152 leadership Leading\ spreading God’s love through teaching\ Harding Bible professor Dr. Allen Diles had taught at Harding since 2005. Before coming to Searcy to teach, he was a missionary abroad in Prague, Czech Republic. Diles first went to the Czech Republic with Scott Karnses and Jason Locke from Abilene Christian University where the three were in graduate school together. After spending a year in the Czech Republic, they all returned to finish graduate school and to form a larger, stronger team to go back for long-term missions work in Prague. Originally planning to travel to Australia, the team changed their minds when the Berlin wall came down in 1989 and Communism was falling. The group knew that the people in the Communist controlled areas needed the Gospel and that this was their chance to go in, now that it was no longer illegal to preach the Gospel. So they decided to go into the Czech Republic instead of Australia in 1990. After this, the group returned to Abilene and Diles began building a team to go back and live in Prague. It was a ten-person team that packed their bags and left the U.S. for mission work in the Czech Republic, including Diles and his wife, Laurie. Although part of the group had already been to Prague, there were still many difficulties the members faced upon arrival. The language barrier proved to be the most imminent of struggles to get through. To overcome this, the team had their own language teacher who worked with them the whole time they were there. “The language was a hard one to learn,” Diles said. “It took over a year to learn how to speak it, and about three years to be comfortable with it.” Another difficulty the team faced was the harsh culture of the Czech Republic. “It was a very closed and reserved culture there,” he said. Status and use of a person’s official title was used very formally in all parts of society. How the team spoke, treated or interacted with anyone from the Czech Republic was influenced by the status that the group carried. This also made it more difficult in some circumstances to reach out to those in the community. Along with the Czech Republic’s strict formality and history came their lack of faith and acceptance of religion. “Between 60-70% of the people in that area were atheists, even some of which claim to be Christians,” Diles said. Some of the things that impacted Diles’ life and the lives of their team in Prague were the few they did reach with the gospel and were able to baptize. One of Diles’ favorite memories was converting their language teacher. She had been with them for over three years when she finally began going to church with them. Six months later they had the privilege of baptizing her into Christ. Before her conversion, the language teacher had also adhered to the strict code of conduct found in the country, asking the team to only call by her proper name. After her baptism, she told them that they were now her brothers and sisters and that they could call her by her first name, Vera. “I have seen up close what society without God is like,” Diles said. “Our society is becoming more like that. The richness of my experiences there influences my teaching here.” Joseph Dickerson and Katie Ramirez
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