June 16, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode, Tudor speaks with Dave Patty, a second-generation missionary and founder of Josiah Venture, about his journey to Central and Eastern Europe. They discuss the challenges and triumphs of missionary work in a region with a complex history, the importance of rebuilding spiritual foundations among youth, and the innovative ways they are reaching young people today, including through social media. The conversation also touches on the impact of the Ukraine war and how Josiah Venture has pivoted to provide aid and support to those affected. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
Learn more about Dave Patty & Josiah Venture HERE
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Today we are going
to be talking missionaries, and I know that's something that
we don't get to talk about every day. But on
Sunday I was at church and this amazing guy was
at church talking about his life story and an organization
called Josiah Venture, and I was it really resonated with me.
(00:21):
This is a gentleman who had the call to mission
to be a missionary. He's a second generation missionary. He
had the call to Central and Eastern Europe. And as
I was listening to the story, I'm like, man, not
only you know the Bible is timely, but not only
is this timely when it comes to faith in the
rising faith in the United States, but also with everything
(00:43):
that's going on in the world stage. So I'm glad
that Dave Patty agreed to join me today on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Dave, thank you, Thank you so much. It's a proven
to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
I'm so excited. So I want to go a little
bit through Josiah Venture because I was listening to your
story on Sunday and I'm like, I don't know how
you know, And I thought it was interesting because you
said you just felt this moment where you're like, I'm
being called to go to Central and Eastern Europe and
you talk to your wife about it, and she's like,
I love that you're being called not sure, I am.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, that's right. Well I was involved that.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
My first experience in Central meaisingup was right after communism fell.
So if you can imagine six months from the time
the wall fell, I was in Budapest in high school
talking to Hungarian young people about God, which would have
six months earlier been just absolutely legal. And I came
home from that trip with just this huge burden on
my heart for a whole region of the world that
(01:38):
had just opened to freedom, just come out from communism,
and have been under incredible oppression. So every year for
the next couple of years, we did these short term
trips into the region, but we had small kids, so
my wife never went with me. And then there was
a spot when the Soviet Union started coming apart that
I just actually I heard someone speak and they said,
(02:00):
we're a hinge of history. This kind of change only
happens in a region once in a generation. That you
imagine the number of countries that came free during that time,
And they said it's important for us to just make
as much progress as possible in rebuilding these countries and
rebuilding the spiritual foundations of these countries. So I came
home and said to my wife, I think God is
(02:21):
calling us to Central Messa in Europe. And she did
not respond very enthusiastically. If you can imagine, well.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
You grew up, I mean you grew up as a missionary.
Your parents were missionaries. You said you came back when
you were five, but you had to have grown up
with that knowledge and understanding. Was that her background as well?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
No, that wasn't her background. She grew up in Oregon
and her dad was a salesman. So I had more
of that ethos in my personality. And I guess even
from when I was about twelve years old, my dream
was to be involved overseas in countries and hard places
and dark places where the opportunity to tell people about
(03:01):
God and teach the Bible in those places.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Hard places, in dark places. And sometimes I feel like
we are in that situation here. But you went someplace
that is considered an atheist country. But tell me about
that moment, because I think that it's very I always
think it's fascinating to hear about that moment when God
lays something on someone's heart and they're unsuspecting and it
hits them very hard. And that happened for your wife, right,
(03:27):
I really did.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So sometimes when we talk about God's call, where does
that come from? And sometimes it comes from seeing a
need and just sensing you want to respond and dreaming.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
About how God could maybe use you to make a difference.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
And then there's sometimes where it's just it's almost like
a supernatural moment. I really believe that God speaks to
us in different ways, and there are times he just
grabs us. And so we actually we were talking about
this move and it created so much tension in our
marriage that I finally told my wife we're not going
to talk about it because it was I said, I'll
(04:01):
just pray and if this call is from God, that
he'll change your heart. And her response was, oh, good,
this is over. We're not going to move to Central
Eastern Europe. And then something really strange happened. It was
over Christmas and we had given our young kids to
her parents to take care of and we got a
couple of nights away, and at that time they were
(04:23):
the tryouts for the Olympics were on TV and the
Romanian gymnasts, which if you remember the Armanion gymnasts, were amazing.
They were on and I walked out of the room
to go down the hall to get a bucket of ice,
and came back in and just noticed my wife just
staring at the TV. And she turned and she said, now,
what did you mean about Central Eastern Europe and young people?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And I just sat down my eyes.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And you're like, here, it has happened. Oh no, And
then I said why and she said, well, I was
just looking at those Romanian young girls and I thought
I could love them the same as I've loved American teenagers.
And something changed in my heart, and something did in
just a moment, and it was just it was amazing
that God changed her heart.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And she said, I think I'm ready to go.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So in nineteen ninety three we moved with our young family,
this is not long after the revolution, into a corner
of the Czech Republic, and we felt like we.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Moved to the end of the world.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Now there's ends of the world that are much more
desolate than that, but everything was gray. We were the
only Americans in a broad area. It felt like everything
was just covered a layer of soot, including the people.
You would never see someone smile, They wouldn't catch your eyes.
If you greeted someone on the street, they thought you
were about ready to rob them because you never talked
(05:38):
to a stranger. And I remember my wife going into
the store for the first time that the best stores
were like low grade, much worse than a seven eleven.
And she came back home and she said, I don't
know how I'm going to feed this family. We're going
to buy things. So it was a huge step of
faith for us to make that move.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But it hasn't been easy. And that's the thing that
I loved about what you said on Sunday. It's like,
this has been a challenge the whole time, and I'm like,
how do you do that? Because I think it's so easy,
especially now in the United States, because we are a
spoiled society. When it gets very hard, we're like, okay,
let me find something else. But you guys have stayed.
(06:18):
You created Josiah venture. You had a vision. The vision
was a movement of God among the youth of Central
and Eastern Europe that finds its home in the local
church and transforms society. And that's a big vision because
there wasn't that much of a local church there. But
you knew going to the young people was the answer.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Well, you know, Czech Republic is the most atheist country
on earth. And so I remember I started teaching in
the high school and I asked my students do you
believe even in the existence of God? And there was
only one student in a class of thirty that even
believe God exists. Now this is this is not even
someone who has active faith in God. So we were
really moving to the what we felt very different, different area.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
But we had this vision.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And part of it was as you look at these countries,
they were trying to rebuild economically, they were trying to
rebuild educationally, but you've got to rebuild the soul of
nations as well, and you don't have if you don't
have spiritual foundations in a nation, Really, most of the
other things don't work. I remember reading a quote from
(07:23):
Votsof Hovel, who was the first president of the Czech Republic,
and he said, the worst thing is that we live
in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because
we became used to saying something different than what we thought.
Concepts of such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness
lost their depth or dimension. And so it was really
(07:44):
interesting that the first president was saying, we have a
soul crisis in our nation. That's really where things come from.
And so we had this vision to be part of
rebuilding these nations by rebuilding the spiritual foundations of young
people and basically helping local churches reach young people and
create communities of young people that are centered around the
(08:05):
Bible and around faith in Jesus Christ. And we felt
like that would change countries. Now, that was a big vision.
We just had two couples, four people in nineteen ninety
three and we moved in and I remember thinking, there
is no way this is going to make any difference,
No way anything's going to happen for this. Our church
had a youth group of five people and the youngest
(08:28):
was twenty three and the oldest.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Was seventy one.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
In our little small youth group, and we were in
a town of one hundred Yeah, we are a town
of one hundred thousand, and how in the world are
we going to make any difference here? So it was
slow and tough in the beginning, in those early days.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So I love the fact that you had these kind
of miracle moments where there have been leaders who have
said there's a crisis here and have kind of let
you fill in those spaces, because there certainly were doors
open that didn't have to be opened in your story.
I think what was most interesting to me was your
story in church started with a young video of a
(09:05):
young man named Pavel, and it was so powerful to
me to see him because we saw him as like
a thirteen year old and then he was a young
adult and at thirteen, he said, I was angry, and
I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know
what to do with my anger. But I went to
this place. And what struck me about what he said
was I saw these people that had this sense about
(09:29):
them that I wanted to be like them. And I
think that's the joy of Christ, you know. I think
what he saw was the joy of Christ. And to
have somebody who is in a culture, as you said,
that is beaten down, that people have been beaten down.
Communism has taken over the region. Everybody is depressed. There's
been a lot of war. They are now hungry. Everything's gray.
(09:54):
You talk about you set the scene very well for
what the community is. It's almost like those I mean,
the way my mind's eye sees it is those videos
where everybody's in like a dark and dingy scene. It's
almost black and white, and then they walk into a
room and it's filled with rainbow of colors. It's almost
like that's what his soul felt when he walked in there.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Well, that's right, yeah, yeah, you were saying, Pavel, And
he's one of thousands of young people who've come to
faith in Jesus Christ through our work in local churches there.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
And it's so interesting because I.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Love lighting a match in a dark place because you
really see it, and you really see the difference. And
we've just you know, when you think of someone who
who has no faith in their background, he didn't have
a single relative in his extended family who believed in
God or had any connection with church and so and
when I think coming from a Christian background, I think,
(10:49):
what would it be like if that was missing in
my life? If life was just going to work, making money,
retiring and dying and I didn't have any higher meaning
or the spiritual dimension of my life was just empty
because I had no relationship with God. I can't imagine
what life would be like. And yet so many of
those young people, they don't even one of the things.
(11:10):
When I asked in my class do you believe in God?
All of them said I'm an atheist. And I would
ask why, and they couldn't tell me why. They were
cultural atheists, which is really interesting, and they never really
had they'd never met someone who had living faith. And
I remember one of the teachers, we had a teacher's meeting,
and she leaned over and she said, I was the
(11:31):
first Christian teacher in the history of this school, right
in the very beginning. And she leaned over and she said,
I always thought that Christians were either really weak so
they needed a crutch, or very old.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And she said, you seem.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
To be pretty smart and you're young. Why in the
world do you believe in God? And so that was
kind of the background. But then when you saw young
people come to faith in Christ, it's like you said,
it just the lights came on. Changed every aspect of
their life, change their sense of hope, their sense of meaning,
their purpose, how they approached like what Pavel said, he
(12:06):
said got removed anger from his life, gave him different relationships.
So it's pretty exciting for us to see that kind
of transformation happen in really thousands of young people.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. One of the interesting openings that
I think you had is you mentioned that people said, well,
if you're teaching English, my parents will let me come
because they believe that that's the key to so many
(12:38):
more opportunities. So you got to here, you are in
the United States, you get this call, you get to
go there and use your language, your life, what you
know to reform an entire country's youth.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, it was I didn't expect that.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
And that's one of the things about when you're following
God's call, he often has a lot of lands that
you don't know anything about, and he opens them up
as you go.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I was learning Czech, and I speak fluent Czech.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I thought it's you know, it's breaking the rules to
use English and when you're working overseas. But I found
that all the young people, that's their ticket to the
world is English. So we began teaching English and then
did an English camp and then all of a sudden,
the young people from that camp were interested in joining
the youth this little youth group in our church, which
all of a sudden became a youth group of about sixty.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
With a bunch of young people.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And we really found these camps were one of the
keys to drawing in young people and exposing them to
a community of believers and to what I mean to
have faith in Christ because they would come to learn English,
and we would teach them English, but we would also
talk to them about what it meant to have a
relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And so we did
one camp that first year in nineteen ninety four, three
(13:50):
the next Since then, we've done two thousand week long
camps in partnership with local churches across the region, with
over one hundred and twenty thousand and young people. So
that that was, you know, what started just with four
people in the beginnings has blossomed. And that's just one
of the ways that we use to reach young people through.
(14:11):
We also go into schools, we have a whole music
ministry or sports ministry. It's really about how do we
gather young people into community, healthy communities that are very
different than what they've experienced before, and then then over
time they begin to learn about faith in God and
and what a relationship with Jesus Christ can do to
really transform your life.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So over one hundred thousand in a country of how many, Well.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Actually that's in more more countries than just just Check.
But but we also I don't know how many it's
been in Check. It's it's uh, it's a lot in Check.
But we also have been face to face with over
one hundred and fifty thousand people in schools. There's just
a there's a lot. We were able to a TV
program on Check Television that so all kinds of doors
(14:56):
open to really.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Talking about change.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That was fascinating because that's that moment where there is
almost a government push to bring culture back. And I
think that there's something here that we kind of want
to touch on is that the Czech Republic is very
into preserving what the Checher Republic is. They don't allow immigration,
they're very cautious about who they let into the country.
(15:21):
The culture is important. But in that I feel like
when you were talking about that, it seemed like, Wow,
that was a moment where the country said we need
a healing. We need hope. This man is bringing hope.
They saw you as bringing hope to their country, and
they're very particular about what they let in.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, they certainly are. Yeah, they're very competent, very proud people.
They're they're very capable, and they aren't easily manipulated. They're
pretty strong. So what happened was we were working with
young people and we had an intern and one of
them is We had the graduation for our interns and
(15:59):
I met this intern's father and I said, what do
you do And he says, I produced television shows for
check Television. And I said, what's your dream for the future.
He says, I wish there was a way that we
could have some kind of spiritual content on TV because
there's none of that. They're not getting anything about about
something that would build a moral foundation.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And I said, yeah, wouldn't it be.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Great if there was a Christian show for young people
on TV? And he looked at me and he said,
you're not serious, are you? And I said, well, I'm serious.
It's a great idea, but something like that's not possible.
And he said, well, would you pray about it? And
I said yeah, yeah, sure. He said if the door opens,
Would you do it with me? I said, yeah, maybe,
(16:42):
And so about six weeks later he said, I've just
contacted Czech television. They actually are concerned about the moral
slide among young people and they're open to doing a
Christian show and they said, if you will produce it,
they'll air it for free. And so then we asked, well,
how many do they want, and they said, we did
a pilot and they said, why don't you do seventeen episodes.
(17:05):
So we began to broadcast on National TV a show
called Exit three sixteen, which is just basically stories of
young people's lives who've been changed by Christ and changed
by learning how to live like the Bible tells them
to live, and we just would tell these stories on
National TV. Well, it was going so well that they
said wanted to do another thirteen episodes, and then they
(17:26):
said to another fifteen episodes, and we aired twice a
week on National TV and in the most atheist country
on Earth, stories of young people's lives who've been changed
by Christ. So that was pretty exciting and it was
reaching hundreds of thousands of people every week. So I
became the producer of a TV show in the Czech
Republic and I don't have any TV background, but then
(17:50):
they said, then they said, would you do it again?
So we broadcast twice a week on national TV for
two full years in the Czech Republic and it was
like it was like it just was changing the whole
moral environment of the country to hear those stories.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And I love that because it's young people sharing their story.
You put together young people's stories so that they could
reach out to other young people. Now there's been kind
of this phenomenon of TikTok, so I wanted to talk
about that because you talked about these young TikTok ministers.
And we complain about TikTok so much because of the
content that is crazy and taking kids in bad directions.
(18:29):
But there is a lot of faith content out there,
and you are finding that people in Eastern Europe are
able to use it to reach hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
So if I fast forward today, I started about their
story in nineteen ninety three, it was just two couples.
Now we're working in sixteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
So I live in the Czech Republic, but we have
staff in sixteen countries. We have three hundred and eighty
full time staff and we're working with we'll train about
seven thousand young leaders in a typical year. So what
(19:00):
we try to do. The reason for our name Josiah
Venture is because Josiah was a king in the Bible
who was a young king and he followed some really
bad kings before him, but he charted a different direction.
He really brought his nation back to God and it
changed the whole nation, and he did it as a
young person. And so we said, how do we find
(19:20):
the young Josiahs, those young influencers who will influence in
a different direction, will influence by their faith in God
and influence their generation for Christ. Because we feel like
they can make changes in the entire country. And so
we're always looking for those young people that are making
a difference. But one of those is in Serbia. His
name is Alexa, and he had a radical experience with
(19:44):
God as a fifteen year old and really came to
faith in Christ, started reading the Bible. It totally changed
his life. And then he looked at all his friends
and they went there. They're on these all the time,
but there's no one who's giving any different message. So
he propped up his phone on an Orange he had
an old Android phone and put it on an Orange
(20:05):
and recorded one TikTok just talking about his faith in
God and put it away five views, six views, eight views,
and then he went, this doesn't make any difference. Came
back a couple of days later, and it had blown
up because another famous TikToker in the nation had absolutely
made fun of him, but it drew everyone's attention to
(20:27):
his TikTok and so they.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Started watching him.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
So he started works.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, he started posting tiktoks every day, and these are
straight up he talks about how here's what the Bible
says about this issue, and this is why faith in
Jesus Christ will change your life.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Just totally straightforward.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
This young now he's seventeen years old, Serbian guy, but
he has hit regularly. His tiktoks will reach a half
a million people. So if you can imagine this young
seventeen year old who just is boldly proclaiming a message's
very different than what's normally out there on tikio.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Talk, is that dangerous in that area?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And well it can be because some people, yeah that
Serbians are pretty hot blooded and but I think they're
also curious about a young Part of it is when
you get a young person's voice, it's different. They're not
quite as threatening. There's a vulnerability to it. But but
he's regularly reaching half the warning people. And in a
(21:23):
country also with that doesn't have a strong church, you know, future.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I love this story because we keep hearing that Christianity
is losing ground, and I don't think that we have been.
My dad used to always tell me, advertise your progress,
because nobody else cares unless you're telling them what you're doing.
And I don't think we do that enough in the
Christian world, is to advertise our progress. And I know that.
You know, we have a big Arab American community in
(21:48):
the state of Michigan, and in the Muslim community, they
are strong about advertising their progress, and so I think
a lot of Christians feel like, well, we're kind of
falling behind. And when I hear these stories. That's why
when you were at church, I was hearing these stories,
and I'm like, we need to share this because for
those of us who this matters deeply too, it's important
(22:09):
to know that there is progress being done and that
people like you have created something from four people to
go to over three hundred people across multiple different countries.
That's an amazing feat. And there is God's God's fingerprints
on every part of this. But it hasn't been easy.
I think that's the one thing that you said. The
(22:30):
wind of spiritual opposition is constant where you are, and
yet you stay, you stay doing it. So tell us
a little bit about what the opposition is like.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, it's interesting because one of the oppositions.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
One of the things has been where my family has
been sick most of the time we've been there, and
with crazy things that you wouldn't expect us. It's not
like we live in the jungle where you would catch
malaria or something like that. But it felt like every
time we would head into something new, my wife would
get sick or my kids would get sick. I stayed
healthy most of the time. But then also there's opposition.
(23:03):
I you know, I've had I've had my life threatened
by parents whose whose kids come to faith in God
and they, you know, they're afraid of what that's going
to be and have threatened our lives and that. But
then the other thing is there just is a sense
of darkness and you know, I think that's that's true
in the United States too, but in areas of the
(23:24):
world where there's small faith in God, you actually feel it.
You know, you sometimes just feel that you're you're pushing
into a headwind. The darkness of discouragement and hopelessness really
presses in on you. And so we've been at this
for thirty one years and and but it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
We just keep going.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. So in the time that you've
been there, suddenly you have this war breakout in Ukraine,
which is right next door to where you live, and
you took a turn in your ministry to provide relief
(24:05):
to Ukraine. And that was something that you, again didn't
have any history with, but God provided. So tell us
a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And this is one of the amazing things about serving
God and the call of God is again he has
plans that we don't know about, and I always feel
like we get invited into his work and it's always
surprising to see what he has. So we have twenty
seven staff in Ukraine and also staff and all the
countries around it. And so when the war broke out.
We were deeply affected because the refugees were pouring into
(24:36):
the countries where we live in and pouring from the
country that this war was happening in, and so some
of our staff evacuated in the first couple of days,
and then we went, wait, we've got to help with this,
and so we strategizing. Within five days, we were sending aid.
We found that the border was a very difficult place
(24:57):
because the men couldn't but they would come and just
drop off their wives and kids at the borders and
sometimes stand there in the middle of winter for three or.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Four days, then try to get across.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Then they don't yeah days and with young kids in
a plastic bag of everything that they own, and then
they'd get across the border and then try to figure
out where they were headed next. They didn't speak the language.
So within five days we began sending tour buses across
the border to pick up refugees and bringing them back
and then connecting them with local churches in the country
(25:29):
surrounding them. So we were taking them into the hands
of believers who would care for them and really cared
about them. And we did brought fifty one buses of
people across the border and then we would send them
back filled with aid. Now we're not an aid organization,
we're a use minister organization, but we had to pivot
and within five days we basically reorganized our whole team
(25:52):
around helping the situation. But the advantage we had over
large aid organizations is we know the people everywhere. We
could pick up a phone and call this past or
contact this person, and so we were able to get
aid right to the place where it needed the most.
We'd get a phone call from someone on the front
front lines and they'd say we need diapers, and we
could have them to them in one day. By we
(26:15):
became the largest buyer of kind of the costco version
in the Tech Republic, and within in a period of
a year, we were able to provide seven million dollars
of aid to Ukraine. And we're not an aid organization
for the Ministry organization, but we were just channeling that
to people and we're still very engaged there. We're not
(26:36):
doing as much aid right now, but actually I talked
to our team this morning and they're getting ready for
their summer of ministry. One of the staffs, she's a
twenty three year old and lives in Nipine, which you've
seen on the news, and I just talked to her
about what it's like to be there right right now.
But one of the things that maybe you don't hear
about is believers are really stepping forward and the church
(26:58):
is making a huge difference in Ukraine right now.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And she talked about she said.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Last Sunday they had the anniversary of their church in
it Opine and she said a thousand people were there.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Wow, Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
She said.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She said, the church is making such a difference in
that area. And we'll do thirty seven camps with young people,
with Ukrainian young people this summer, all the way from
the front lines, and there'll be thousands of several thousand
Ukrainian young people in camps that were leaving this summer
in these next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
As you were telling this, when I was listening to
this on Sunday, I was just thinking, God knows everything.
He already saw that before it happened, you know, he
knew that was where you needed to be, and he
knew this war would happen. And you tell such a
different story of the war than we know because we
know the higher level negotiations, but when you said that men,
(27:50):
I mean, it brings a tear to my eye when
you said that men are dropping their wives and children
at the border. When we hear the people in government
in the United States saying we want the killing to stop.
We don't want to lose five thousand men a day,
this is crazy. We've got to stop this. I think
about how many of those people were dropped off in
the cold for three days and never saw that man again.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, oh that's right.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, I mean, he brings a lot of emotion to
me as well when you hear that. Just the impact
on my families. We just we need to pray and
do everything we can to bring this war to an end.
It's impacting people every day. So when I talk to
our staff, they say, yeah, every night, we just hear explosions,
you know, all through the night, and they're right out
there in the in the midst of it. Two of
(28:34):
our team members, well, when one of our team members
was driving a he's a man in his mid twenties
with his wife and one and a half year old kid.
He gets stopped at a police checkpoint and pulled into
the Army you know, because they have to get the
men out there to defend the country. So his wife
is up, she doesn't have a driver's license, and all
of a sudden she's left in the car alone with
(28:56):
her one and a half year old child, and her
husband's gone for the foreseeable fewtre sure she doesn't know
if she'll she'll even see him again. Uh So, And
and these are men on our staff that are now
serving in the military. Another one is just walking down
the streets of the town and got stopped and pulled
and couldn't even go back to his apartment building. So
there's there's both the the death and destruction, but there's
(29:18):
also the ripping of families and uh and in the
sense in these young families of will I ever see
my dad again? So as we're working with the young people,
many of them their fathers are gone, their their their
fatherless homes, and and they don't know even if they're
going to get pulled into the military. So really caring
for the soul of that young generation in Ukraine is
(29:41):
is crucially important. So we've got seven churches that are
right on the border, uh right on the front lines,
and they're pastors who stayed there and their their youth groups.
Youth group is the only place where young people can
gather together because their school is all online and all
the communities are shut down, and there's these there are
these pastors who are who are shepherding these young people
(30:02):
right on the front lines. And we'll do seven camps
with them. And they just said, get us as far
away from the noise of the bombardment as possible. So
we're taking them into the mountains in the far West
and going to give them a week of camp together
and create community, but also talk about a hope that's
bigger than just this life, and a hope that's rooted
(30:26):
in a relationship with God that is independent of what's
going to happen politically. You know that you have a
foundation that's deeper than just the circumstances around you.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I mean, truly truly amazing work that you're doing. I
just want to before we close this is you are
second generation, but you've raised a third you're wondering what's
going to happen with the fourth. But your kids are
also missionaries, correct, that's right.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
My kids are missionaries, and so we're in third generation missionary.
So I have a son that serves in Albania, another
son that serves in czech and a daughter in Germany,
in the eastern portion of Germany. So yeah, it's in
the third generation and maybe we'll raise a fourth.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So tell us tell everybody. I know, as they've listened
to this about Josiah Venture and everything that you're doing.
I know there's a lot of people out there that
will want to help out. So tell us where they
can go to find out more about it, how they
can contribute to what you're doing over in Eastern in
Central Europe.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah, you could down.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
We have a website www dot Josiah Venture and it's
not Josiah Adventure, it's Josiah Venture. So think of the
name the King Josiah and then just venture dot com
and there you can see our different teams. You can
go in search one of the countries. You can see
all our Ukraine staff. There's different projects there. But one
of the things I would just say is if our
(31:45):
strength is in our national staff, is in our Ukrainians,
our polls, our checks, our young leaders who are really
serving on the front lines, and if any of any
of your listeners wanted to just adopt one of those
young people that are making a big difference. You'll see
all all their pictures on our website, or you could
just write you can write me a note through our
website and just be a part of what God's doing there,
(32:08):
which is really exciting.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
That's amazing. I love it, I love your story, I
love what you're doing, and I'm so glad you came
on to share it today. Dave, Patty, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Oh, thank you so much as well, and thank.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
You all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon podcast
for this episode and others. Go to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you
can watch the video on Rumble at Tutor Dixon. But
make sure you join us next time and have a
blessed day.
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Today we are going
to be talking missionaries, and I know that's something that
we don't get to talk about every day. But on
Sunday I was at church and this amazing guy was
at church talking about his life story and an organization
called Josiah Venture, and I was it really resonated with me.
(00:21):
This is a gentleman who had the call to mission
to be a missionary. He's a second generation missionary. He
had the call to Central and Eastern Europe. And as
I was listening to the story, I'm like, man, not
only you know the Bible is timely, but not only
is this timely when it comes to faith in the
rising faith in the United States, but also with everything
(00:43):
that's going on in the world stage. So I'm glad
that Dave Patty agreed to join me today on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Dave, thank you, Thank you so much. It's a proven
to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
I'm so excited. So I want to go a little
bit through Josiah Venture because I was listening to your
story on Sunday and I'm like, I don't know how
you know, And I thought it was interesting because you
said you just felt this moment where you're like, I'm
being called to go to Central and Eastern Europe and
you talk to your wife about it, and she's like,
I love that you're being called not sure, I am.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, that's right. Well I was involved that.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
My first experience in Central meaisingup was right after communism fell.
So if you can imagine six months from the time
the wall fell, I was in Budapest in high school
talking to Hungarian young people about God, which would have
six months earlier been just absolutely legal. And I came
home from that trip with just this huge burden on
my heart for a whole region of the world that
(01:38):
had just opened to freedom, just come out from communism,
and have been under incredible oppression. So every year for
the next couple of years, we did these short term
trips into the region, but we had small kids, so
my wife never went with me. And then there was
a spot when the Soviet Union started coming apart that
I just actually I heard someone speak and they said,
(02:00):
we're a hinge of history. This kind of change only
happens in a region once in a generation. That you
imagine the number of countries that came free during that time,
And they said it's important for us to just make
as much progress as possible in rebuilding these countries and
rebuilding the spiritual foundations of these countries. So I came
home and said to my wife, I think God is
(02:21):
calling us to Central Messa in Europe. And she did
not respond very enthusiastically. If you can imagine, well.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
You grew up, I mean you grew up as a missionary.
Your parents were missionaries. You said you came back when
you were five, but you had to have grown up
with that knowledge and understanding. Was that her background as well?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
No, that wasn't her background. She grew up in Oregon
and her dad was a salesman. So I had more
of that ethos in my personality. And I guess even
from when I was about twelve years old, my dream
was to be involved overseas in countries and hard places
and dark places where the opportunity to tell people about
(03:01):
God and teach the Bible in those places.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Hard places, in dark places. And sometimes I feel like
we are in that situation here. But you went someplace
that is considered an atheist country. But tell me about
that moment, because I think that it's very I always
think it's fascinating to hear about that moment when God
lays something on someone's heart and they're unsuspecting and it
hits them very hard. And that happened for your wife, right,
(03:27):
I really did.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So sometimes when we talk about God's call, where does
that come from? And sometimes it comes from seeing a
need and just sensing you want to respond and dreaming.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
About how God could maybe use you to make a difference.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
And then there's sometimes where it's just it's almost like
a supernatural moment. I really believe that God speaks to
us in different ways, and there are times he just
grabs us. And so we actually we were talking about
this move and it created so much tension in our
marriage that I finally told my wife we're not going
to talk about it because it was I said, I'll
(04:01):
just pray and if this call is from God, that
he'll change your heart. And her response was, oh, good,
this is over. We're not going to move to Central
Eastern Europe. And then something really strange happened. It was
over Christmas and we had given our young kids to
her parents to take care of and we got a
couple of nights away, and at that time they were
(04:23):
the tryouts for the Olympics were on TV and the
Romanian gymnasts, which if you remember the Armanion gymnasts, were amazing.
They were on and I walked out of the room
to go down the hall to get a bucket of ice,
and came back in and just noticed my wife just
staring at the TV. And she turned and she said, now,
what did you mean about Central Eastern Europe and young people?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And I just sat down my eyes.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And you're like, here, it has happened. Oh no, And
then I said why and she said, well, I was
just looking at those Romanian young girls and I thought
I could love them the same as I've loved American teenagers.
And something changed in my heart, and something did in
just a moment, and it was just it was amazing
that God changed her heart.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And she said, I think I'm ready to go.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So in nineteen ninety three we moved with our young family,
this is not long after the revolution, into a corner
of the Czech Republic, and we felt like we.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Moved to the end of the world.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Now there's ends of the world that are much more
desolate than that, but everything was gray. We were the
only Americans in a broad area. It felt like everything
was just covered a layer of soot, including the people.
You would never see someone smile, They wouldn't catch your eyes.
If you greeted someone on the street, they thought you
were about ready to rob them because you never talked
(05:38):
to a stranger. And I remember my wife going into
the store for the first time that the best stores
were like low grade, much worse than a seven eleven.
And she came back home and she said, I don't
know how I'm going to feed this family. We're going
to buy things. So it was a huge step of
faith for us to make that move.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But it hasn't been easy. And that's the thing that
I loved about what you said on Sunday. It's like,
this has been a challenge the whole time, and I'm like,
how do you do that? Because I think it's so easy,
especially now in the United States, because we are a
spoiled society. When it gets very hard, we're like, okay,
let me find something else. But you guys have stayed.
(06:18):
You created Josiah venture. You had a vision. The vision
was a movement of God among the youth of Central
and Eastern Europe that finds its home in the local
church and transforms society. And that's a big vision because
there wasn't that much of a local church there. But
you knew going to the young people was the answer.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Well, you know, Czech Republic is the most atheist country
on earth. And so I remember I started teaching in
the high school and I asked my students do you
believe even in the existence of God? And there was
only one student in a class of thirty that even
believe God exists. Now this is this is not even
someone who has active faith in God. So we were
really moving to the what we felt very different, different area.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
But we had this vision.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And part of it was as you look at these countries,
they were trying to rebuild economically, they were trying to
rebuild educationally, but you've got to rebuild the soul of
nations as well, and you don't have if you don't
have spiritual foundations in a nation, Really, most of the
other things don't work. I remember reading a quote from
(07:23):
Votsof Hovel, who was the first president of the Czech Republic,
and he said, the worst thing is that we live
in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because
we became used to saying something different than what we thought.
Concepts of such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness
lost their depth or dimension. And so it was really
(07:44):
interesting that the first president was saying, we have a
soul crisis in our nation. That's really where things come from.
And so we had this vision to be part of
rebuilding these nations by rebuilding the spiritual foundations of young
people and basically helping local churches reach young people and
create communities of young people that are centered around the
(08:05):
Bible and around faith in Jesus Christ. And we felt
like that would change countries. Now, that was a big vision.
We just had two couples, four people in nineteen ninety
three and we moved in and I remember thinking, there
is no way this is going to make any difference,
No way anything's going to happen for this. Our church
had a youth group of five people and the youngest
(08:28):
was twenty three and the oldest.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Was seventy one.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
In our little small youth group, and we were in
a town of one hundred Yeah, we are a town
of one hundred thousand, and how in the world are
we going to make any difference here? So it was
slow and tough in the beginning, in those early days.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So I love the fact that you had these kind
of miracle moments where there have been leaders who have
said there's a crisis here and have kind of let
you fill in those spaces, because there certainly were doors
open that didn't have to be opened in your story.
I think what was most interesting to me was your
story in church started with a young video of a
(09:05):
young man named Pavel, and it was so powerful to
me to see him because we saw him as like
a thirteen year old and then he was a young
adult and at thirteen, he said, I was angry, and
I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know
what to do with my anger. But I went to
this place. And what struck me about what he said
was I saw these people that had this sense about
(09:29):
them that I wanted to be like them. And I
think that's the joy of Christ, you know. I think
what he saw was the joy of Christ. And to
have somebody who is in a culture, as you said,
that is beaten down, that people have been beaten down.
Communism has taken over the region. Everybody is depressed. There's
been a lot of war. They are now hungry. Everything's gray.
(09:54):
You talk about you set the scene very well for
what the community is. It's almost like those I mean,
the way my mind's eye sees it is those videos
where everybody's in like a dark and dingy scene. It's
almost black and white, and then they walk into a
room and it's filled with rainbow of colors. It's almost
like that's what his soul felt when he walked in there.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Well, that's right, yeah, yeah, you were saying, Pavel, And
he's one of thousands of young people who've come to
faith in Jesus Christ through our work in local churches there.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
And it's so interesting because I.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Love lighting a match in a dark place because you
really see it, and you really see the difference. And
we've just you know, when you think of someone who
who has no faith in their background, he didn't have
a single relative in his extended family who believed in
God or had any connection with church and so and
when I think coming from a Christian background, I think,
(10:49):
what would it be like if that was missing in
my life? If life was just going to work, making money,
retiring and dying and I didn't have any higher meaning
or the spiritual dimension of my life was just empty
because I had no relationship with God. I can't imagine
what life would be like. And yet so many of
those young people, they don't even one of the things.
(11:10):
When I asked in my class do you believe in God?
All of them said I'm an atheist. And I would
ask why, and they couldn't tell me why. They were
cultural atheists, which is really interesting, and they never really
had they'd never met someone who had living faith. And
I remember one of the teachers, we had a teacher's meeting,
and she leaned over and she said, I was the
(11:31):
first Christian teacher in the history of this school, right
in the very beginning. And she leaned over and she said,
I always thought that Christians were either really weak so
they needed a crutch, or very old.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And she said, you seem.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
To be pretty smart and you're young. Why in the
world do you believe in God? And so that was
kind of the background. But then when you saw young
people come to faith in Christ, it's like you said,
it just the lights came on. Changed every aspect of
their life, change their sense of hope, their sense of meaning,
their purpose, how they approached like what Pavel said, he
(12:06):
said got removed anger from his life, gave him different relationships.
So it's pretty exciting for us to see that kind
of transformation happen in really thousands of young people.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. One of the interesting openings that
I think you had is you mentioned that people said, well,
if you're teaching English, my parents will let me come
because they believe that that's the key to so many
(12:38):
more opportunities. So you got to here, you are in
the United States, you get this call, you get to
go there and use your language, your life, what you
know to reform an entire country's youth.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, it was I didn't expect that.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
And that's one of the things about when you're following
God's call, he often has a lot of lands that
you don't know anything about, and he opens them up
as you go.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I was learning Czech, and I speak fluent Czech.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I thought it's you know, it's breaking the rules to
use English and when you're working overseas. But I found
that all the young people, that's their ticket to the
world is English. So we began teaching English and then
did an English camp and then all of a sudden,
the young people from that camp were interested in joining
the youth this little youth group in our church, which
all of a sudden became a youth group of about sixty.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
With a bunch of young people.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And we really found these camps were one of the
keys to drawing in young people and exposing them to
a community of believers and to what I mean to
have faith in Christ because they would come to learn English,
and we would teach them English, but we would also
talk to them about what it meant to have a
relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And so we did
one camp that first year in nineteen ninety four, three
(13:50):
the next Since then, we've done two thousand week long
camps in partnership with local churches across the region, with
over one hundred and twenty thousand and young people. So
that that was, you know, what started just with four
people in the beginnings has blossomed. And that's just one
of the ways that we use to reach young people through.
(14:11):
We also go into schools, we have a whole music
ministry or sports ministry. It's really about how do we
gather young people into community, healthy communities that are very
different than what they've experienced before, and then then over
time they begin to learn about faith in God and
and what a relationship with Jesus Christ can do to
really transform your life.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So over one hundred thousand in a country of how many, Well.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Actually that's in more more countries than just just Check.
But but we also I don't know how many it's
been in Check. It's it's uh, it's a lot in Check.
But we also have been face to face with over
one hundred and fifty thousand people in schools. There's just
a there's a lot. We were able to a TV
program on Check Television that so all kinds of doors
(14:56):
open to really.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Talking about change.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That was fascinating because that's that moment where there is
almost a government push to bring culture back. And I
think that there's something here that we kind of want
to touch on is that the Czech Republic is very
into preserving what the Checher Republic is. They don't allow immigration,
they're very cautious about who they let into the country.
(15:21):
The culture is important. But in that I feel like
when you were talking about that, it seemed like, Wow,
that was a moment where the country said we need
a healing. We need hope. This man is bringing hope.
They saw you as bringing hope to their country, and
they're very particular about what they let in.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, they certainly are. Yeah, they're very competent, very proud people.
They're they're very capable, and they aren't easily manipulated. They're
pretty strong. So what happened was we were working with
young people and we had an intern and one of
them is We had the graduation for our interns and
(15:59):
I met this intern's father and I said, what do
you do And he says, I produced television shows for
check Television. And I said, what's your dream for the future.
He says, I wish there was a way that we
could have some kind of spiritual content on TV because
there's none of that. They're not getting anything about about
something that would build a moral foundation.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And I said, yeah, wouldn't it be.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Great if there was a Christian show for young people
on TV? And he looked at me and he said,
you're not serious, are you? And I said, well, I'm serious.
It's a great idea, but something like that's not possible.
And he said, well, would you pray about it? And
I said yeah, yeah, sure. He said if the door opens,
Would you do it with me? I said, yeah, maybe,
(16:42):
And so about six weeks later he said, I've just
contacted Czech television. They actually are concerned about the moral
slide among young people and they're open to doing a
Christian show and they said, if you will produce it,
they'll air it for free. And so then we asked, well,
how many do they want, and they said, we did
a pilot and they said, why don't you do seventeen episodes.
(17:05):
So we began to broadcast on National TV a show
called Exit three sixteen, which is just basically stories of
young people's lives who've been changed by Christ and changed
by learning how to live like the Bible tells them
to live, and we just would tell these stories on
National TV. Well, it was going so well that they
said wanted to do another thirteen episodes, and then they
(17:26):
said to another fifteen episodes, and we aired twice a
week on National TV and in the most atheist country
on Earth, stories of young people's lives who've been changed
by Christ. So that was pretty exciting and it was
reaching hundreds of thousands of people every week. So I
became the producer of a TV show in the Czech
Republic and I don't have any TV background, but then
(17:50):
they said, then they said, would you do it again?
So we broadcast twice a week on national TV for
two full years in the Czech Republic and it was
like it was like it just was changing the whole
moral environment of the country to hear those stories.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And I love that because it's young people sharing their story.
You put together young people's stories so that they could
reach out to other young people. Now there's been kind
of this phenomenon of TikTok, so I wanted to talk
about that because you talked about these young TikTok ministers.
And we complain about TikTok so much because of the
content that is crazy and taking kids in bad directions.
(18:29):
But there is a lot of faith content out there,
and you are finding that people in Eastern Europe are
able to use it to reach hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
So if I fast forward today, I started about their
story in nineteen ninety three, it was just two couples.
Now we're working in sixteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
So I live in the Czech Republic, but we have
staff in sixteen countries. We have three hundred and eighty
full time staff and we're working with we'll train about
seven thousand young leaders in a typical year. So what
(19:00):
we try to do. The reason for our name Josiah
Venture is because Josiah was a king in the Bible
who was a young king and he followed some really
bad kings before him, but he charted a different direction.
He really brought his nation back to God and it
changed the whole nation, and he did it as a
young person. And so we said, how do we find
(19:20):
the young Josiahs, those young influencers who will influence in
a different direction, will influence by their faith in God
and influence their generation for Christ. Because we feel like
they can make changes in the entire country. And so
we're always looking for those young people that are making
a difference. But one of those is in Serbia. His
name is Alexa, and he had a radical experience with
(19:44):
God as a fifteen year old and really came to
faith in Christ, started reading the Bible. It totally changed
his life. And then he looked at all his friends
and they went there. They're on these all the time,
but there's no one who's giving any different message. So
he propped up his phone on an Orange he had
an old Android phone and put it on an Orange
(20:05):
and recorded one TikTok just talking about his faith in
God and put it away five views, six views, eight views,
and then he went, this doesn't make any difference. Came
back a couple of days later, and it had blown
up because another famous TikToker in the nation had absolutely
made fun of him, but it drew everyone's attention to
(20:27):
his TikTok and so they.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Started watching him.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
So he started works.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, he started posting tiktoks every day, and these are
straight up he talks about how here's what the Bible
says about this issue, and this is why faith in
Jesus Christ will change your life.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Just totally straightforward.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
This young now he's seventeen years old, Serbian guy, but
he has hit regularly. His tiktoks will reach a half
a million people. So if you can imagine this young
seventeen year old who just is boldly proclaiming a message's
very different than what's normally out there on tikio.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Talk, is that dangerous in that area?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And well it can be because some people, yeah that
Serbians are pretty hot blooded and but I think they're
also curious about a young Part of it is when
you get a young person's voice, it's different. They're not
quite as threatening. There's a vulnerability to it. But but
he's regularly reaching half the warning people. And in a
(21:23):
country also with that doesn't have a strong church, you know, future.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I love this story because we keep hearing that Christianity
is losing ground, and I don't think that we have been.
My dad used to always tell me, advertise your progress,
because nobody else cares unless you're telling them what you're doing.
And I don't think we do that enough in the
Christian world, is to advertise our progress. And I know that.
You know, we have a big Arab American community in
(21:48):
the state of Michigan, and in the Muslim community, they
are strong about advertising their progress, and so I think
a lot of Christians feel like, well, we're kind of
falling behind. And when I hear these stories. That's why
when you were at church, I was hearing these stories,
and I'm like, we need to share this because for
those of us who this matters deeply too, it's important
(22:09):
to know that there is progress being done and that
people like you have created something from four people to
go to over three hundred people across multiple different countries.
That's an amazing feat. And there is God's God's fingerprints
on every part of this. But it hasn't been easy.
I think that's the one thing that you said. The
(22:30):
wind of spiritual opposition is constant where you are, and
yet you stay, you stay doing it. So tell us
a little bit about what the opposition is like.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, it's interesting because one of the oppositions.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
One of the things has been where my family has
been sick most of the time we've been there, and
with crazy things that you wouldn't expect us. It's not
like we live in the jungle where you would catch
malaria or something like that. But it felt like every
time we would head into something new, my wife would
get sick or my kids would get sick. I stayed
healthy most of the time. But then also there's opposition.
(23:03):
I you know, I've had I've had my life threatened
by parents whose whose kids come to faith in God
and they, you know, they're afraid of what that's going
to be and have threatened our lives and that. But
then the other thing is there just is a sense
of darkness and you know, I think that's that's true
in the United States too, but in areas of the
(23:24):
world where there's small faith in God, you actually feel it.
You know, you sometimes just feel that you're you're pushing
into a headwind. The darkness of discouragement and hopelessness really
presses in on you. And so we've been at this
for thirty one years and and but it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
We just keep going.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. So in the time that you've
been there, suddenly you have this war breakout in Ukraine,
which is right next door to where you live, and
you took a turn in your ministry to provide relief
(24:05):
to Ukraine. And that was something that you, again didn't
have any history with, but God provided. So tell us
a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And this is one of the amazing things about serving
God and the call of God is again he has
plans that we don't know about, and I always feel
like we get invited into his work and it's always
surprising to see what he has. So we have twenty
seven staff in Ukraine and also staff and all the
countries around it. And so when the war broke out.
We were deeply affected because the refugees were pouring into
(24:36):
the countries where we live in and pouring from the
country that this war was happening in, and so some
of our staff evacuated in the first couple of days,
and then we went, wait, we've got to help with this,
and so we strategizing. Within five days, we were sending aid.
We found that the border was a very difficult place
(24:57):
because the men couldn't but they would come and just
drop off their wives and kids at the borders and
sometimes stand there in the middle of winter for three or.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Four days, then try to get across.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Then they don't yeah days and with young kids in
a plastic bag of everything that they own, and then
they'd get across the border and then try to figure
out where they were headed next. They didn't speak the language.
So within five days we began sending tour buses across
the border to pick up refugees and bringing them back
and then connecting them with local churches in the country
(25:29):
surrounding them. So we were taking them into the hands
of believers who would care for them and really cared
about them. And we did brought fifty one buses of
people across the border and then we would send them
back filled with aid. Now we're not an aid organization,
we're a use minister organization, but we had to pivot
and within five days we basically reorganized our whole team
(25:52):
around helping the situation. But the advantage we had over
large aid organizations is we know the people everywhere. We
could pick up a phone and call this past or
contact this person, and so we were able to get
aid right to the place where it needed the most.
We'd get a phone call from someone on the front
front lines and they'd say we need diapers, and we
could have them to them in one day. By we
(26:15):
became the largest buyer of kind of the costco version
in the Tech Republic, and within in a period of
a year, we were able to provide seven million dollars
of aid to Ukraine. And we're not an aid organization
for the Ministry organization, but we were just channeling that
to people and we're still very engaged there. We're not
(26:36):
doing as much aid right now, but actually I talked
to our team this morning and they're getting ready for
their summer of ministry. One of the staffs, she's a
twenty three year old and lives in Nipine, which you've
seen on the news, and I just talked to her
about what it's like to be there right right now.
But one of the things that maybe you don't hear
about is believers are really stepping forward and the church
(26:58):
is making a huge difference in Ukraine right now.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And she talked about she said.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Last Sunday they had the anniversary of their church in
it Opine and she said a thousand people were there.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Wow, Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
She said.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She said, the church is making such a difference in
that area. And we'll do thirty seven camps with young people,
with Ukrainian young people this summer, all the way from
the front lines, and there'll be thousands of several thousand
Ukrainian young people in camps that were leaving this summer
in these next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
As you were telling this, when I was listening to
this on Sunday, I was just thinking, God knows everything.
He already saw that before it happened, you know, he
knew that was where you needed to be, and he
knew this war would happen. And you tell such a
different story of the war than we know because we
know the higher level negotiations, but when you said that men,
(27:50):
I mean, it brings a tear to my eye when
you said that men are dropping their wives and children
at the border. When we hear the people in government
in the United States saying we want the killing to stop.
We don't want to lose five thousand men a day,
this is crazy. We've got to stop this. I think
about how many of those people were dropped off in
the cold for three days and never saw that man again.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, oh that's right.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, I mean, he brings a lot of emotion to
me as well when you hear that. Just the impact
on my families. We just we need to pray and
do everything we can to bring this war to an end.
It's impacting people every day. So when I talk to
our staff, they say, yeah, every night, we just hear explosions,
you know, all through the night, and they're right out
there in the in the midst of it. Two of
(28:34):
our team members, well, when one of our team members
was driving a he's a man in his mid twenties
with his wife and one and a half year old kid.
He gets stopped at a police checkpoint and pulled into
the Army you know, because they have to get the
men out there to defend the country. So his wife
is up, she doesn't have a driver's license, and all
of a sudden she's left in the car alone with
(28:56):
her one and a half year old child, and her
husband's gone for the foreseeable fewtre sure she doesn't know
if she'll she'll even see him again. Uh So, And
and these are men on our staff that are now
serving in the military. Another one is just walking down
the streets of the town and got stopped and pulled
and couldn't even go back to his apartment building. So
there's there's both the the death and destruction, but there's
(29:18):
also the ripping of families and uh and in the
sense in these young families of will I ever see
my dad again? So as we're working with the young people,
many of them their fathers are gone, their their their
fatherless homes, and and they don't know even if they're
going to get pulled into the military. So really caring
for the soul of that young generation in Ukraine is
(29:41):
is crucially important. So we've got seven churches that are
right on the border, uh right on the front lines,
and they're pastors who stayed there and their their youth groups.
Youth group is the only place where young people can
gather together because their school is all online and all
the communities are shut down, and there's these there are
these pastors who are who are shepherding these young people
(30:02):
right on the front lines. And we'll do seven camps
with them. And they just said, get us as far
away from the noise of the bombardment as possible. So
we're taking them into the mountains in the far West
and going to give them a week of camp together
and create community, but also talk about a hope that's
bigger than just this life, and a hope that's rooted
(30:26):
in a relationship with God that is independent of what's
going to happen politically. You know that you have a
foundation that's deeper than just the circumstances around you.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I mean, truly truly amazing work that you're doing. I
just want to before we close this is you are
second generation, but you've raised a third you're wondering what's
going to happen with the fourth. But your kids are
also missionaries, correct, that's right.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
My kids are missionaries, and so we're in third generation missionary.
So I have a son that serves in Albania, another
son that serves in czech and a daughter in Germany,
in the eastern portion of Germany. So yeah, it's in
the third generation and maybe we'll raise a fourth.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So tell us tell everybody. I know, as they've listened
to this about Josiah Venture and everything that you're doing.
I know there's a lot of people out there that
will want to help out. So tell us where they
can go to find out more about it, how they
can contribute to what you're doing over in Eastern in
Central Europe.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah, you could down.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
We have a website www dot Josiah Venture and it's
not Josiah Adventure, it's Josiah Venture. So think of the
name the King Josiah and then just venture dot com
and there you can see our different teams. You can
go in search one of the countries. You can see
all our Ukraine staff. There's different projects there. But one
of the things I would just say is if our
(31:45):
strength is in our national staff, is in our Ukrainians,
our polls, our checks, our young leaders who are really
serving on the front lines, and if any of any
of your listeners wanted to just adopt one of those
young people that are making a big difference. You'll see
all all their pictures on our website, or you could
just write you can write me a note through our
website and just be a part of what God's doing there,
(32:08):
which is really exciting.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
That's amazing. I love it, I love your story, I
love what you're doing, and I'm so glad you came
on to share it today. Dave, Patty, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Oh, thank you so much as well, and thank.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
You all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon podcast
for this episode and others. Go to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you
can watch the video on Rumble at Tutor Dixon. But
make sure you join us next time and have a
blessed day.
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