About us. Fr. Martin's words from the About us page on the original krm.sk, in Czech, as he wrote them.

My dream was to become a famous designer, earn a lot of money and give talks all over the world....

It seemed I was doing quite well. I was not even 19 yet, and orders were coming in from all over the world and from the biggest Czech companies. Then I became lead designer at what was then the fastest-growing Czech startup, Kiwi.com, and at the beginning I put together the whole design team. Still, something changed my direction. It was one badly chosen “shortcut” in the village of Klenovec in central Slovakia. The region had already stuck in my head for some reason - huge unemployment and divorce, drugs.

With colleagues from the company we bought a house here and thought that, as young entrepreneurs, we would know how to help. But God had another plan.

On my way to a craftsman it occurred to me to take a shortcut, but I turned into a dead end at the edge of the village - straight into a Roma settlement.

Until then I had never looked poverty in the face. It touched my heart, and although I did not love the Roma, quite the opposite, I wanted to help them.

For several months I gathered my courage and only prayed, until I simply took a few balls, hoping to catch the children's interest so that we could start to play. It worked. It took perseverance, many moments on my knees, frequent holy communion, countless lost balls, several broken guitars and skateboards split into firewood, but little by little I managed to win the trust of the community.

Sometimes God asks small sacrifices of us so that we may ripen for greater ones; after all, He gave His whole life for us. I knew that if I meant to take helping seriously, I needed to live among them, to know them from the inside, in other words to move into a wooden hut in the settlement. Looking back, I must say it was one of the happiest times of my life. By then I was working mostly as a remote designer, still at Kiwi, but my heart already stayed in Klenovec. But God had another surprise for me.

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” In prayer and while reading the Bible, God showed me that I should leave the promisingly growing mission and return to Brno. WHY???

“It is not good for man to be alone.” Even though I had already thought I would stay alone, because let us admit it, the chance of finding a woman willing to live this way of life is like looking for a needle in a haystack, God thought otherwise. I met Michalka at work in Brno, and we had even just both moved back to our parents, who “by chance” lived across the street from each other. We married on 25.8.2018, and after the wedding we moved to Klenovec, where we have served together ever since. In October 2019 our first helper arrived - our little son Adam Ginepro, and in May 2021 his little sister Mária joined him.

Michalka is a trained psychologist, but now above all a model mother and homemaker. She gave the whole work tenderness and a kind heart, which it had lacked before. She also supplied the missing piece in the work with girls. Together we try to seek God's will for our work among the poor, to lead them to diligence and honesty, to teach children to read, write and count properly, and to teach them Christian faith and morals too.

In the summer of 2020 we founded the non-profit organization Christian Roma Mission, and so our work finally got an official form. It lets us employ others, receive volunteers, ask for donations and help in the settlements even in the time of the coronavirus, when ordinary visits were forbidden. Another reason for founding it is the wish to set up retraining courses for bricklayers and to begin teaching young people practical trades.

Martin, Míša, Adámek and Mária