Brian, Jill, Jessica, and Amy Dagen

Missionaries to the Czech Republic

Canaan is a founding support church for the Dagen’s mission to the Czech Republic, supporting them financially and in prayer since the fall of 1997, just prior to their departure from Southern California to Prague.

Christians comprise a small minority in the Czech Republic (www.czech.cz) attributable in large part to former Communist rule, which formally ended in 1989. One of the lasting effects of Communism is that Czech people are cautious to form new friendships and wary of spiritual things. Another difficulty of reaching the Czech people is learning the very difficult Czech language.

The Dagens spent two and a half years in Prague studying the Czech language then moved during the summer of 2000 to begin working with a small church group in a city (Havlickuv Brod) of about 25,000 an hour and a half from Prague. They made a two year commitment to this particular group. This will enable the Dagens to gain valuable experience working in the Czech culture with other Czech believers and will hopefully enable them to identify, with the Lord’s leading, whether this church or someone from within the church will be willing to help them begin a new church planting work in an area or city where there is little, if any, evangelical witness.

Brian and Jill are helping the church begin a ministry among high school and college students. To that end, they are teaching conversational English classes in two local high schools as a means of making contact with students. Once or twice a month the students are invited to the Dagens for an evening of food, videos, sports, etc. This has helped to build important bridges of relationship and trust.

In addition to this work with students, the Dagens also teach English at their home two nights a week. Jill teaches a beginner’s class for 10 women on Tuesday nights and Brian and Jill share a class on Thursday nights for intermediate and advanced students. These classes were started at the request of those in the same neighborhood as the Dagens and provide an important point of contact with neighbors and others in the city.

Brian and Jill also have two daughters, Jessica (8 years old) and Amy (5 years old). Jessica is in second grade in the Czech school system. Amy attends a Czech preschool three days a week and will begin first grade in the Czech school in September (kids begin school a year later in the Czech Republic than they do in the U.S.). Both are doing well in their respective school situations where they speak only Czech. Both girls have done well at making friends and adjusting to the Czech culture. Amy has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis that causes occasional swelling of her knee and ankle.