Slavek

This week’s camp is marked by a population of children who have suffered much, as half of the campers are Ukrainian refugees. However, compassion is tempered by a strong sense of apprehension among the camp staff. We’ve heard many stories leading up to this week, of the difficulties and strains these campers put on the camp the previous summer. They don’t cooperate with the program, have disruptive mealtime behaviors, talk loudly amongst themselves throughout chapel times, and they traumatized last year’s English teachers by inconstantly running out of the English classes and jumping into the pool. They speak neither Czech nor English, so the camp is dependent on just a handful of Ukrainian translators for communication. While all the camp is committed to demonstrating the love of Christ and helping them grow in their relationship with Christ, there is a collective brace for impact. 

We’ve made efforts to better prepare for this week’s influx. There are several Ukrainian staff this year, in addition to Ukrainian speaking volunteers. We’ve even recruited several more mature Ukrainian campers from last week’s older teen camp to stay on as volunteer staff this week. Cari has worked hard to prepare lessons that are fully interactive and gamified with almost no lecture times. Chapel arrangements have been made, so that Ukrainian campers will sing Ukrainian worship songs and hear preaching directly in their own language. 

Many of these preparations have been made by a pastor named Slavek. Slavek is the pastor of a small Czech church near the border of Germany where there is a large Ukrainian refugee community. He is Ukrainian by heritage himself, and operates in both Czech and Ukrainian fluidly, in addition to speaking some English.  I met him several weeks prior, not knowing who he was when he was introduced to me simply as a visiting pastor by Honza, the camp director. I won’t realize this connection until I meet him again this week and put the pieces together. 

The aged white school bus rumbles into camp just a few minutes beyond the expected time. It rolls to a halt in front of the basketball court. The shriek and hiss of the air brakes signal to all within and without that it has reached its terminal destination. The doors fold inward and Slavek, a late middle-aged man with curly graying hair and glasses, disembarks with an arm full of camp registration papers entrusted to him by responsible parties back in the border town. Registration volunteers meet him in the road and determinedly begin organizing the papers into some semblance of order. As they do, the campers, who have been cooped up for the better part of four hours, begin streaming out of the bus, forced into a neat line by the narrow exit doors. Slavek directs them to the registration area where they are met by camp staff who engage them with offered games of cornhole, ladder toss, nine-square and carpet ball. 

The preparations seem to be paying off. Revolts against the program appear minimal, mealtimes are fairly orderly and manageable, and the separate Ukrainian chapel times are reported fruitful. The campers, who earned such notoriety just a year prior, are not what everyone feared. They all speak Czech with some fluency now, and they appear conditioned to Czech dining room habits and systems. English classes and sports training proceed without mutinies. They have been attending Czech schools, and many of the rough edges that so irked our Czech colleagues appear to have been worn off. It’s a pleasant surprise for all.

However, it is also apparent that while customs and habits have been adjusted, the traumas precipitating their expatriation still inhabit the forefront of their thoughts, and have followed them here. 

The female campers are housed in the lodge. With the dining room, kitchen and shower facilities below, the second floor features a long hallway flanked by a multitude of boarding rooms. In the wee hours of night, the corridor comes alive. Not with campers disregarding bedtime restrictions or girly giggles defying sleep, not in these later hours anyway. Rather, counselors are awakened by shrieks of terror, calls in the night from no one in particular to no one in particular, and campers bolting upright from vinyl mattresses and bare feet slapping on floors before retreating to their blankets after consciousness triggered. The nightmares and terrors visit them in those dark and quiet hours. The traumas, unspoken but relived in the mind’s eye when left without distraction or suppression, come to life. 

In the daytime, campers don’t mutiny or rebel as in summer past, but they disappear. We struggle to keep headcounts. We find them huddled in shower stalls, running into the woods, or hiding in their rooms. 

I see a couple of girls disappearing into a thicket of woods on the edge of the camp. I call out to them. They turn and stare at me in stillness, like rabbits gauging the intentions of a predator, hoping to become invisible. After a few moments, they slink further in. I follow, but find that they have circled back and rejoined camp activities. I observe a boy slip through a fence onto a camp neighbor’s property. He is unaware of my observation. He too, seems only to be probing his boundaries before returning to camp. They’re investigating escape routes. I don’t even think they’re doing it consciously. It's more like a compulsive behavior, a survival instinct awakened but not easily put to rest. These children are tough but tender, in the way that only wounded souls know. 

This week, in the refuge of each others’ support and under the caring direction of Slavek, some of them will debrief their pain. It is shared only in yet reserved expressions. The fullness of it not entirely spoken, a stoicism expressed in young words and few, diminutive streams betraying deep founts untapped. 

They are Slavek’s little lambs. He is with them always; Playing, chatting, counseling, encouraging. He is undistracted by fellowship with the camp staff or visiting with the American church teams that so easily grab the attention of other adults and volunteers. He is singular in his purpose and energy. His care for these young ones could not be any more evident. 

His focus is singular, because it aligns with his unseen energies already spent and invested leading up to this week. Slavek has spent months inviting and recruiting Ukrainian children to this camp. He has established rapport with their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles or whoever has charge over them, so that they might entrust their care to him this week. He has made numerous phone calls and sent emails imploring churches and denominational leaders to donate money for scholarships for these campers, almost none of whom can afford the camp cost, modest as it may be. He has invested his time, energy, and life into getting these campers here this week. Even making a visit early in the summer, when I first met him, to scout out the facilities and make arrangements to ensure that they would have the best experience possible and that all distractions from the gospel ministry set before him would be minimized. He has prepared soil, tilled, and sown.

We all have hearts that desire to see fruit at camp this week. We all have compassion for the campers and hope that they will find faith in Christ. But none of us are feeling these things so acutely as Slavek, and it is clear to everyone that this is the case. In morning staff meetings there is discussion about this logistical difficulty, that problem with a camper’s behavior, a shortage of some supply. All of the normal things that we try to solve in these morning congresses. Slavek has very little interest in any of it. He wants to pray: for Marie, who lost her father in the war last month, for Artur who has potential but needs to grow in his faith, for a number of names and concerns I don’t remember, because they are not my little lambs, they are Slavek’s, and he loves them. 

Nearly half of the busload of children that accompany Slavek to camp this week make professions of faith in Christ; over twenty. Slavek is encouraged that his labors have not been in vain, that so many of his little lambs have been saved. He pleads with the camp staff to come to his village and help him. There are over two hundred Ukrainian refugee families there. He can not meet all of the needs. There are over fifty children who come for youth events when he organizes them each weekend, but he is tired. He needs help. He is pastoring a church as well as serving the needs of this refugee community, and there simply aren’t enough ministers for all of the work that needs to be done. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are so few. Camp staff pledge that they will come every couple of months and host a youth event. It won’t meet the weekly needs, but it is something. 

Slavek loads his flock back into the old white bus and it rumbles back from whence it came. He leaves blessed, but burdened. How can he possibly maintain all that has been accomplished this week? And how can he reach so many more? He is one man in one desperate place with so many hurting and hungry souls. 

In the mystery of God’s providence, little lambs are scattered, wounded, and lost. He finds them and adopts them into His flock. He moves in the heart of Slavek to be a shepherd amongst them. Had they never been scattered, would He have scooped them up and folded them into his own? Did not the cruel circumstance yield the outcome? Such mysteries of His ways are beyond us, but to see them, is to rejoice in them, and know that He is good. 

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There is a man named Slavek, in a small baptist church, in a small provincial town, doing ministry with great eternal impact. Would you pray for Slavek? Pray for God’s sustaining grace, energy, and empowerment. Pray for laborers to join him in the good work of harvest. Pray that God would work in the hearts of so many Ukrainians scattered abroad, over 370,000 in Czech Republic.