to themselves. You don't talk to people, you mind your own business. And that was hard for me. But in understanding um the Polish people, you you get a sense of that. Um and I don't know, you can jump in whenever you want.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

You're doing great with your history lesson.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Okay. Well, essentially all of that has trickled into their spirituality as well. That the one thing that helped the Polish people survive communism was the Catholic Church. Uh, and specifically Pope John Paul II. He was the Archbishop of Krakow for many, many years before he became uh Pope John Paul II in the 70s. And he really provided a beacon of hope to the Polish people. They saw him as, well, he made it out and he's he's making a difference, so we can endure this as well. He spoke out against communism, against the Soviet Union, and he was a rally point for uh the Polish people. So uh that made it on the one hand, very thankful for his political contributions and for the fall of uh communism and the Soviet Union, but on the other hand, he made it to where it is uh almost a it is a cult following of communism or of sorry of Catholicism, uh specifically tied to him. It's there's kind of a big three. It's Mary, Pope John Paul II, and then Jesus and like a second tier. They literally worship Mary and Pope John Paul II and Jesus to a lesser degree. Like they love these people, they pray to them, they uh they do everything is uh specifically for Mary and the Pope. And in fact, just as a little aside, ever the specific time when the Pope died, it was around 927 a.m. Every single day, you will still find people who stop whatever they're doing and pray to the Pope in that moment because they love this man that much, like he has a cult. And so that just gets into where Poland is at nowadays, is that Roman Catholicism dominates, but more so on a cultural level than religious level, that the and Jessica says this well, but to be Polish is to be Catholic, that it's ingrained into their culture, that they were all baptized at birth, they all went through confirmation uh when they're around 10, they have all gone through these sp their first communion, they've done these specific steps that make them into a Polish person, and con or uh Catholicism is ingrained into that identity. And so coming in and saying, hey, uh is the Catholic Church actually teaching the Bible? Is are they proclaiming the gospel? Does it align with scripture and pushing against the Catholic Church, it really ruffles feathers for a lot of people because uh when you question the Catholic Church, you're you're coming at them in a sense. And I I I will say there are probably some true believers in the Catholic Church, but in Poland, there the Catholic Church is not proclaiming the gospel. Um, it is not helping people to actually know uh salvation through grace alone, by faith alone, and Christ alone. And so we just came in telling people uh we're not concerned about denominations, all these things. We want you to have a personal relationship with Jesus. And the end result of that was you would end up in a Protestant church because you can't really stay in the Catholic Church with that. But uh we wanted people to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

So I want to pause you for a second. Uh you've said two or three times now, but it's just second nature to you at this point. But I want you to explain to our audience why are you saying Protestant church?

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Mm-hmm. So you have to distinguish yourself in Poland because they they would all tell you that they're Christian. Any person on the street would say that they're Christian. Like it would be rare, even if we found a student who said that they're atheist, for them to also not say that they're Christian.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Yeah, they would say, like, well, I'm an atheist, but I'm a Christian because I'm Polish.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

And it interesting, yes. It hurts our heads. Like it it does not make sense, but for them, you cannot believe in God, be atheist, and still be a Christian. So we really tried to make ourselves clear that we were Protestant. We didn't say Baptist as much because that kind of they didn't even know what that was.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

They think you're a cult if you say you're Baptist.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Yeah. But they at least have a sense that okay, Protestant, it's not a cult, it's not Catholic, but it's just it's a different thing. So that's kind of how we would uh present ourselves as past.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Because of the presence of like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses there, if we said Baptist, they kind of just said, oh, you're with them. But if you said Protestant, they have a separate category of like you're not the cult, but you're not Catholic. So that was just a helpful, helpful term. But yeah, I think for everything that Heath just said about Poland with Catholicism is true, but it's true to a lesser degree with the university students, especially younger people. Really, what they have is like enough familiarity with the Bible and the church to say, yeah, I've done it, I've been baptized, I've I've done the thing, and I reject it and to move on. And so most of what we had was like, you would almost have to teach this is what the Catholic Church has taught you. You have never read the Bible, you don't know what any of this actually means, and help them see how that is wrong and then teach them what the gospel actually says. And so, in some ways, I think it's harder working with people that have some familiarity with the Bible. The Catholic Church is somewhat teaching the Bible, you know, enough for them to say that I reject it, but trying to teach them to care about what the Bible says again to help them undo all of this hurt, all this baggage that they have and really point them to the truth. And so it was just a muddled mess of like postmodern Gen Z stuff, but with like a little hint of Catholicism, enough for them to know that they don't like it or to somehow kind of identify with it, even though they don't really believe what it says.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Yeah. To provide a number for this, the percentage of evangelical Protestants who believe the Bible, have a personal relationship with Jesus, it's about 0.18% in Poland, which for context is lower than countries like Saudi Arabia. It you wouldn't think it because Poland is a Christian country. I'm using air quotes, but it's really not. There are hardly any evangelical Protestant believers in the country, even though most people would call themselves Christian.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Yeah, that's the that fits into the crazy stat that I hear coming from European personnel, where they say Europe is the most lost continent on earth per capita. It's true, yeah. So factoring in population, they're the most lost continent in the world, which is just crazy to me. I know. Uh the shift that has happened in the last decades, right? Um and we're depending on how things go, on pace to do it here. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

So I there's something that can be maybe um exhortation to listeners is the Lord really has been um using 2 Timothy 2.2 to speak to me, and just how Paul says, what you have heard from me in the presence of many faithful witnesses, and trust uh it's a faithful men also who will themselves be able to teach others. And it's that word entrust that the Lord really um put on my heart that if you don't entrust the gospel to others, then the result is Europe. Uh honestly. They did not, they had the gospel. The reformation happened there. Martin Luther uh was there, John Calvin was there, uh, these incredible figures, um, the Puritans, um, Baptists literally started in England. Uh, Europe has a rich legacy of Christianity, but that's all it is today is a legacy that they did not entrust the gospel, and today they find themselves as the most lost continent. And like you said, it could easily happen in the US that we can't take for granted where we're at.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah, it's sad, but there's a great need, great need and a lot of work to be done. So tell us about the English club. What was that? What did you do? What was the structure?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

So, we the week before we landed, actually, I think our team um just got a building that we rented. And so it isn't funded by the Lottie Moon offering. It was something that our team had to fundraise and is continuing to fundraise to pay the rent every month. Um, but there's a church that meets there, lots of other random organizations meet there. But Ukrainians, the FCA group would meet there sometimes and just different people. But, anyways, that was the space where we had our English club every Wednesday night. And so it was roughly two hours. We tried to talk about things that were not on the surface, like, what do you believe about Jesus? But things that were deeper questions that would lead to discussions of like worldview that led to spiritual discussions and that kind of thing. Because we were kind of connected with the university classroom, like we didn't want to get that professor in trouble. And we also didn't want to do the bait and switch of like, here, come practice English, and now I'm gonna shove the gospel down your throat. And so we talked about different things. Man, I'm really blinking on conversation topics that we had.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Talked about emotions, emotions, yeah. We talked about uh racism and like priorities, yeah, success.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Yeah, just just like life topics, life topics. Yeah, life topics that would get them talking, get them thinking on a deeper level that can lead to spiritual conversations.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

And we would try to talk about things that could have like a spectrum of opinion on. And so, like as a student and talked about their perspective on marriage and family, like being able to contrast that with, okay, well, as a believer, this is what what I would say, or this is what the Bible would say about marriage and family. And so we would do different things. Sometimes we would watch movies, like a section of a movie. We did the Barbie movie one time to talk about um, as it was International Women's Day, which is a huge deal in Europe. Um, so we we would do different things like that. Um, but we also tried to shift the focus a little bit from purely academic to community as well. And so once a month we would do just kind of a fun night, just play games or something like that. And we started to invite our Polish churches to come. And some of those people don't speak English, and so we would kind of market it as like this is not an English conversation night. This is just coming out, come have fun. Um, I think the studies have shown that that's like what gin. Is wanting is like community. And so we tried to provide a space for that. And really our hope was that our Polish students that were coming could see what a Polish believer looked like. That it's not just the Americans that are these weird Protestants, but that there's also Polish people that believe that. And so yeah, the structure for every week, they would just kind of come in and hang out for maybe 30 minutes and kind of like youth group, you know, we'd play a game and then we would present whatever topic we were talking about, um, have some sort of big group discussion and then usually break into small groups and talk for, I don't know, about an hour and then just hang out afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

So yeah. And those how successful were those meetings to leading towards additional like outside contact and like opportunities to share and have life-on-life relationships with students.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

It was super successful. Like that's what we found as we went out and just engaged students on campus, because that was really the only way that we could get students to come to our English club was just to go find them. And so, like, if we could get them to come to English club, then at that point they were very willing to friend us on Instagram and get coffee. And it was really in those meetings that we were able to get to know them better, but to have opportunities to share the gospel. And then if we would get them to come to coffee, then they really would continue to come to our English club, continue to meet up with us. And then we hosted a Bible study every Thursday in our house in English. And sometimes they would even come to that. But I think it was through them taking a chance to come on the invite of this random American that walked up to them, being willing to come into our space, see that we're kind of normal, you know, we we just want to hang out with them and love them and and that being willing to meet up with us outside of that.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yeah, you could almost think about it like a funnel. I know uh admissions has used this type of analogy, but it it really is that you have the top of the funnel, the the larger um section, and that was kind of us just going out, engaging students uh where they were. But if they came to Breakthrough, that was huge. That was even a step down the funnel. And then if we uh got to meet with them in person one-on-one, then that went down and so on and so on. So hopefully the bottom of the funnel is that they are a believer uh connected to one of the local churches that we had there. Um, but it, I mean, it's a lot of stages. And one of the things that we actually introduced that was a game changer for us that Kyle, you were a big part of was uh a back to school party. Oh, yeah, that um your church, Emmanuel Baptist Church, played a big role, and they still do a great partner for the work in Krackel. Uh, but just bringing you guys in, and we just got pizza, you you did giveaways, gave away OBU gear. There's Polish university students walking around with I'm a bison shirt on right now because of the all. There really are. And all the uh all the gear and games, and just we did a big night of trying to get students at the start of the semester to come and check us out, and it was a huge hit every single time we did it. We passed out a thousand flyers and ended up having around 50 students come, which there's no way our space could hold a thousand people. No, right, no way, but that's like how many you have to pass out just to get 50.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

That's the funnel, right? Yeah, if I pass out this many flyers, I'll get this many contacts. If I get this many contacts, I can have coffee with this many people. Yep. And it's just how the funnel works.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Exactly. And the ultimate goal is you're trying to find the spiritually open people. That's why we do what we do is that the Lord isn't actively working on everyone's heart, but he is calling some out of the harvest, and we want to find those people, but we don't know where they are. So that's why we do that whole funnel idea and these big events is so uh after that, I mean, not all 50 stuck around, but you know, 10 would, and those 10 were more committed. And then of those 10, uh, maybe three were spiritually open and seeking. And then we could really go deep with those three. We could really spend more time with them and continue to read scripture with them and answer their questions.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah, but that really is why we continued, even with English Club, to go out on campus and just do broad evangelism, because we never wanted to get in a place where the only students that we were talking to were the ones that were willing to come to us. Like we still had a real conviction that the Lord was calling us to go out and find new students. And we really there was one girl that I met in doing evangelism that I continued to have a relationship with. Like we're still texting, but she she came to my very last English club, but she never stepped foot in in our English club while we were there. But we really wanted to continue to go out and find people because we knew very few were gonna actually be willing to come to an English club on a random invite from a foreigner.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Right. That's just one mode of engagement, right? And there are so many varieties of personalities and interests that you gotta have a variety of methods of engagement. Yeah, that makes sense. So talk to us then. When you think about your time in Poland, think about the the most, I don't know if it's fair to say, successful, fruitful, profitable, life-giving ministry that you guys had, or relationships that you were able to build. And talk us through those and what did you see the Lord do? Just brag on the Lord for a bit of what you saw him do while you all were in Poland.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

I would say, well, there's a couple that I want to say, but the one that I'll really boast in the Lord about is my friend Darek. Um, Darek is my best friend in Poland. And when I first met him, I met him our second week at the English club, and he came up to me and introduced himself. He is funny. He studied English in university, and he's obsessed with specifically American accents, even more specifically, like Southern accents, and really specifically Texas accents.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Matthew McConaughey.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

Yes, he loves Matthew McConaughey, and his favorite thing to do is walk around and say, all right, all right, all right. But if you can conceptualize a thick Polish accent trying to also sound Texan, that's about what you get. It's this strange Slavic Texan, all right, all right, all right. Like it, it's just not what you really expect.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

But not going to be Matthew's voice actor.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

No, no. But he he tried. He he loved to give it his best shot. And so his English was essentially perfect. Like there was almost nothing that he didn't know in English. And so we spent a lot of time together. We had a lot of similar interests and hobbies and things that we like to do. And so we just started being friends. But um, it was that first night when we met, one of his initial questions to me was So, what do you think about evolution? And I was like, Well, nice to meet you too. I'm Heath. And but from that, it really go to coffee first. Yeah, let's go to coffee. So the first time we met up, uh, we actually got Mexican food at a knockoff Chipotle in uh Krakow. And we talked and I fully shared the gospel. There's an illustration I used countless times uh from David Platt's book Radical about the mountaintop, and uh all religions are trying to go up the mountain, but uh in Christianity, God comes down the mountain to us. And I use that using a water bottle. I think at that uh Mexican place I used like the napkin holder. But just I communicated this idea to Darek that um the difference in Christianity is that Jesus has come to us. And he's like, that sounds good. And but he was still very closed off. Um, but to make this long story short, we continued to meet, but it had been probably eight months and he was not moving anywhere spiritually. I would bring it up. He wasn't interested, and I was just like, Well, I don't know, I should probably prioritize other people who are more open. But it was around that time we met up, and somehow we started talking about Ephesians 2, and I really just laid it on this guy. I was like, look, man, Ephesians 2 is true. You are dead in your sins, and Jesus makes you alive. He is the only one who can wake you up and give you true life. He was like, you could see it. He was something in him had changed. The Holy Spirit had had done some work in him before, and he was really starting to get it. And so from there, we started to meet up pretty regularly. I would say every week, every other week, and we started to read through the Bible together. We started to just go deeper into these questions about the gospel. And so, fast forward, that was about October of 2023, uh, moving forward to July of 2024. We were out of the country on vacation with Jessica's family who had come to visit. And we, while we're gone, I get a text from one of my friends at church and he says, Hey man, Darek was at church today, which wasn't that shocking. Um, he'd been there a couple times, but he's like, Dark was at church today, and he said that he was coming as a person with faith in Jesus. And I'm like, Whoa, that's crazy. Like I Darek knew at this point what that meant. He wouldn't just say that. I'm like, what? Like, we need to talk about this. He's like, Yeah, we're we're gonna go out to dinner on Tuesday. Like, you need to be there. Uh, like we're gonna talk about this more. And so we go out to dinner actually at that same Mexican place, and we're there talking, and uh, we all are just like, Dark, do you understand what you're saying? He's like, Yeah, I believe Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, that there's no other way to the Father except through him. Like, I want to follow him every day in my life, I want to um carry my cross and obey him. And we're just like, what? I just gave me chills. I know. Like that genuinely, as we were talking about with Europe, you never see believers, you never see people come to faith. It's I'm just like, is this happening right now? Like, what is going on? And just it was so sincere and so genuine. Um, was he reading the word or was he just googling or he was reading through um a lot of the New Testament at that time? And actually, one thing that the Lord used, which I'm not gonna uh necessarily endorse in every circumstance, but he was watching the chosen, and he from that just really got this picture of Jesus. And he was like, I love Jesus, like the way that he cares for people, the way that he loves people who are hurting, and he takes time for the lowly. He's like, I feel so overlooked by society, like I don't have a job. Um, he's like, My life is just really struggling, but Jesus cares about people like me. And I'm telling you, I was just like blown away by when he was saying that. And so he was it was the combination of the chosen, reading the word, um, talking to myself, but pastors at the church, other believers, that uh it all just clicked for him. And the Holy Spirit opened up his heart and he came to faith. And so from that, uh I was like, all right, I gotta start discipling this guy. I pulled out all my FPO material. I'm like, let's go. I'm gonna train him in like the 411, all the fields and everything. And so I started trying to do this, but I quickly realized that Darek knew nothing about anything that has to do with Christianity. Like he was, he didn't even have like any background knowledge for me to go off of. So we would start trying to do these things, and then he would just get derailed and want to ask, like, what about Abraham? Like, what happened with him? Or like, how does how do you read the Old Testament? And so a lot of our time was spent answering his questions. He wanted to understand the Bible. One of the helpful tools was the grand meta-narrative of scripture, walking him through the whole story of the Bible so he could see how it fit and it was just one big story. Um, and one of the amazing things was this last February, we were out of town and we got back and we were meeting up, and he realized during this meeting that his fiance, who he had gotten engaged to the year before, that she was also lost and that she needed to hear about Jesus. And not only that, but he was like, I'm the one who needs to tell her about Jesus. And it was just so cool. Like, I like it was cool when he came to faith, but this was almost as cool. I was like, he gets it. He realizes that he's the one who needs to go tell his family. And so we walked through how he can share the gospel, uh, how he can answer questions, and he felt prepared. And so he went back to his house and he didn't end up sharing the gospel with her. But we continued to pray, continued to encourage him. And uh, so he did end up talking to her, and he's still standing on his principles as he is a born-again Protestant believer that her family, his fiancé's family hates. Uh, is not popular with his family, and yet he's standing true to that, continuing to uh to talk to his fiance about these things and um do life with believers. So he has a lot of room to grow. Um, I pray for him regularly that he wouldn't be like the soil that Jesus talks about, that uh that the seed sprouts up amongst thorns and gets choked out, but that he would be the seed that falls on good soil and bears much fruit. But we don't know for sure. So continuing to pray for him.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Wow, yeah. What a story.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Hard to follow that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

But like uh for you, I mean when you were in poem, what what were some of your favorite ministry moments?

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Goodness, there were there really were so many, but I think the the sweetest relationship that the Lord gave me was in my friend Carolina. She showed up to our church in was it January of 24. Um, it was her and her fiance, and they had never been a part of a church before. They were both from like Catholic background believers, or yes, Catholic background believers. Their families were super Catholic, but they independently became believers and had just been in their small churches, small towns where there were no churches. And so she had been like reading the Bible on her own, and her and her fiance were like doing their best to grow in the Lord as much as they could. But then they moved to Krakow for university and they showed up at our church. And so she was like 20 years old, had never been in a church before, but just so eager and so excited to read the word. And so there were several other girls in that demographic in our church, but they had all grown up as like second generation believers, which is pretty uncommon in Poland. But I think for them, church was a little bit of an option, if that makes sense. Like they were really, they were believers and loved the Lord, but had just kind of gotten stuck with the busyness of school and life and hadn't made church and like Bible study specifically the greatest priority for them. But Carolina shows up and is just so excited about everything and just so eager to read the word. And there was one day that she was telling me that she had thought she had to read like 10 chapters of scripture every day and like how she was struggling to keep up with her reading plan. I was like, Carolina, you don't have to read 10 chapters of the Old Testament every day. And so, anyway, so some of the other girls had kind of stopped wanting to meet together, just wanted to take a break, but Carolina was like, No, I want to meet and we're gonna read the Bible together every week. And so I got to meet with her really for a lot of the time that we were there. And then one day I had was telling her that we had been going on campus to do evangelism to talk to people just about the gospel. And she was like, Well, I've never done that before, but I want to come. And so she always heard us talk about evangelism as Eevee, but she thought it was like Eevee IE. So she would always text me and be like, when are we going to go do Eevee this week? And so her English, it was she could communicate, but man, she just really said the wrong thing all the time. And it was so fun to watch. Um, but anyway, so since she had never actually shared the gospel before, I got to walk her through like what does it look like to share the gospel and got to see her practice it. I showed her how to do it and then she practiced it. And then uh she said that she she was ready to go out for Eevee with us. And so she told me, since she had never done it before, that she she didn't want to say anything, she just wanted to watch. And I was like, Carolina, you're you can do this. Like you're so mature, like you know what to say. And you're a Polish person, but she was really adamant that she didn't, she didn't want to do it. And so we go out for evangelism. The first person we walk up to doesn't speak English. I was like, Carolina, this is your chance. Like, I cannot talk to this person, but you can. And so I got to watch her um just share the gospel in Polish. I have not much of an idea of what she said. I'm sure she stumbled through it, but um, she was faithful to do it. And I got to watch her continue to do that and then eventually convince her fiance to go out with us and do evangelism. And so um that was just a really, really sweet thing to see the Lord take a Polish person, really captivate their heart with the gospel and with the local church there and be excited to go out and share the gospel um with lost people. And then I also got to see just in this last year, um, her really become convicted that she needed to share the gospel with her family, much like Darek. She wasn't, it wasn't like she didn't know that they were non-believers. She was just really afraid. And so getting to see her um get baptized and then um just become bold enough to share the gospel with her family. And they were really mean to her and really rejected her, but she she wasn't disheartened at all. You know, she continued to have a burden um for them. And even last week when I talked to her, she was telling me about how she's just continuing to share the gospel with her family and looking for those opportunities. But um, I think that was a really cool thing to see because even as we left, like I had such a confidence that Carolina was gonna continue being there with her friends, with her family, the people in her university classroom, and was gonna continue the work that honestly that we were not even able to do, she's able to do it to such a better extent, but to know that it is continuing was a really cool thing to see.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

That's awesome. So, in Polish culture, when people like your friend or just anyone who comes to faith in Christ, in both situations that we just talked about, you mentioned their families not liking it. Talk to us about what it means for a pole to accept Christ and how that affects their their life, their family relationships, etc.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

Yeah. Obviously, it's not to the same extent of like somebody coming out of Islam, but in some ways I think it is kind of similar because it is so tied to their cultural identity that their families see it as them like just rejecting culture. And so I know as I've talked to Carolina, like she is an active member of a Protestant church. She goes every week, she reads her Bible, talks about Jesus, but in her family's eyes, she's an atheist and they see that she's rejected the true church and they think that she's not a believer, which is just crazy for atheists. Yes, they think that she's an atheist because she doesn't go to the Catholic Church. And so I think for the super Catholic families, there's that kind of sentiment, like you've walked away from the faith, like you're no longer believing the truth. And then for the more like culturally Catholic people, there's just the aspect of like you're not a part of this family, like you've rejected being a Polish person. Like you're not gonna raise your children in the Catholic Church, you're not gonna baptize them, just a real sense of tension of like you have left what our family has done because they were raised up in the Catholic Church. And so to leave is really to reject what your grandma and and your parents have taught you. And sometimes there really is a separation of like they don't spend time together anymore and they're expected just to go do their own thing.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

You become an outcast to society in a sense that Darek talked about often of feeling like he didn't fit in because he was Polish, but he wasn't of the same religion anymore, and that that automatically just excluded him in people's eyes from uh this overall sense of Polish unity that they have. And so it's a really hard thing. Like you in choosing to follow Christ and with that choosing to be part of a healthy local church, like you are accepting consequences of um being shunned and of your family uh at minimum disagreeing with you, but potentially even worse, uh pushing you out and wanting nothing to do with you anymore. So there there is certainly persecution that takes place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

More like societal pressural persecution, per se. Yeah, yeah. So how did the Lord grow you all personally? When you think of when you you've been home for a couple months, been able to reflect on your time, and obviously um you're probably doing some self-reflection throughout, but how has the Lord grown you and strengthened your relationship with him in the last two years?

SPEAKER_02 52:48

I I would say personally I have a deeper dependence on the Lord than I ever have because in Poland it was just you know, our we love our church, but there wasn't we weren't really fed by our church uh in the sense that we weren't always getting it from the sermons, they were in Polish, translated. There were other factors as well, and uh it it could have been a really spiritually dry season, but I think and because of that, Jessica and I both like made it a non-negotiable part of our lives that we were going to spend time with the Lord daily, and it was hard. I mean, we were lonely at times, like we were frustrated and uh having to figure things out, and yet we could depend on the Lord, knowing that He would sustain us and get us through. And so I was just like, All right, Lord, I need you. I even today, like I wake up and that's the prayer that I say, like, I need you, Lord. Like I can't get through this day apart from you. Um, you give me all that I need in you. And I think too, uh ministry and like personally, it's given me a new burden for the lostness around me. Like I served at a church before we moved to Poland, but I never thought about lostness around me. I never thought about how I could be playing a factor in reaching people with the gospel. And now I think about that all the time. Like that's one of the main drivers in me serving uh in student ministry at this church is that I want to see lost students in Chickasay, Oklahoma come to faith in Christ. And knowing that I have uh a role to play in that, not necessarily through me being the one to always go take the gospel to them, but equipping and empowering the students who are here at the church to go and do that work. And everything I learned in Poland is playing a role in helping me to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 54:50

Yeah, that's good. I would affirm all of those things. Um but probably through FPO, the word that they just drill into you is abide. Like you wake up hearing about abiding with the Lord and you go to sleep thinking about abiding with the Lord. And every time in between, like it it kind of becomes a joke how much they use the word abide. But um you really do learn that in such a tangible way when you show up somewhere that you don't speak the language, you don't know anybody, and the task is so overwhelming. Like, I I don't think I've ever seen in such a tangible way of like, I don't have anything today. There's nothing I can do in this day if if it is not just abiding with the Lord. And so I think in that, one of the most obvious ways that I saw was prior to moving to the field, I would have told you that like my identity is rooted in the Lord. And obviously, you know, I've been a Christian most of my life. Like I know what it means to have my identity in Christ, but that was really shaken when we arrived at the field because I had previously, you know, been a seminary student, an employee, like had lots of things to do during the day that I could point to at the end of my week, like I did this thing and was able to just like feel good about myself because of the things that I had done, which is so dumb. And I wouldn't have said that that was true. But, you know, when we got to the field, like sometimes all I could do in a week was go grocery shopping, especially our first, you know, couple of weeks on the field. And that's not really a good thing to get to the end of your week and be like, man, I'm a good person because I went grocery shopping this week. And so I think just the Lord really broke that down in me of seeing the way that I had found my identity and all of these other things and what I can do rather than and what Christ has done for me. And so that has been a really sweet lesson. I'm still learning that lesson in this season, but it's been a really cool thing just to see how the Lord was faithful to teach me that in that season, that my identity has to be rooted in him. It can't be rooted in what I'm doing when I have a really good day as a missionary or when I have a really bad day as an unemployed person in America. Like it has to be rooted in him, and that comes from abiding with him every single day.

SPEAKER_01 57:04

That's really good. So, having been in Poland for two years, coming back, trying to get rooted now here in Chickasay, how do you all see your time in Poland, your time in the Journeyman program influencing how you all live your lives for the next five, 10 years and what you do with your lives and the relationships you meet, things like that?

SPEAKER_00 57:32

I think one of the biggest things, and I hope that this sticks with us beyond the next five to ten years, but it's just a slower pace of life. Like when you're overseas, things just move so much slower. You have coffee for three hours and just have deeper conversations and just do more of like the life on life kind of thing that we talk about with discipleship. And so my hope is that moving forward, that continues to be our mindset that we're we're not in a hurry with the Lord, like not hoping that you know somebody converts and is a perfect disciple overnight, but that we're okay with the slower pace of life, the slower pace of ministry, and just the willingness to spend time with people because growth doesn't happen overnight. And so we we need to be willing to just sit down, to have, to have availability for people, I think is one of the biggest things, just um moving forward. My hope is that as we serve teenagers and and chickachet, that that our lives reflect that we're available to spend lots of time with them and to have hard conversations and to do those things, I think is one of the most tangible ways that I hope it moves on into this next season. But also just a boldness to share the gospel. It's kind of crazy that we signed up as missionaries and I would not have said that, you know, evangelism and sharing the gospel is not something that I was great at. And even now it's not something that I'm great at, but it's something that I can do and I have done for the last two years. And so I think just not being afraid, just being willing to share the gospel where the Lord opens up opportunities and seeing that the Lord is faithful to open up opportunities. And um I think just knowing that if I can walk up to a stranger and share the gospel in Poland, I can certainly share the gospel with somebody that speaks English in America, whose culture I understand and whose language I understand. I think just being empowered to know that the Lord is moving, He is opening doors, that I just need to be looking for them and to be bold enough and faithful and obedient to do those things.

SPEAKER_02 59:35

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

That's gonna be really exciting to see how you all teach your students and engage your community with your students with the gospel from this experience. So that's awesome. Well, friends, thank you so much for taking the time to do this and getting to share your story, uh story that I think is gonna. Resonate with a lot of our listeners and a lot of our students on campus at OBU and really just around the state who are thinking about journeymen, but they're not thinking about career missions long term. Uh just people who are saying, I have a passion, I have a heart. I'm willing to give two to three years and just make the gospel known among the lost. So it's a really good story. Really glad you all were willing to share. Um so uh really appreciate it. Everyone, thanks for tuning tuning in to today's episode, and uh catch us next time. We'll we'll be back. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to this episode. The Tom Elliott Center for Missions exists to equip the next generation of missionaries at Oklahoma Baptist University. Regardless of your major, you can come to OBU, get a world-class Christian education, and get equipped to take the gospel to the nations. Our prayer is to send students from the local church through OBU to the world with the gospel. For more information about us or the Elliott Center Scholarship, follow the link in our description and come visit us at OBU.