Checking Yes to Serving in the Czech Republic with Adam McBride
In this episode, Mike and Chris talk to Adam McBride about his experiences with global work in the Czech Republic. Adam shares how the outreach has grown over the past decade and the personal growth he found through being willing to go to an unfamiliar place and culture.
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What does it take to start serving overseas? For Adam McBride, it took one conversation. He met Ota, a Young Life leader from the Czech Republic, at a men’s retreat, talked baseball with him for hours, and has led student mission trips to the Czech Republic for 13 years. He joins Mike Mobley and Chris Howard, his friend of 25 years, to share how one genuine leader’s passion drew him in, how a camp that started with about 50 kids grew to about a hundred, why baptism is such a big decision in one of the least religious countries in Europe, why you don’t need special skills to go, and what he’d tell anyone on the fence: you can’t mess it up. Below: the key takeaways, the Scripture themes that came up, and the full episode transcript.
Refrigerator-Privilege Friends
Chris introduces Adam as a “refrigerator privilege” friend of about 25 years. They were friends at Louisiana Tech, and Chris’s wife Jessica set Adam and his wife Alita up on their first date. Adam and Alita have been married more than 22 years and have three boys: twins Boston and Bennett and their younger brother Bowen. The warm-up questions cover being late to a wedding over a game of NHL on the Xbox, finishing a hockey shift on a broken leg, pickleball tips for beginners, and the night the Cubs finally won the World Series.
One Genuine Leader Can Change Your Direction
Before 2012, the Czech Republic wasn’t on Adam’s radar beyond a couple of tennis players. Then he met Ota, who was growing Young Life in a town in the eastern part of the country. Ota was “a guy’s guy, but just the nicest person in the world,” and his passion was contagious. When Ota twisted his ankle before the first camp and soaked it in a cold stream without a word of complaint, Adam saw the kind of leader he wanted to support. Mike adds that genuine, authentic excitement about what God is doing draws people in.
From 50 Kids to 100
Ota’s vision was to move camp from the country into the city, so the American team could meet kids where they live. The team teaches English, runs sports workshops, crafts and games. Over seven or eight years, the camp grew from about 50 kids to about a hundred before COVID, in a former communist bloc nation. Adam has learned he has skills he didn’t think he had, like teaching, and an energy that comes from 16- to 18-hour days under the summer sun. His standard warning to every team: “the toughest, the hardest, the most exhausting fun that you have ever had.”
Why Baptism Is Such a Big Deal There
What keeps Adam going back is seeing the same kids return year after year, moving from campers to the work crew, staying connected even before they put their faith in Jesus. Much of the ministry is indirect, through the local staff. One year, after camp ended, several volunteer staff were baptized in 60-degree water in the rain, with Pastor Ross baptizing some of them. In a culture that is very atheistic, a student’s decision to follow Jesus can cause real problems with family. Mike notes that in much of the world, a public profession of faith is a life-or-death decision we can take for granted.
You Can’t Mess It Up
To parents and students on the fence, Adam says this kind of trip is a safe, perfect way to get your feet wet in mission work, and you don’t need a special skill set. Teams prepare for months, learn the history and culture, and use a proven template for lesson plans, so non-teachers can do it. His advice to his younger self, besides “the Cubs will win in 2016”: “You can’t mess it up,” as long as the goal is to support kids, have fun and keep them engaged. The first year, his life group raised money with a Wiffle ball tournament called the Czech Swing Classic.
A Decade of Saying Yes
What started as “an Adam thing” became a family thing: by the third year Alita went too, then their older boys, then Bowen. Now the church is looking at how to support Young Life across central Europe, from Czech and Slovakia to Poland and the Balkans. Mike thanks Adam for his obedience in saying yes, which will pay dividends beyond what he may ever see. Adam’s favorite part now is getting other people ready to lead trips, and the friendships built over 13 years.
Scriptures From This Episode
Also referenced: no verse is quoted in this conversation, but it touches on baptism as a public profession of faith, obedience in saying yes to God, and bearing fruit you may never see.
Go deeper: What is Baptism? · Seeing God Work Through Obedience · Scripture on Obedience · 31 Days Of Serving · What is Servant Leadership? · Scripture on Friendship · A Convincing Case for Small Group Community with Vince Rice
Full Transcript, Not Quite There, Episode 40: Checking Yes to Serving in the Czech Republic with Adam McBride
Adam: I would say this is going to be the toughest, the hardest, the most exhausting fun. You will hit your pillow at the end of the night and you will fall asleep faster than you’ve ever fallen asleep.
Mike: All right, well, here we are again. Another day, another dollar at NQT Studios. Chris has his readers on.
Chris: Where are these dollars?
Mike: He is ready. Well, speaking of dollars, it’s dollars I made today. Sorry you didn’t. What would you like to share about your new glasses?
Chris: There’s not much to say about them. They make me look a little bit… I think “grandpa” is the term that you use. So yeah, I’m wearing my readers today because I just want to make sure that I can read when I need to.
Mike: When someone says they’re bringing their readers, do you think they’re trying to downplay it? “It’s not glasses, they’re readers.”
Chris: I don’t think they have a prayer there. It’s old and not wanted, no matter what.
Mike: We’re almost a year into the podcast. Chris has learned to take his shoes off every time before we record, and now he puts on his readers.
Chris: Readers on, shoes on.
Mike: We have had a very eventful year. We are aging quickly.
Chris: Well, some of us are.
Mike: So how’s your day been today?
Chris: Day’s been just fine. Just fine. Not too up, not too down.
Mike: I feel like you have a story with that, the way you’re looking at me.
Chris: Not really. It’s just midweek.
Mike: Today’s a Wednesday. Historically known as hump day. There was that commercial, very popular. Do you remember that?
Adam: “Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike…”
Chris: “Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike. Hump day!”
Mike: You don’t remember this? Our guest remembers this. I can’t believe you don’t remember. It was a camel. You don’t like that commercial?
Chris: It was fine. It was fine. It was kind of midweek.
Mike: So today was fine. You’re in a bad mood.
Chris: I’m not in a bad mood. I just don’t want to take center stage here, because we have somebody here in the studio that I want to make sure people get to know.
Mike: We do have a guest today. How would you introduce our guest, Chris? Christopher Howard. Christian.
Chris: Well, Mike, let me ask you a question right back. Do you have classifications of friends? People that you kind of know, people that are acquaintances, people that are really good friends that you’ve known for a while?
Mike: Do I have friends?
Chris: Well, you do have friends. Number one.
Mike: There’s a couple out there. Let’s say real friends and acquaintances. That’s probably right. And enemies.
Chris: Do you have enemies? We can talk about that on another episode.
Mike: You don’t have any enemies?
Chris: None that I know of.
Mike: You’re feeling strong today.
Chris: I am. I’m feeling quite strong.
Mike: Does this guest happen to fall into a classification on your side of things?
Chris: Well, let me answer that, because I have another question for you. Do you have refrigerator privilege friends?
Mike: Yes.
Chris: You do? What does that mean to you?
Mike: Those are the friends who, obviously, I want them to come in and feel at home. They don’t even have to take off their shoes, but if they want to take off their shoes, they can. Go into the fridge, grab whatever they want, go to the pantry. Pantry privileges, fridge privileges, whatever. Lie on the couch. If they want to eat a block of cheese from the fridge, they can.
Chris: We have one of those guys here today. One of those guys for me. He’s been a good friend for, I think, a quarter of a century now.
Mike: High classification.
Chris: He is husband to Alita, father to the twins, Boston and Bennett, and to their younger son, Bowen. And he’s been a good friend for, like I said, 25 years, that I’ve been doing life with. Sorry, Bowen’s not 25. My bad.
Mike: Bad joke. Crickets.
Chris: There we go. But it’s Adam McBride.
Mike: Adam McBride, everyone. Welcome into the studio.
Adam: Great to be here.
Chris: Glad to have Adam here. I think we’re going to have a fun time, because we have some questions for him to start off with.
Adam: I wanted to jump into some of that other conversation, because…
Chris: Please do.
Adam: …the stuff about the readers.
Chris: They’re on right now.
Mike: What do you think? Do you think people downplay glasses by saying readers?
Adam: I think so. I’ve gotten to the point over the last couple of years where I have readers strategically placed throughout the house, so I don’t have to go very far.
Mike: Just within arm’s reach. Why stand up for them?
Adam: And usually at some point in the week, they all find their way to the same place, and I’m having to go spread them back out around the house.
Mike: The only reason I think that is because normally you’re like, “Oh, you got your glasses,” and everyone’s always like, “No, no, they’re my readers.” So I’m like, why would you correct me if you’re not trying to put them in a different classification? I can’t take you seriously when you’re wearing them. I’m sorry. And you’re looking at me above the readers. You’re doing the old-man look. “Excuse me, Timmy, I’ve got something to say.” What’s with all the B’s for the kids’ first names? Just curious. You like B’s?
Adam: We like B’s. When what we thought was going to be the first kid was coming, we had a B name already picked out. And then once we found out it was going to be twins, and boys, we just thought another B name would flow well. But it took us a little while to figure out what that second B name was going to be. We went through quite a few, and we landed on Boston. When I first heard Boston, I was like, “Oh gosh, no, everybody’s going to call the kid Boss.” And then after a couple of weeks, it just started to flow. When you’re naming a kid, especially a boy, you’ve got to think about how that name is going to turn into nicknames and things like that. But we landed on it and love it. It’s a little more unique.
Mike: So now, years later, what kind of nicknames does Boston have?
Adam: It’s mostly Boss. Boss, Boss Man.
Chris: One thing that you may not know, Mike, is that Adam has a unique knack for generating nicknames.
Mike: Do you have a nickname?
Chris: For a while I’ve been “Cheese Staff.”
Mike: Cheese Staff.
Chris: I do like cheese stuff, so that would apply. So maybe sometime during this time, you can get your own nickname generated.
Mike: That’s my goal in life.
Chris: You’re not walking out of here without one from Adam.
Mike: I want one. It’s funny you say that about Boston. When Joelle brought up Peyton’s name to me, I could just think of Peyton Manning, and she’s a girl. And I was like, that’s not a girl name. It took me weeks. I started asking around, and everyone was like, “That’s a beautiful girl name.” Eventually it was like, oh no, now she has to be Peyton. But at first it was no, no, no.
Adam: It’s the exact same thing. Bennett was a little more unique. You probably hear it more as a last name than as a first name. We were trying to find something in that same round that wasn’t super common, but not completely off the wall.
Chris: He’s got a great middle name, by the way, Bennett does.
Adam: Yes, he does. Bennett Christian.
Chris: I like it. That’s good.
Mike: So, Adam, thanks for being here. Normally we have some quick questions.
Chris: Some appetizers.
Mike: We roll out appetizers, then a main entree, and then we have something at the end that we can’t tell you about until we get there. And Chris put his readers on, so clearly you want to go through the appetizers.
Chris: Yeah. Let’s go. Oh, my bad. A little loud. Wrong button. This is where we really get to grill you a bit. We’ll start with something easy. Have you ever been late for a wedding because you were playing Xbox?
Mike: By the way, these are just out of nowhere. Hypothetical questions. We ask everyone.
Chris: Everyone.
Mike: So go ahead and answer the question.
Adam: Have I ever been late to a wedding? I think only once that I can recall.
Mike: And you were playing Xbox?
Adam: I was playing Xbox with a buddy.
Chris: Follow-up question. Who were you playing Xbox with?
Adam: He goes by Cheese Staff. He does not like to wear shoes.
Chris: I think we were playing NHL.
Adam: As we walked by the chapel and looked through the window, I believe the bridesmaids were walking down the aisle, and I think we resorted to going to the balcony.
Mike: This was not your wedding?
Adam: No, no, no. Our wives were either part of it or somehow in it, and we didn’t have to go early.
Chris: Plenty of time.
Mike: The bride wasn’t even walking down the aisle yet. It sounds like y’all were early.
Adam: They had shut the door, though. There was some finagling that had to be done.
Mike: NHL ’04. Do you remember what teams you played?
Chris: I was probably the Avalanche.
Mike: Yeah. Stupid Colorado. Every time.
Chris: It always comes back to that. Just take the team that won the first championship for Denver and throw them under the bus and stomp on them. Thank you, Mike.
Mike: You’re welcome.
Chris: Adam, speaking of hockey, have you ever played hockey on a broken leg?
Adam: I have played hockey on a broken leg.
Mike: These are easy questions, because again, they’re hypothetical. They just happen to apply to you.
Adam: Okay. It was some late-night pickup hockey.
Mike: Street hockey or real ice?
Chris: Ice, Michael.
Mike: I understand that, but we’re also in Texas, Chris. I had to play street hockey.
Chris: That’s not hockey. That’s street hockey.
Mike: I agree. But ice hockey was not available for me when I was growing up. Thanks for that reminder.
Chris: Go Avs.
Adam: It was late at night, on the ice. I think it was an open play situation, so you had a variety of levels of players. There was a guy who was maybe just learning to skate, and he just fell awkwardly on my leg and into the boards. I knew it was broken when I got up and had to skate off. I finished the shift.
Chris: He finished it. Skated off.
Mike: Oh, you kept going?
Adam: It wasn’t long. I got up and I may have just kind of acted as an obstacle.
Mike: Was the leg dangling to the side?
Adam: It wasn’t that bad. It was in my boot, so my boot actually kept it from displacing. We can get into all the details of that.
Chris: He comes to the bench and says, “I may have broken my leg.”
Mike: “Hey guys. Good job finishing your shift.”
Adam: I saw the line change coming. I figured maybe it’s time to sit on the bench.
Chris: “Are you going to be in for the penalty kill?” What is one pickleball tip that you would give to America?
Mike: Random question again.
Adam: Pickleball tip to America.
Chris: Just assume that you play pickleball.
Adam: I’ve played several times. I do love to play. Oh gosh. That’s a good question.
Mike: It doesn’t have to be the top tip. It can be any tip. What’s going to get them over the hump? The entire country.
Adam: Just get out there and play. The rules are weird. Weird rules, weird terms.
Mike: The kitchen. Strange things like that. You’re like, where’s the kitchen?
Adam: You hear about the kitchen and an Erne and an ATP and all this, and it’s a little silly. But for guys and gals who are getting a little bit older and don’t want to cover a full tennis court…
Mike: They wear readers.
Adam: You need to wear shoes.
Mike: No barefoot. Put those shoes on.
Adam: Learn the rules a little bit, watch YouTube videos, and then get out there and find an open play group somewhere, because they exist, and just start learning how to hit the ball.
Chris: America, you’re welcome.
Adam: You’ll naturally fall into your level of play, and you’ll find those players that you like to play with.
Chris: Do you think I’d be at a high level, Mike, or would I have to start somewhere in the medium?
Mike: I think you’d be in the medium.
Adam: You were a racquetball player, weren’t you?
Chris: I did play some racquetball back in the day.
Adam: Usually racquetball players, tennis players, even good ping-pong players can adjust pretty quickly to pickleball.
Chris: Okay. That gives me hope. Thank you, America. Speaking of hope, how did you celebrate the Cubs winning the World Series? Because you are a longtime Cubs fan, I’ll just tell America that. When they finally won, that was a great night.
Adam: It was a little tough, because there was a rain delay, and then it went into extra innings, so the game didn’t end until really late that night. The boys had all fallen asleep by then. I was on the phone with my longtime buddy back in Louisiana, who’s a huge Cubs fan, and we watched that last inning on the phone together. It was more of a relief than going crazy. I went and got my big W flag and hung it in the front window for the next week and all that. It was great. To the boys, it was kind of like, okay. And I’m like, well, I’ve gone my whole lifetime without them winning, and you’ve gone, what, five years, however old they were at the time.
Mike: I felt that way about the Rangers. When that happened, it was a relief: finally. Well, yours was even longer. What was it?
Adam: It was over a hundred years. I think 108.
Mike: Wow. Our kids were kind of like, “So they won. What’s the big deal?”
Chris: They leave the room, right? Walk away. Well, he’s the biggest Cubs fan I know around these parts.
Mike: Around these parts.
Chris: Last question. Last appetizer. This is again hypothetical. This is for everybody. If you’re checking on somebody’s house for them, say they’re on vacation…
Mike: Naturally.
Chris: …what kind of cake do you want them to leave on the counter for you?
Mike: Because whenever anyone house-sits, they immediately go, “What’s the perfect cake you have up there?”
Adam: I would just say keep it simple. Chocolate icing, white cake. Just a simple little cake mix.
Mike: Do you ever do yellow?
Adam: White or yellow is fine. Maybe yellow.
Mike: It’s a good combo. Just classic chocolate. I’m glad you said that. Not fancy. We don’t need 25 toppings.
Adam: No sprinkles. It doesn’t need to be layered. It can be in a little dish.
Mike: So Chris, when anyone house-sits for you, is the thought, “Well, what kind of cake are we going to make them and put on the counter?”
Chris: When you have friends that have refrigerator privileges, pantry privileges, you kind of just put it out there and say, “Just help yourself.”
Adam: You go over to check on the dogs and do all that, and if there’s a cake sitting on the counter, you assume that it was left for you.
Chris: These people are out of town. It’s not going to get eaten.
Mike: Frankly, you’re house-sitting, so not eating it would probably be a slap in the face. Even if it says “not for you,” they’re not there, and it’s going to go bad. You’ve got to eat it.
Adam: You’re not paying me anything. I’m just helping out.
Mike: Oh, you don’t get paid for that? You’ve gotten ripped off many, many times. So are you a Cubs fan because you’re from Chicago?
Adam: No, not at all. I’m from North Louisiana. I grew up on WGN. Back then, the Cubs only played day games, before they had lights. So in elementary school, you’d come home from school and you’d still get to watch. It was the only baseball game on. It was either them or the Braves. The Braves were on TV all the time too, and I just never connected with the Braves.
Mike: You’re taking me back. I watched a lot of Cubs, because WGN was on all the time. Is WGN even around anywhere?
Adam: WGN is, but they may play like eight games a year or something like that. Not enough for America.
Mike: We’ve been talking about America a lot. This show is also available to all of you international listeners. We will talk more about cricket. We’re supportive of rugby. There are more than two sports. Soccer, or football, around the world.
Chris: We’ve got some folks in South Africa.
Mike: Thank you for being here.
Chris: Well, that is all the appetizer questions that I have.
Mike: Those were great questions. Dynamite hypothetical questions. Thank you, Chris.
Chris: I tried to bring the dynamite.
Mike: Excellent. So tell us a little bit about your family, a little bit about you. A little biography.
Adam: Chris kind of led off with it earlier, but my wife Alita and I have been married for 22-plus years now. We’ve got three boys. The older boys, the twins, are freshmen in college. Bennett is at Tarleton State over in Stephenville. He’s actually up in Oklahoma right now competing in a fishing tournament; he’s on the bass team there at Tarleton State. They’re braving the elements; they just had some weather go through there, so they got a late start this morning. And then Boston is back in Louisiana, at Louisiana Tech. He works for the baseball team there.
Chris: Former alma mater.
Adam: My former alma mater. That’s actually the connection that Chris and I have. It’s his wife. We were friends in college at Louisiana Tech.
Mike: Oh, y’all were friends first.
Adam: So we knew each other there. And then when I moved over here to the DFW area, Jessica was already over here. And so that’s how Chris and I got connected and got some friends and did all that. And then we have our youngest, Bowen. He’s just enjoying life with his brothers being gone a lot of the time, being the focus of our attention at home.
Mike: Versus scraps. If you’re the third kid, you’re like, “Here’s a piece of bread for you.”
Adam: We never knew what it was like to have one. We had two right away, so it was man-to-man right away. And then we had Bowen, so we had to go into a little bit of a zone, or pull in grandma and grandpa if we had three different directions at any given time. But now he gets it all. And he’s not the kind of kid who demands that or wants that. He’s just getting it, and he’s eating it up.
Mike: He’s probably loving it. That’s awesome. I didn’t know you knew Jessica ahead of time.
Adam: Yeah, we go way back.
Mike: Shout-out to Jessica. Thanks for listening, if you’re here.
Adam: And the other piece of it: Jessica and Alita worked together way back in the day and set us up on our very first date. That’s how we met.
Chris: And we had a double date.
Mike: So if it wasn’t for Jessica, you wouldn’t have any friends. You wouldn’t be married. You wouldn’t have children.
Adam: I probably wouldn’t have broken my leg playing hockey.
Chris: All these things that happened. A whole different life.
Adam: We had a Dave & Buster’s double date.
Chris: We watched a little USA versus Russia Olympic hockey that night, which I think pushed us further down the hockey route.
Mike: Did you play games for tickets on that double date?
Chris: Dave & Buster’s. There’s some Skee-Ball.
Adam: Some Skee-Ball, and props to Alita. She’s really good at the little mini basketball game. And she was super competitive. I’m like, whoa, she’s playing for real. So it was fun to see that competitive side come out of her right away.
Mike: That’s a good eye-opener. Twenty years in. That’s awesome.
Chris: Very much so. And early on, when I first knew you, or when Jessica met you in college, was the Czech Republic anywhere near your thoughts at all?
Adam: The Czech Republic? Outside of Martina Navratilova and Ivan Lendl, the tennis players, which I guess was more old Czechoslovakia, I didn’t really know much about that part of the world, or have any desire to know that much about it.
Chris: Well, the reason I ask, and I don’t know if we should just address America, not the world… The reason I ask is that around these parts, Adam’s kind of known as the Czech guy. The guy who has led a lot of mission trips over to the Czech Republic. Maybe it started with one trip, and then it turned into, okay, you’re leading these things. You’ve been leading for quite a while.
Adam: It started kind of randomly, I guess. Our buddy Ota was in Texas. He was actually part of a men’s retreat. He and Ross were friends back in the day through Athletes in Action. He was visiting here, at a men’s retreat, and somehow I got connected with him, and we talked for hours about baseball. He loves baseball, which is a little more unusual over there. It’s not a common sport. It’d probably be about 10th or 12th, maybe a little higher now; it’s starting to grow in that country. But at the time, it was fairly low. So we talked a lot, and I just kind of fell in love with this guy, who he is and what he was trying to do over there with Young Life, really trying to grow Young Life in a little town in the eastern part of the country. I think that next summer was maybe the first time we had ever, even as a church, considered going over there, and I couldn’t go. I can’t remember why I couldn’t go that year. So it was almost like, okay, I’m already slated. I want to go the next year. So I ended up going that next year.
Mike: Why did you even want to go?
Adam: It started with just meeting Ota, getting to know him and hearing about his passion and his ministry with Young Life over there. It just felt like something, with students, that we could really have a lot of fun with and really get in there and have an impact.
Mike: Up until that time, you’d never thought about it before. So then you meet this guy, and it’s just like, I’ve got to go see this?
Adam: Yeah. He just oozed… I can’t even really describe what it was. He’s one of those guys who’s a guy’s guy, but just the nicest person in the world. You could just tell how much he loved doing what he did. And it was that feeling of, I want to go support this guy and what he’s doing over there. Just sending small teams over there to help them run their Young Life camps, teach English, help with their workshops, all those things.
Mike: It’s contagious. When we meet someone like that… Not to be negative, but typically you’ve got complainers, or just what’s going on in real life. But when you come across someone who’s genuinely, not faking it, excited about what they’re doing, and they have a grand vision…
Chris: The midweek Wednesday.
Mike: It’s not a hump day, though. There’s just this, “Man, this is what’s going on, and this is happening, and I can’t believe this is taking place.” They don’t have to be on cloud nine every two seconds, but there’s a driven contagiousness that comes from something like that. That gets me excited, and I want to learn more about what it is. When it’s very authentic…
Adam: Very genuine. Yeah.
Mike: I can tell when it’s fake, and it’s like, eh, okay, whatever. But there was something genuinely compelling about that.
Adam: Well, at the very first camp we were at, before any of the campers had gotten there, this was when it was out in the country and they would bus the students in for overnight camp, we were having a game of kickball with all of the Young Life staff and the American team. Ota stepped in a little hole or rut in one of the fields and twisted his ankle pretty good. And you never saw any kind of complaint. Of course, you can’t get ice over there. It’s hard to get ice in central Europe anyway, much less out in the middle of nowhere at a camp. He just had to go stick it in the little stream, which was cold. He just had the best response that a leader could have. It made you really want to invest in what he was doing.
Chris: So that must have been really helpful in you going back again.
Adam: Oh yeah. After the first year, like I said, it was out in the country. Ota had this vision to bring camp to the city, so you could potentially reach more kids, and it would be more of a day camp during the week as opposed to an overnight camp. So we made that adjustment to go into the city, which was great for us, because we wanted to go to where they lived. We were out in the middle of nowhere before that. So we got to see where they live and what they do every day. It evolved into more of a city camp at that point. We were still doing a lot of the same things: teaching English, helping run sports workshops, arts and crafts, games, different things like that.
Mike: Did that help it grow, moving to the city?
Adam: It did. Over the course of seven or eight years, it went from about 50 kids that first year at camp to about a hundred kids right before COVID.
Mike: Wow. So it doubled.
Adam: And we’re not talking about a Grapevine, Texas type of place. This is in the middle of the old communist bloc, at the time only 20-something years out from being under communism.
Mike: So it’s clearly making a strong enough impact for those kids to show up, to step out and do something.
Chris: Wow. And I know you had a little experience with student ministry and with other mission trips before. I want to say Costa Rica was one back in the day. So there was a little preparation. But since you didn’t grow up saying, “I’m going to be a missionary,” what did you learn about yourself over that time that maybe surprised you, once you started leading these trips and going on repeat?
Adam: All of these short-term mission trips are a little different. This one was unique in that we did a ton of preparation beforehand. We were five or six months out when we started to prepare: deciding who was going, assigning roles, and learning about the history and the culture, which was pretty critical. But I think what you learn most about yourself is that you have skills you wouldn’t think you have. I wouldn’t consider myself a teacher, or say that’s a strength of mine, but you go there and you’re teaching English to kids whose first language is not English. The first year, you’re just figuring it out.
Mike: What do you do with these kids? You’ve never been there before. You have no idea what you’re doing.
Adam: You try all this stuff. Some stuff works great. Some stuff flops. But you see what gets the interest of the kids, what they enjoy doing, the types of games. So you learn a little about that. And getting back to your question about learning about yourself: I learned I can go 16- or 18-hour days. The sun comes up at that time of year there at 4:30 in the morning, and it doesn’t go down until 10 or so at night. You’re up a little higher in latitude, whatever it is with the solstice. So you’ve got a lot of sun, and you’re going during most of that time. And you realize you get an energy there that you’re just not going to get at home doing your day-to-day thing. When people would come to the interest meetings, wanting to go, they’d say, “I don’t know if I can do this,” or “I don’t think I’m called to do this,” or “This isn’t a strength of mine.” And I’d say, “Well, mine either.” But you go with the mindset that you just want to pour into kids and show them how to have fun, because the idea is you want them to keep wanting to come back to camp. You have to set the tone with people. Every year after the first year, as trip leader, I would say, “This is going to be the toughest, the hardest, the most exhausting fun that you have ever had. You will hit your pillow at the end of the night and fall asleep faster than you’ve ever fallen asleep. And you’ll wake up with the sun coming right through that window, and you’ll pop up ready for coffee and breakfast, and ready to take on kids again.” And if you get fewer than 35,000 steps, you’re not doing it right.
Mike: Being lazy.
Adam: Being lazy. You’re doing something wrong. But you find an energy.
Mike: I bet. Especially with all that sun. Before you went the very first time, had you been on any other trips like this?
Adam: Just little short-term things, like Mexico or Central America. But those were more door-knocking, or a specific, designated thing, like supporting a family while we were there, helping with repairs to their home. Something where you didn’t have to do a lot of preparation. You knew what the goal was, you got there, and you did your thing.
Mike: So how many times have you been by now?
Adam: Let’s see. I think it’s eight or nine times.
Mike: Okay. So here’s my question. I always think about this. You’ve been on some other trips. You meet this guy Ota, he gives you a perspective of what’s going on over there, and you go. And then you’re like, okay, we’ve got to do this again. And then again. You’ve gone this many times…
Chris: Almost a decade later.
Mike: …and you weren’t planning on that. You didn’t wake up and go, “I’m going to go to the Czech Republic for almost a decade.” There’s probably someone out there right now where you were before you went the very first time. Now you can look back with a little hindsight. Why do you keep going back? What’s the drive behind that?
Adam: It’s interesting. The first year, we had a fantastic time just connecting with the kids, and that’s our goal: to connect with the students who are there. As far as directly ministering to them, it’s probably a lot more indirect. We’re probably ministering more to the staff and the work crew. Anything with the students themselves is a little more indirect, just because of their culture and the way things are there. We allow the staff there to do more of that. But I would say what keeps you coming back, maybe after the second year, is that you go back and see returning campers. And then the third year, you see the same campers. And by the fourth year, they’ve moved out of the junior high age and they’re in high school, but they want to be back there, so they’re on work crew that year, and the next year. They may still not have put any trust or faith in Jesus at this point, but they’re staying connected with it.
Mike: And they’re seeing you consistently, and you’re seeing them.
Adam: That’s a big deal. They’re seeing consistency, while the team around the leader may change a little. It’s primarily a student trip. You get some high school kids who start going as freshmen or sophomores, and they want to go the next couple of years, so they’ve gone two or three times by the time they graduate. That continuity is really, really good. But just to see them coming back… And then there was one time, maybe the fourth or fifth time I was there, when we had finished camp on Friday evening. We had packed everything up, gotten it back to the club room, and everything was done. There were several baptisms. They were for some of the volunteer staff who had been part of Young Life for a while but had made the decision to follow Jesus and actually get baptized. And that’s such a big deal there. The culture there is very atheistic. It’s a high percentage, the highest in Europe, or at least traditionally it has been. And for a student, making a decision like that can create a lot of problems with family and things like that. So making a decision to be baptized…
Chris: That’s one of the better memories.
Adam: That’s one. And that year, Pastor Ross actually happened to be there, and he did some of the baptisms. The water’s probably 60 degrees, and it’s raining…
Mike: But no one cares.
Adam: It was just like, whatever.
Chris: Cold enough to stick your sprained ankle in. Get it healed up.
Mike: That’s a good point. I guess in America, since we’re on the America route, thanks, Chris, we take baptism for granted. Not everyone. But around the world, for the majority of the world, making that public profession is a massive deal. It is just as massive a deal here, but I think sometimes it’s tempting to be like, “Oh yeah, they got baptized.” In a lot of areas around the world, it’s a life-or-death difference.
Adam: Families will potentially turn their back on you for that type of decision. And with kids who are younger, junior high age, there’s not a huge push for them to make decisions like that early on, because the goal is for them to keep participating in camps and clubs, keep coming back, and to pastor and minister to them over the course of several years. And then as they get a little older, it’s not necessarily more accepting, but parents are kind of like, “Okay, you’re old enough now. We don’t agree with your decision, but it’s your decision, and we’re not going to tell you what you can and can’t do.”
Mike: Oh man, that’s great.
Chris: So knowing this was not on your radar for a long time, but once you dove into it, and now a decade later, what would you share with parents, or with students themselves, if they were on the fence, thinking, “I don’t know if this is for me. I haven’t had a particular leaning toward a country, and I haven’t met somebody like Ota yet, but I know I definitely want to get involved somehow, some way”? What would your advice be?
Adam: My advice would be that this type of trip is a perfect way to get your feet wet in any kind of overseas mission work in another country. From a safety standpoint, it’s very safe, and for a lot of parents, safety is the concern. Some parents go along, and some are just trusting you with their kids, so safety is obviously a big concern, and it’s great for that. And they’re leading students there. If you have a younger brother or sister, it’s not like you’re having to do something really, really uncomfortable. It’s just a great way to really serve without having to have a really special skill set. I think that’s what’s attractive about it. We’ve had teams as big as, I think, 26 one year. We probably had seven or eight adults, and the rest were students, so maybe four or five to one. Those were the years we were getting 80, 90, up to a hundred kids there, and you had some very specific roles. When it’s been smaller, you’re doing a lot of double duty. But it’s an easy trip. It’s a little bit of a challenge from the travel perspective, but it’s a beautiful country to go to, whether you’re out in the country or in the city. We usually spend a day or two in Prague, and it’s a pretty easy city to get around, and a beautiful city. It’s not complicated. The things we ask them to do on the front end are preparing, learning some history, understanding that. And we sit down with students and they develop lesson plans for their classrooms. When they first hear that, it’s like, “Well, listen, I’m not a teacher.” But we have a very good template that we can reproduce. Each year we just change themes and ideas, and we brainstorm and come up with new things. But the template in place makes it not difficult for students, or someone who’s not a teacher, to do.
Mike: So if you went back in time to tell Adam before his first trip, and let’s say your previous self was doubting if it’s worth it, maybe not going to go on the trip, what would you have told yourself?
Adam: If I was doubting…
Mike: Probably thinking, “I don’t know if it’s worth it.”
Adam: “It’s too much time. It’s a week off of work,” kind of a thing. Knowing what I know now… I don’t know what I would tell myself.
Chris: “The Cubs are going to win.”
Adam: “Just stick it out to 2016, and the Cubs will pull it off.” If my earlier self was having any doubts, the advice I would give myself is that you can’t mess it up. You can’t go over there and do it wrong, as long as your goal is to go over there and support kids and have a fun time and keep them engaged. You can’t mess it up. And the long travel, the expense, that’s always another thing too. They’re not giving those flights away. That’s always sometimes a little bit of a…
Chris: What’s been the most creative way you’ve fundraised for that, that you can recall?
Adam: That’s a great surprise question.
Chris: What did you name that event?
Adam: That was the very first year I decided to go. We had our little life group. Once I told the group that I was feeling led to go there that year, the life group wanted to support that in the fundraising and things like that.
Mike: I see where this is going.
Adam: We decided to do a Wiffle ball tournament, and it was called the Czech Swing Classic. A little baseball connection.
Mike: Oh, yeah.
Adam: It ended up being the greatest thing. I still have T-shirts. We had T-shirts and prizes.
Mike: What a great idea. That’s a great idea.
Adam: It worked out really, really well, and it was a lot of fun. The Czech Swing was just a creative way to connect that. We were never able to quite replicate that very first year.
Chris: There was a lot of excitement about a Wiffle ball tournament that first year.
Adam: I think it was good. We tried to get the students to plan and organize it, and for students it’s a great idea, but then it’s kind of like, well, we’re not going to plan this for you. It’s a little harder to get off the ground.
Mike: Good idea. I like that. So what’s next? Eight more trips?
Chris: Do we do eight more trips, or is it a different type of trip, or the same trip? What’s going on?
Adam: The partnership that we have with Young Life over in that part of the world, we definitely want to continue that. This year we’re not doing the same type of trip to Ostrava for camp. We’re doing something a little different, some vision planning and things like that, to see what other Young Life chapters throughout central Europe we could potentially have an impact on. Central Europe’s a pretty big area. You’ve got Czech, Slovakia and Poland, and then all the old Balkan countries: Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia.
Mike: Keep it going, basically.
Adam: Yeah. I think for me, it certainly is. And for 121, that’s kind of the driver behind it, while we’re in that relationship. That’s the vision and the goal as well. So this summer will be a little bit of trying to figure out, okay, can we do this? Are there other areas where we can have an impact? And hopefully the answer’s yes. Just for me personally, I want to stay connected to that part of the world, whether it’s Czech or Slovakia or wherever, because there are a lot of friendships and relationships that have developed over the last 13 years.
Mike: That’s awesome. I love that.
Chris: Well, thanks for going, and for making it possible for teams to keep going through your leadership, and for stepping in there and doing it.
Adam: I’ve enjoyed it. And I’ve enjoyed getting other people ready to lead trips. That’s been rewarding as well. You can do it for a while, and then it’s like, okay, I’ve got kids graduating this summer, and this is not going to happen this summer. Having somebody you can get ready to lead a trip is good.
Mike: He’s enjoying that. Do you think he’s going to enjoy the lightning round? We’re moving on to the lightning round. Readers are on. We’re going to alternate. Here are the lightning round rules. Very official rules here at NQT; thank you for taking this seriously. You can’t overthink. It’s rapid fire. You’ve got to answer right away.
Chris: Lightning, right?
Mike: That’s why it’s the lightning round. Here comes the first lightning round question.
Chris: All right. Sosa spelled backwards is…
Adam: A-S-O-S.
Mike: Oh, very good. If you have a headache, fever and chills, what should you wrap around your head?
Adam: I’m going to go with a hot towel.
Chris: Button-downs or T-shirts?
Adam: I usually go with T-shirts.
Mike: Okay. He thought about that. Three ways for a hobbit to prepare potatoes.
Adam: Let’s see. Boil them, mash them, stick them in a stew.
Mike: There you go. Very good.
Chris: Favorite place to eat after a midnight hockey game?
Adam: IHOP.
Chris: Yes.
Mike: Okay. Favorite Band of Brothers character?
Adam: Oh. Lieutenant Dan. No, what’s his name?
Chris: You’re thinking of Speirs.
Adam: Yeah.
Mike: All right. Last one. Here we go.
Chris: Drumroll. Name three Louisiana Tech legends.
Adam: Oh, gosh. Terry Bradshaw, Karl Malone and Kim Mulkey.
Mike: There we go. You are off the hot seat. The lightning round is over.
Adam: That was fun.
Chris: Ladies and gentlemen, Adam McBride.
Mike: I’m clapping. You weren’t clapping. I’m clapping.
Chris: I had to take my readers off.
Mike: I don’t have the applause button. Man, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your heart behind this. What is it, 13 years, when you space it out? Is that how long it’s been?
Adam: Thirteen years. 2012 was the first year.
Mike: Thank you for that. I know you went because you were excited and you met Ota, but your obedience to say yes, and to have those long days, and to have a decade’s worth of involvement like that, that’s going to pay dividends. That’s going to have an impact for a long time that will go beyond you. You may not even see all the fruit of it.
Adam: Yeah. And that’s just how it is. And one thing I didn’t even talk about is that this went from an Adam thing, just Adam going on a trip, to… I guess it was the third year before I could get Alita on board to go. And then, once Alita and I had been, our older boys were like, “We want to go.” We waited for them to be at a good age to understand what they were doing, and then they were a part of it, and then Bowen was a part of it as well. So it’s more of a family thing. We’ve seen leaders transition there, and we’ve been there through that, and we love our friends and family who are there. I’ll shout out to Mark, who’s the country director for Czech now, and Karlo, who’s the area director for Ostrava. They’ve been a big part of why we continue to do what we do.
Mike: Love it. Thanks for sharing that. Chris, final thoughts?
Chris: I thought you were going to say Phil Robertson.
Adam: Oh yeah. I didn’t think about Phil.
Chris: But yeah. Mulkey.
Mike: We might have to take this debate offline.
Chris: Oh, there we go.
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