DEAR FRIENDS AND PARTNERS, OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST,

I suppose that the current situation in Czech Republic is not reported during your evening news. After seven years of transformation, reformation and deformation, our government is facing a major crisis. Two thirds of population lost the faith in current leadership. The "miraculous post communist country" is in a serious moral, financial, economical and political trouble. The local currency is losing its value, as said, due to lack of interest of foreign investment capital and much interest of "foreign speculators". After years of dissatisfaction and complaints about unclear laws, conflict of interest, lack of controls in stock market, etc., the real investors left the field. About a dozen of major banks and number of investment funds have recently collapsed. The assets were looted or as they say here tunneled and nobody bears responsibility for these white-collar crimes. The creed of the day is - what's not forbidden, is permitted. One can imagine how flexible interpretation is being used in defense of wrongdoing. For example the taxi services are totally deregulated, so in Prague unsuspected tourist can pay close to $12 for the first mile and just little bit less for the next.

Many days were again action-filled with hospitality, changing plans and frequent drives to the airport. Our visitors are coming from near and far in various density and mixture. From HCJB headquarters arrived our boss and pastor Jim Allen, his wife and the Reimer's. They spent three days with us. As hosts we try to be flexible and creative using all modes of transportation. The most exotic experiences came from Klara's brother. His job takes him every other month to the former Soviet Union - to Kazachstan. He travels to quite distant and remote areas not knowing how or when he will get to his destination. Last time he had to buy fuel for the chartered airplane the company provided.

The June deadlines are approaching fast. We will be out of town for most of it. We travel to Germany for HCJB annual European Conference. June 10, we fly to London to meet two families - our special friends from Indonesia. Our youngest son, Vit, will join us. There will be three families or twelve people touring England in an 18-passenger bus for a couple of weeks. We know that this will be the therapy we both need so badly!

Real detectives - friends of ours from California arrived Saturday afternoon to Ricany without the street address and phone number. They asked three people - the priest, the caretaker in another church and the printer and they could not help them. The fourth person was gardening. She said - I think I know who you are looking for. As they classified information further, our friends became excited. Yes,it is he. The lady was the doctor who told Pavel - no sugar. Our friends drove the doctor to her office, she wrote our address on prescription slip and they were on the way. They could hardly read the street name and from the house number they were sure only about the last digit. After finding us they missed us we were out with another batch of visitors; but we met later anyway. Not so DHL service! It gave up to find us even with the correct address. So, we had to find DHL and our tax return at the airport - four days after its delivery to Prague!

Among my Czech friends in Prague there is a great awareness of the city's surliness toward, and envy of, foreigners. From April through October, it dictates a mass exodus of Czechs from Prague' during weekends and major holidays. One can walk for blocks in the capital without hearing a word of Czech. Foreign residents, as well as Czechs, understand that, but many foreigners fail to see why the flood of tourists should be debited to their account. After all, it was the Czechs themselves who opened the spigot of foreign cash, allowing their population to increase six-fold during tourist season.

Perhaps the Czechs can't have it both ways-they gladly take the tourists' money but have a harder time accepting the tens of millions of visitors that comes with it. Or perhaps they can have it both ways--they'll let the tourists and foreign residents come, but retain their contempt and envy at the same time.

Whatever pattern is at work, it is an old one-so old it makes four decades of a brutal Communist regime seem like modem times. Many of my Czech friends admit that in some ways, Prague is a display case for Czech xenophobia. And they all agree that fear of foreigners lies deep, if not hidden, in the Czech character. Czechs cite history--centuries of defeat, invasion, occupation and betrayal--as an explanation, or in some cases as a whitewash.

Let's begin with the battle of Bila Hora (White Mountain) in 1620, a three-hour, engagement just outside Prague: It brought the recalcitrant Czechs 300 years of Habsburg domination and created what Czech-born journalist Benjamin Kuras calls the "White Mountain Syndrome" in his 1996 book; Czechs and Balances. Kuras defines it as "what Czechs consider their most self-sabotaging psychological pattern, that paralyzed them for three centuries and repeated itself in 1938, (the Munich pact), in. 1948 (the Communist coup d'etat), and yet again in 1968 (the Soviet Invasion) ... This is the psychological pattern that turns Czechs into quitters before they give themselves a chance to be losers."

What is this phenomenon that begs to be called by its proper name--caution or cowardice? There were some Czech units that fought admirably at Bila Hora - there are always good Czech exceptions to bad Czech rules. But most turned and fled across the Vltava before the Bohemian King Frederick (a German) knew what was happening.

The scene is described by the late British historian C.V. Wedgwood, in her memorable book The Thirty Years' War. She says King Frederick was dining with two English ambassadors when he decided to "ride out (to Bila Hora) to see his gallant soldiers. As he passed the city gate, he met the first fugitives of the battle (and that) was the first the king knew of the battle he had lost."

Bila Hora may have been half Marx Brothers movie, half Bohemian slaughter, but it was definitely not an event on which to build a national legend. Neither was Czechoslovak acquiescence in the 1938 Munich pact, signed by France and Britain, that delivered the Sudetenland to Hitler. For all the sympathy one can have for a nation abandoned by its allies; it is clear to me that it was also abandoned by itself--or by President Edvard Benes, which is the same thing.

Benes's decision not to fight was made against the advice of his own top generals and with the likelihood of holding a far weaker Germany at bay longer than the French were able to do two years later. In an agonized appraisal of Bene§'s action; Czech diplomat-turned-academic Josef Korbel (the father of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) asked 20 years ago: "Does, a nation have a moral obligation to defend Its rightful position against violence, even in the most adverse circumstances? Or is it morally justified in attempting to assure its biological survival ... at the cost of even the temporary loss of its moral Integrity and fundamental values?"

Good questions for my Czech friends. But as a foreign resident, it's not for me to answer them. Instead, I offer a piece of advice both to my Czech and foreign friends in Prague. Next time you're strolling through the architectural splendor of the city, remember that beauty comes with a steep price-decisions not to defend the city, which would have destroyed it. Until someone figures out how to change human nature, hormone-charged men will fight wars, as inevitably as women will bear children-it may be a politically incorrect observation but truthful nonetheless. And those men or countries that choose not to fight--whatever their genius, and the Czechs have more than their fair share--will suffer the costly consequences.

... it (Ryrie's book) is written in a very belliger ent spirit which is characterized by one-sided fundamentalism of American cut with no will to penetrate into depths of problems, and without preparedness to conduct any dialog. The book is a band of fundamentally minted axioms. Students and other concerned parties have no choice but to grind and accept in good faith that this and only this is the correct and genuine. The book disgorges into students' cognizance completed doctrines, apart of them there is no other alternative but straying away.

... it pays much attention to evolution which it abates with a zeal and implacability in our terms unprecedented-nearly Steiger-like one.

Letter #1636
Dear Brother Pavel, let me open with an enjoyable note. The young man whom you witnessed to at the conference in Ostrava has committed his life to Lord God. I have a few recordings of your radio programs which are very much in demand, especially by unbelievers. They (recordings) are all the time checked out, and when they return there is always immediately someone else who is interested in them. My circle of friends and colleagues check out your recordings all the time. One of them after listening to some of them said, that he never realized, that salvation is grace - a free gift, and nobody can earn it by good works (Eph. 2:8). Another colleague works with me in the same shop. When we read God's Word, he discovered, that he was for 25 years deceived. When he heard (from recordings) that Bible makes sense he marveled. I could continue in this manner. I hope that you will help me by mailing some recordings of your radio programs. However, the best recordings are from live services. -Michal K. Modra, Slovakia-

Letter #1417
Hello, I have listened to your broadcasting for over a year. On January 14, 1995 I was trying to find a Slovak radio broadcast. As it happened I picked up the last five minutes. When the station identification and broadcast schedule was announced at the end, I was glad that the program can be heard daily at the same time on the same frequencies. Since that evening I have been listening to all programs. I like all of them. However, most on my heart is "Struggle for Soul" prepared for every Monday by Pavel Steiger. I would wish, if you could mail it to me in Slovak language. I thank you in advance and wish you a lot of Lord's Blessing. Many regards to all of you. I can't wait for evenings when I'll hear you again. -Zuzana J., (55), Yugoslavia-

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