From Kingston to Ireland to Czechia
By Pete & Michelle Foster
Between 1998 and 1999, while I was studying at Kingston University, God gave me a very clear sense that one day I would live in Ireland. Two years later I met and married Michelle who is from Czechia. When we got together we made a deal that when God called us to Ireland or Czechia, we would go.
In 2008, Exactly 10 years after my first visit to Ireland, we moved from Kingston to Dublin with our daughter Ema, a soon to be born baby Jan and the Uberois. We went to help out in the Newfrontiers church plant that had just started. Not long after arriving we were given two words "You thought you were coming here to be part of a project, but actually you're God's project" and "What do you need to be doing in faith now to see yourselves moving to Czechia".
At the same time, we started a Czech and Slovak Playgroup on Saturday mornings for Czech and Slovak families in Dublin. It quickly grew to about 50 parents and kids and gained the attention of the Czech Embassy in Dublin. Shortly after I was offered a job at the Embassy and it all seemed like stepping stones for God moving us to Czechia but we still had the questions of where would we live and when would we move.
In the summer of 2013 Newfrontiers' Relational Mission family of churches got in touch and offered to run a prayer day later that year for Czechia. At the prayer day we were given a word about Pardubice and this confirmed a few months later when Michelle and Ema both dreamt the same night that Ema was riding on a white horse in Czechia. Ema said the horse was called ‘Majesty’. What we didn’t realise, and found out the following week, was that Pardubice is the Czech city of horses with a world-famous steeplechase and has half a white horse as its coat of arms.
The next question was when to move and what jobs we would do. God quickly answered that, again through a dream, and within three months in the spring of 2014, we were living in Pardubice and working as English teachers.
When we arrived in Pardubice, we realised there were other expat couples who God had also called here, so we started a Christian community group to pray and worship together in English and explore if God was wanting to start a new church here.
Just over three years later, with lots of help and prayers from Relational Mission and a story of a lost ring, God made it clear that we should transition our Christian community group to a church plant. https://www.
In September 2018 we started intentionally meeting each Sunday as a church plant. There are currently between 10 and 20 of us including kids meeting each week.
Please pray for:
The lady who became a Christian in the summer that we can disciple her well.
The people that we are in contact with who are showing interest in Jesus and Christianity.
Our ‘Christianity Explored’ course that we will run from February 2019.
The small youth group we have started.
