In July this year, a team from CityLife Church went to the Czech Republic on a short term missions trip. They spent two weeks with CityLife missions partner, Stanislav Bubik, attending his No Boundaries churches and their 6-day family camp.

The trip had a bit of a rocky start, after boarding the plane and sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours, we were informed by the captain that the flight had to be cancelled because the food supply truck had hit the plane and the damage was serious enough to ground the plane. It took the airline two days to get us onto another flight out. This meant that a 2-night prayer conference that we were meant to be sharing at had to be cancelled.

However, that’s part and parcel of missions, i.e. things often don’t go exactly as we plan but God is in control and he orders our steps (Proverbs 16:9). The team decided to use the two day wait to fine tune the various messages and workshops that were planned for the trip and for long we were in Prague settling into our first night’s accommodation in the heart of the city. Here’s a video update we sent that first night.

The next day we spent the morning going around the beautiful city of Prague and then headed off to the country for the No Boundaries Family Camp where we spent the next six days getting to know the pastors and members of the No Boundaries network of churches, as well as running workshops and the children’s program.

Each of our team members had the privilege of running their own workshop (2 each day) and we covered topics like prayer, intimacy with God, hearing God’s voice and freedom from spiritual bondage. In the evenings, we either shared an inspirational message or ministered prayer.

What was truly impacting for us as a whole was the hunger of our Czech brothers and sisters for more of God, servant spirit and their warmth towards us. We made some truly precious friendships over the course of the camp. Following is a short testimony from one of our team members…

The highlight of the trip for me was, apart from tasting great coffee and delicious goose leg, it  was seeing the children queuing up with a smile on their face and full of excitement waiting for Kids Church to start early in the morning well before the session begins. It was so encouraging to see the eagerness and excitement in their faces to want to hear and learn more about God’s word and interact with each other. Due to language barrier, the children were initially reluctant to attend kids church. However as a result of prayers ( a lot of it! )  and support from the parents , the team were able to encourage the children to attend.

The finale for Kid’s church was a craft project where we had all the children create a collage of their hands and transform it into a poster for the main church . We then had the congregation pray over the poster, as they will be the future generation of the church that will spread God’s Love.

I was immensely blessed to be part of this Short Term Mission trip, not only did I form some amazing lifelong friendships with the members of the team and the family church in Prague, the whole experience has been life changing. I went with the mission to change lives and came back being touched in so many ways.

– Li Ting

Following the camp, back in the city of Prague, we ran a primer course on CityLife’s LifeTracks International course for group of Stanislav’s leaders and then spoke at various No Boundaries congregations on the Sunday.

On the last day of our trip, Stanislav decided to take us to Germany to visit a town on the border called Herrnhut. This town was founded by Moravian refugees in 1722 and where the Moravian Church established itself. When the town was only 300 strong, it started sending out missionaries across the world and within 30 years, hundreds had been sent out. Australia was one of the countries that the Moravian missionaries came to. Below is a video of our trip to Herrnhut, Germany.

We had an amazing time with Stanislav and his churches, it was truly an eye-opening experience in what faith and missions is like for the members of No Boundaries Church. They have an amazing vision and passion to see their nation saved for Jesus. This short article really only touches on a few aspects of what Stanislav and his team are doing, there is more that’s not mentioned here. But even more important that what they are doing is who they are as a community of Jesus followers, that’s something that really needs to be experienced! So why not consider joining the next short term missions trip to the Czech Republic?

If you are a part of the CityLife Church congregation and would like to find out more about the next team going, contact world.impact@citylife.church