I’m Evan Livingston. Here’s how God used a mission trip to Prague with CSPC earlier this year to enable me to live deeply. 

“I’m not good at open hands. Ask my wife Judy. Ask anyone who knows me. When something matters, I make a plan. Plan A, Plan B, Plan C. Contingencies for my contingencies. So when my career started heading toward a crossroads, I did what I always do: I started building the plan. What I didn’t know was that God was about to send me to a city overseas where the people had lived through things that make plans look almost embarrassing in their smallness. And he was going to use them to change me- much more on that later in my story! But the story starts with our CSPC small group leader Cary Lewis, who leads the church’s mission trips to Prague, working alongside a couple named Tom and Petra Damms. Tom and Petra run a refugee ministry called The Dignity Center, which the past few years has been busy helping Ukrainians fleeing the war. Every time she came back from the Czech Republic, Cary would say, ‘You guys have got to go.’ And every time, I’d think, ‘Man, that’d be great. But there’s no way. I don’t have time. I can’t afford it.’ All the reasons. But Judy and I had been praying separately -we didn’t even know this about each other- and one Sunday in December it just came out. We both looked at each other like, ‘Wait, what?’ Cary said the church would raise half the funds for us to go to Prague if we could raise the other half. I’m a school teacher, and I had paternity leave saved from when our son Rigby was born over the summer. So for once, I actually had the time. Then the fundraising came back double what our goal was! Every door I expected to be closed just opened- which, looking back, was the Lord’s first lesson to me about what an open hand actually feels like. I just didn’t have eyes to see it yet. We landed in Prague in January. And that was where God started a shift in me.

About halfway through our trip, we went to Terezín- a former Nazi ghetto camp, now a museum. And something happened in my brain that I wasn’t prepared for. I’d spent the first part of the week doing what you do in Prague: Old Town, New Town, the castle, the royal chambers. Trying all the food with my other small group co-leader, Cary’s husband Brad. Laughing. Marveling at the architecture. And honestly feeling a low hum of something almost like guilt about how much I was enjoying myself. Then Terezín. The photographs. The history of Nazi occupation, followed almost immediately by Soviet control. And then, walking back out into the city, I couldn’t stop doing this thing where I’d step somewhere and a photograph from the museum would flash in my mind. Nazi soldiers were standing right here oppressing people, I thought to myself. Right here where I’m standing. And then it clicked: the full weight of what Prague carries. Because the grandmothers we were serving? Some of them were alive for all of it. The Nazis. The Soviets. And now they’re watching Ukrainian refugees pour in because of Russian oppression. The people of Prague know -in their bones, in a way I never will- what it is to lose your home and have someone else decide your fate. So the debate we have in America about whether to take in refugees is almost abstract compared to what it means to these people personally. Cary had warned us before the trip: ‘It’s going to feel weird, walking around eating food and taking tours. But it will help you understand what the people you’re going to love and serve have actually been through.’ She was right. I walked into the ministry carrying something heavier than when I arrived. And that heaviness turned out to be a gift.

Tom and Petra met in the UK but moved to the Czech Republic. They saw a story about Syrian refugees on the news one night and felt a pull toward them that they couldn’t explain. It made no sense. They prayed about it for a long time. Petra quit her job before anything was lined up. And then, slowly, everything fell into place, and they started a ministry to refugees. They’ve been doing it ever since. This is the couple who was waiting for us at The Well, a space inside The Dignity Center where Ukrainian refugees can come in, sit down, have coffee, and just be seen. Tom and Petra are there, day after day, getting to know people’s names and their stories. The Dignity Center is a bustling place, and we saw a lot of the activity firsthand. They host a ministry for older women. A young adult group meets Thursday nights- teenagers and early 20s, practicing their English, who were asking us what America’s like. There’s a safe house for kids and their mothers from Ukraine. There was training for Ukrainian pastors (who, believe it or not, navigate some of the same spiritual struggles as we do in America, like overcoming a transactional view of God). And there were bandages. We rolled bandages that were going to the actual front lines in Ukraine’s war to defend itself from Russia. At some point while I was there, I’d done everything on my checklist: set up chairs, made coffee (most people said no, so it was a very easy shift). And I found myself just standing against a wall. Not doing anything. And I hated it. I kept thinking, ‘Am I actually helping if I’m not doing anything?’ But then I looked up. Judy was deep in conversation with a woman who was really connecting with her. Petra was in the corner with a mom who was going through something hard. Matt, another friend along on the trip, was by the coffee machine just talking to someone. And I thought: ‘God doesn’t need me to be everywhere. He just needs me to be present.’ I guess I already knew that, but in that moment, it hit me in a new way.” 

NOTE: Evan will share more of his story in next week’s Live Deeply posts.