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ihal Kreko’s deep brown eyes communicated life
experience that his lips had not yet revealed. There was an
air of wisdom about the Croatian pastor and Bethel Seminary student,
to which the silver flecks on his head of dark brown only hinted.
As he spoke, his words confirmed the wisdom and knowledge that
his appearance suggested. When asked about his life goal, he paraphrased
something he once heard from Erwin McManus, distinguished Bethel
professor and futurist: “I want to live by faith, be known
by love, and be a voice of hope wherever I go.”
“McManus said it so well,” Mihal explained. “That is exactly
how my heart beats.”
To live by faith
Mihal’s faith journey began in 1975 when a Christian acquaintance
invited him to visit a weekly prayer group. Having subsisted in
Austria four months without a job, Mihal decided he had nothing
better to do than accept the invitation. When the group asked him
how they could pray for him, he mentioned his need for work. One
week later, while waiting in line among a dozen other people to
apply for an opening, the employer pointed to Mihal, asked him
if he wanted a job, and hired him on the spot. “From that
moment on,” Mihal said, “I have believed that prayer
works and God is real.”
Mihal continued to attend the prayer meetings, and gradually involved
himself with the group’s church. He grew especially close
to a man who emerged as an example of how Mihal wanted to lead
his own family someday. Noticing how appealingly different this
friend was from the average person, Mihal finally asked him how
he might emulate that difference. “It begins with prayer,” the
man told him. So one night, standing before the open window of
his Vienna apartment, Mihal prayed. “God, if You are there
let me know You,” he said. “Take my life and transform
it according to Your will. Show what You can do with me, a lost,
guilty, wandering creature.” Mihal points to that night as
a milestone in the development of his deepening faith. “That
was a real breakthrough for me,” he said, “when I became
aware that I could talk to God.”
Since then, Mihal has taken risks that have put his faith to the
test. In 1996, for example, he planted a church in the western
part of Zagreb. His fledgling congregation would need a place to
meet, but there was no money for a building. Mihal did have $10,
however, which he placed as a down payment on a $120,000 pizzeria
where the church could gather. He then proceeded to raise the rest
of the money in a mere eight months.
But Mihal took an even bigger risk when he decided to move his
family to the United States in pursuit of a seminary education
at Bethel. “There would be many difficult adjustments,” he
said, “but I had to trust that God would provide and take
care of them.” The result? Mihal is nearing the completion
of his master of arts in theological studies at Bethel. And he
fully expects to put his Bethel-supervised research on church planting
models to practical use when he returns with his family to Croatia
next August. “I go to bed and wake up with dreams for our
country every night,” he said, “dreams of transformed
relationships in our society, of the hope our people can have in
Christ. A thousand pictures parade through my head.”
To be known by love
Mihal’s capacity to love is especially evident through his
selfless deeds toward complete strangers, his ability to forgive
his father, and his dedication to the welfare of his family.
When Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian war refugees fled to the vicinity
near his home just over a decade ago, Mihal and his wife Lydia
rallied their church family to provide food and clothing to the
displaced wanderers. Over a period of five to six years, the church
distributed truckload after truckload of supplies from the United
States, England, Spain, and other European nations to more than
1,200 families. Some of the refugees were from enemy territory,
but Mihal and company extended their hearts to them nonetheless.
 An
even bigger stretch for Mihal, however, was to extend forgiveness
to Pavel, his father, following a lifetime of wrongdoing. For years
Mihal poured out his bitterness to anyone who would listen, detailing
the abuses to which Pavel had subjected his family. But then Mihal
had two dreams. In the first dream, Pavel roamed the streets as
a homeless, alcoholic beggar. Someone asked him how he had fallen
so far from the respected military officer he once had been. “I
am in despair that one of my sons will never forgive me,” he
answered. In the second dream, Pavel languished on his deathbed
declaring, “I will not die in peace until I know I have Mihal’s
forgiveness.”
Mihal waited no longer to journey home to grant his father that
forgiveness. While Pavel received his son’s heartfelt words
with joy, Mihal laments that his father has yet to accept responsibility
for his actions. Released from his bitterness, however, Mihal has
never since felt compelled to expound his father’s sins. “It
is not finished,” Mihal added. “From America I call
my father every month, and at the end he always cries. The tears
are a mystery to me, but they speak about something; perhaps he
is haunted by his memories. I have great compassion for him. Today
he says I am his ‘best son.’ There is a relationship,
and I do not give up hope that my father will one day experience
complete healing.”
In Mihal’s own home, the cycle of dysfunction is broken.
His 17-year-old daughter Tabita speaks of the deep love her father
demonstrates to his family. He prays faithfully for each of his
five children, and he is sincerely interested in the details of
their lives. “He may have a huge seminary paper due the next
day,” she testified, “but he’ll drop everything
to spend two hours helping us with our homework.”
To be a voice of hope
Mihal learned early in life what it means to hope and dream. His
father had been an officer in Tito’s army during World War
II, and saw little distinction between commanding the troops and
heading a household. As a teenager, Mihal wanted to be a dentist,
but Pavel forced him to become a builder. Swayed by a communistic
worldview, Pavel saw life as a giant wheel trying to run over people—and
if one wasn’t careful, the wheel would win. Mihal disagreed
with his father’s ways of thinking, constantly arguing with
him and questioning what Pavel considered to be nonnegotiable rules.
Mihal hoped for a different, better life, so at 17 years of age
he struck out on his own.
Mihal also entered marriage full of hope. He met 16-year-old Lydia
at a friend’s wedding in 1980. Her father was a pastor, and
didn’t want her to date. Therefore, the young couple hardly
knew each other when they married in 1981. Nonetheless, they decided
from the beginning that the word “divorce” would never
be in their vocabulary. “Today, our marriage is as strong
as ever,” Mihal said, “and we intend for it to stay
that way the rest of our lives.”
 Mihal’s
penchant for hope pushes beyond career and family, however. In
1991, the year Croatia was attacked and drawn into war, he founded
a private publishing company. His purpose was to publish works
that would encourage people during hard times. To this day, thousands
of Croatian readers continue to receive wisdom and instruction
from Mihal’s books Super Dad—You Can Be the Father
Your Family Needs; The Power of Ethical Management; and his co-written
From Debts to a Peaceful Night. Mihal also reprinted an essay by
C. S. Lewis called “Learning in War-Time,” circulating
it among college and university students in an effort to encourage
them in their educational pursuits, even through such dark and
dangerous times.
Heart & Mind readers will remember Mihal’s “Speaking
Up for America” (see the Winter 2001-2002 issue, page 14)
written in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
His compassionate sympathy and passionate call to Christlikeness
rang with the authority of his own experience in wartime Croatia,
finding hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.
It would seem that Mihal Kreko already has achieved his life goal.
He does live by faith. He is known by love. He continues to be
a voice of hope wherever he goes. And he is determined to live
out his goal all the way back to Croatia. “Our friends and
relatives did not believe we would ever come back,” Mihal
mused. “After all, America is the ‘Promised Land’!
But we have no desire to immigrate. We are returning home with
great hope, vision, and energy to take our local churches to a
place they have never imagined.” •
Lindsey Wible is a junior at Burnsville
High School, Burnsville, Minn., who plans to attend Bethel
College.
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