In a small village on the island of Hvar in Croatia, one of the countries where JV staff serve, there is a cave below Sveti Nikola. This mountain is the highest point on the island, above steep vineyards and the Adriatic Sea. One hundred thirty-one inhabitants make the village below their home.

In the 15th century, Augustinian monks found their way here and built a monastery. For centuries, generations of monks lived, served, and prayed from this tucked-away location, apart from the rest of the world.

People from the village hiked up to the church for centuries to worship God, even after, for unknown reasons, the monks left in 1787. A church was finally built in the village in 1823, and generations of families still worship there.

My family and I have vacationed in this small village for many years, climbing up to the ruins of the monastery in the cave to ring the bell that’s still standing, draw up fresh water from the well, and look out over the beauty of this glorious location.

Every time I’m there, I think about those monks who spent their lives serving God, no doubt praying for people, the village, the island, and the surrounding areas. Did it make a difference?

Josiah Venture has been praying for a movement of God across Central and Eastern Europe for thirty years. We’ve prayed alone, with our families, in small groups, at churches, in nature, tucked away in our prayer closets, and at conferences with hundreds of people.

We started a web-based Prayer Room in 2017 and, five years later, as an app for iPhones and Androids to fuel a movement of prayer for God’s work here. Thousands of people have prayed with us for the many requests our staff have submitted with real-time needs. Everything from the smallest to the most significant needs are in the Prayer Room.

God has answered many requests; those answers can even be viewed in the Prayer Room! But what about the requests he hasn’t answered?

It’s been ten years, and we’re still waiting for permits to build a higher-capacity event center at Malenovice, our JV training hub in the Czech Republic. Some of our staff have been waiting on God for healing (including my own healing from Long Covid) for years. There are also many young people we’re working with who either haven’t met Jesus or turned away from him. There are sorrows and sadness in ministry that we continue to intercede for, even if it means praying for years.

Those monks in the cave on the island of Hvar never knew that a missionary family would be a light for Jesus, not just to Croatia but, along with their teammates, to many villages, towns, cities, and nations across Central and Eastern Europe.

They also never knew that our missionary family would come to their cave on Christmas mornings to celebrate the birth of Jesus, just as they did for 300+ years.

I hope we’ll meet them in heaven someday and be able to thank them for their prayers. I like to think that they never stopped praying but persevered in prayer even though they didn’t see the fruit that would come many years later.

Please join us in persevering prayer for God’s movement across Central and Eastern Europe! Perhaps we’ll get to see some of the answers to our prayers. But if not, we’ll know we’re joining with the saints in accordance with God’s will and in obedience to his Word: "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.”

 —1 Thessalonians 5:17