Lída and Jirka Matušková, a Czech missionary couple, have relocated permanently to Kenya to continue the two-decade-old work of ShineBean in the Bondo area near Lake Victoria. The couple arrived five months ago and are learning Swahili as they build on the ministry's existing foundations. Their move marks the fulfilment of a calling Lída first sensed as a teenager reading travel magazines about the Masai Mara and Serengeti region.
Lída is a familiar figure in Czech Christian circles after twenty years at Radio 7, where she preached, moderated and translated. Around seventeen years ago she received a prayer vision of African women gathered around radios in simple homes, listening to biblical teaching and praying together — an image she took as a personal calling to radio ministry in Africa. Her husband Jirka received his own unexpected invitation to cross-cultural mission around 2020, and the couple toured roughly eight ministries across Kenya and Tanzania at the turn of 2024–2025 before settling on Bondo.
The ministry they are joining, ShineBean, was founded by Renata Rokůsková of the Baptist church and has served the Bondo region for two decades. Alongside it, Hanka Fišerová — sent for a year by the Effatha choir — has run summer Art Camps that invest in children often overlooked by others, using theatre and art to awaken creativity and confidence while making sure each child receives a proper meal, which for some is a rare occurrence. Lída describes Kenya itself as elemental and energetic, a place where one must continually respond to circumstances rather than coast on plans.
(Originally published in Czech. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Církev bratrská / Brána — https://portal.cb.cz/cs/clanky/13394-afrika-je-zivel
