Many LCMS churches are “recycling” their blue Lutheran Worship hymnals, and one of our supporting congregations generously shipped about 340 copies directly to Tisovec. People here at the Evangelical Gymnasium Tisovec were amazed when 27 boxes showed up in the entry way of our school. We briefly explained that someone donated these hymnals and the local pastor himself perked up about using them in worship, since we are a bilingual school and our students would have no problem singing hymns in English. I’m sure you realize how much Gospel is present in these hymns and what a unique opportunity we have to use these hymnals to share the Gospel with our students through music.

During our school’s Easter worship, on April 4, we used them for the first time. Our fellow missionary, Laurie Lenz, asked the pastor if we could include, “Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted” during the service. We divided the responsibility to go over the lyrics of this hymn in our religion classes prior to the service so the students would understand all the English words in the hymn when singing them at church. This study became a Christ-centered Bible study filled with the message of Easter. Students loved this hymn!

Our students are in charge of preparing student-led chapel services at a civic auditorium during the time of the year when it’s too cold to meet in the church building. Students come up with all kinds of ideas to communicate the message of a given Bible passage. This past week we had an opportunity to help lead one of these student chapel services.

We met with the group of students who were preparing chapel. We talked about confession and absolution (a new concept for many of those who do not belong to a church). We chose Psalm 103 as one of our readings and picked songs that communicated the wonderful truth of the psalm.

The lyrics from the closing song “At the cross, He died for our sins; at the cross, He gave us life again…” was what we wanted the students to hear louder than anything else. “You are forgiven” is not what people in Slovakia hear very often. But as we all together confessed our sins by saying “I, a poor, miserable sinner…” and heard the words of forgiveness, we were reminded that we have a God who forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies and removes our transgressions as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:1-12). It is a privilege to be able to share this very message with people here in Slovakia.