What has happened to them? Where are they now? Are they still alive? Are they still worshipping in their homes? I no longer remember the street where they lived and worshipped. I do remember the passionate prayers offered up throughout the night as they read scripture and prayed for their country, which they knew was shortly to have its own iron curtain. They knew the Russians would come; it was only a matter of time. It was not if, but when. Did they live, were they rounded up and taken off and shot simply for being Christian? Did the Bibles I give them betray them? Did I do the right thing?

Today I once again walked the streets and crossed the bridges of Prague, seeing the numerous statues of saints and sinners, potentates, politicians and princes. But it is not the same any more. As our guide reminded us "everything has changed." Indeed they have. Today there is religious freedom, but Christianity is not flourishing. Atheism has been a part of their lives for decades. The large Roman Catholic cathedral attracts more tourists than worshippers. Its architectural construction is more reminiscent of Westminster Abbey in London than Canterbury cathedral.

I was a young, brash, 24-year old theology student studying at what was then called London Bible College (now London School of Theology), a recognized college of the University of London. I had also done a stint at L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland studying the works and listening to the lectures of American-born Presbyterian churchman/evangelist Dr. Francis Schaeffer, and watching the brilliant young Os Guinness cut his teeth on the mind of one of Europe's major post war cultural Christian thinkers, perhaps unaware of the impact he himself would make in the years to come in North America, Europe, and across the globe.

I was an outsider. I had left my country of origin, New Zealand, restless and inquisitive to go abroad, to know more about God, unhappy with my home and Plymouth Brethren upbringing, but unable to truly rebel. At the end of a term, word went out asking if there was anyone willing to take (read smuggle) Bibles into Eastern Europe. I jumped at the chance.

I was given a small Volkswagen packed with Bibles and was told to make my way to Germany to visit the house of Mother Basilea Schlink in Darmstadt. She was a German religious leader of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary and an author in her own right. Her books were quite popular at the time.

I dutifully turned up on her doorstep and was handed several volumes of her books with a request to drop them off to her friends and followers in Prague. She and her sisterhood would pray me through the border into Czechoslovakia. I had no idea how much those prayers would be answered.

At this time, Czechoslovakia was under local communist rule -- a period that extended from 1948 to 1989 following the expulsion of the Nazis. In February 1948, the Communists took power through a Czechoslovak coup d'etat - a preliminary step toward socialism and, ultimately, communism. The attainment of Soviet-style command socialism became the government's avowed policy. The 1960 Constitution declared the victory of socialism and proclaimed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR).

But de-Stalinization was in the air. In the early 1960s, the Czechoslovak economy stagnated. The Prague Spring began August 20-21 in 1968 -- the very day I was in Prague. The then popular dynamism of President Dubček, who wanted to carry the reform movement a step further in the direction of liberalism, was short lived. Radical elements found a voice and anti-Soviet polemics appeared in the press. The Social Democrats began to form a separate party. A program favoring a modern, humanistic socialist democracy, that would guarantee, among other things, freedom of religion, press, assembly, speech, and travel, tried put "a human face" on events. It was too much for Mother Russia.

Troops of the Warsaw Pact countries (except Romania) invaded Czechoslovakia during the night of August 20. A few months later on January 19, 1969, Jan Palach, a student, set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968. On April 17 1969, Dubček was removed as party First Secretary. Czechoslovakia was once again an occupied country.

On that day of August 20, leaving my car behind fearing the roads would be blocked, my hosts pushed me onto the last train out of Prague and I made my way out to Germany. The Soviets were only a few miles behind us.

The train ride was harrowing. Men and women wept. Many were just stone cold silent trying hard not to comprehend what was happening to them. Czech stoicism, born of years of oppression going back to the Hapsburgs and the 30-year war, then the Nazis and now the Communists, seemed etched into their psyche and faces.

I thought of my newfound friends whom I had left behind. At one point in my stay, I had crossed the border briefly into Poland to visit Christians there. I was given a conducted tour of Auschwitz and saw man's inhumanity to man, confirming in me, forever, the Doctrine of Original Sin and man's total depravity. Many of my Polish friends could not finish the tour as it was too painful for them.

I wondered what would happen to those fleeing with me. Would they live forever in another country like England? Would they ever return? How would their lives change, would they ever be the same again? I was returning to a freedom they had never known.

Christians had prayed for me to cross the border with my books and Bibles and so it came to pass. It rained as my little car pulled up to the border crossing that day and the guards were too lazy to fully inspect my Volkswagen. Now I found myself praying for them and hoping that God would guide them into a better future than they had known. I hoped my prayers would be answered.

END