Don and Ruth Slabaugh came back in February completely exhausted from their mission trip to the Czech Republic.

Today the Whitefish couple, refreshed and rejuvenated, are flying back to the Eastern European country for the seventh time to provide leadership for a Christian church they’ve nurtured over the past six years.

What began as a “low-key friendship” when the Slabaughs first visited the Czech Republic for two weeks in 2006 has now grown into a key role in helping the church grow.

“The last time we were deeply involved within the church,” Don said. “A big role was helping them visualize and discover their own way of doing things.”

Though there are several people within the Czech congregation who speak English quite well, the Slabaughs also rely on tools such as Google Translate or dictionaries to converse with parishioners.

In a country where just over 25 percent of the citizens are Christian and 71 percent profess to be nonreligious, mission work is a tall order.

“A big majority are first-generation believers,” Don explained. “They don’t have a Christian heritage to pass on, and they’re coming out of the communist era of being told what to do. They don’t want to be part of a [religious] organization.”

Ruth said the ultimate goal is to train church leaders to become strong enough to grow the church on their own.

“You want to work yourself out of a job,” she said with a smile.

The Slabaughs don’t take days off when they’re on their mission trips because they totally immerse themselves in their work.

“We spend a lot of time with people,” Ruth said.

Don said during the first couple of visits to the Czech Republic the question was, “Do you want us to come back?

“Now it’s ‘When are you coming back?’” he said. “They call us their spiritual father and mother. To us it’s astounding when we look at what God is doing.”

The one common denominator, Ruth added, is relationships.

“We [as Americans] are task-oriented,” she said. “Other cultures are relationship-oriented. After you build those relationships, then the work happens.”

The Slabaughs say they keep in mind a key theme from their own congregation at New Covenant Church near Kalispell: “Let Love Talk.”

When the Slabaughs met at Goshen College in Indiana, fell in love, got married and moved to Missoula in the early 1970s, they knew then and there that they would one day follow their calling to the mission field.

But first they had to make a living and raise their two children.

Don took a teaching job in Polson for four years before the family moved to the Flathead Valley. He felt a little burned out from teaching and began work instead as a maintenance supervisor at Big Mountain Resort in Whitefish. He later went back to teaching and spent 15 years at Helena Flats School.

“It was always in our mind to take early retirement and go on missions,” he said.

But as it turned out they didn’t have to wait for retirement.

In the mid-1980s when First Presbyterian Church in Whitefish was exploring the idea of establishing a sister-church relationship with a church in Haiti, the Slabaughs were part of a team sent to evaluate that option.

“While in Haiti, both of us were really touched and realized the desire to continue in ministry to other countries as part of God’s plan for all people of the world,” Ruth said.

They had their children, Kristen, then 10, and Todd, then 11, in tow when they headed to Haiti for their first mission trip in 1986. The children accompanied them on subsequent trips to Haiti. Those family trips also included a year working with New Tribes Mission in Brazil while their children were in high school.

“This was one of the best years of our life together,” Ruth said about the time in Brazil.

As they recalled their decision to go to Brazil for a year, they marveled at how the plan came together with some true divine intervention. Though the housing market was in a slump, the Slabaughs were able to sell their home on Big Mountain.

“We told God we’d use the proceeds [for the mission trip] and two weeks later it sold,” Ruth said.

Don was able to take sabbatical leave from teaching at half his salary, and Ruth, then a nurse at North Valley Extended Care Center, got a leave of absence.

Throughout their mission work they’ve kept the faith that God will provide the means for them to do the work.

“Quite often we don’t know where the money comes from,” Don said. “It’s just there.”

After Don took an early retirement from teaching, the Slabaughs spent four and a half years in Papua New Guinea, where Don was an educational consultant for Christian schools there. The couple went there expecting a “regular” home for shelter, but wound up with a “bush house” made especially for them.

“We had to carry water and cook on an open fire,” Don recalled. “We lived as they did.”

After nine months in the primitive home, “we asked God, when will we start our mission work?” he said. It was then they realized they’d been ministering to the people of Papua New Guinea all along.

“You were one of us,” the natives told them.

Ruth said it built trust and credibility. “Now they trusted us,” she said.

The Slabaughs established their connection to the Czech Republic in 2005 when a Czech couple who were Fulbright exchange teachers in Whitefish attended New Covenant Church.

Now that the Slabaughs are both fully retired — Ruth retired from Immanuel Lutheran Communities in June — they plan to spend their golden years doing mission work as long as they’re able.

“We want to allow God to use us as long as He wants,” Don said.

Ruth added, “It’s a great job to serve.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.