Brane, Elizabeth and Sarah.

23-year-old Sarah Holdsworth was in her last year of studying animal science at Melbourne University when she decided to fly 14,200 kilometres around the world to take her final subjects in a country she’d never been to, which had a language she couldn’t speak.

What attracted her to the small European country of Slovenia was not the lush forests, ice-capped mountains or azure blue rivers, but a desire to help grow the Kingdom of God in a part of the world where Protestant Christianity is on the margins and the ground is hard.

With her came fellow Aussie and science student from Melbourne University, Elizabeth Townshend, and together, they joined ZVES, the Christian student group on campus at Ljubljana University. Brane Zelenjak, a ministry trainee from Slovenia had just come back from a year Melbourne Uni learning about AFES and the Christian Union, so they had at least one local connection.

Sarah and Elizabeth running an Australian stand at a uni fair.

In the country on student visas, Sarah took a Semester of classes in Slovene, studying agriculture in the science department, while Elizabeth took social science subjects in English. While on campus as students, they were granted freedoms the ZVES staff workers aren’t allowed to have.

“We could run groups or Bible studies and advertise around the university, whereas for non-students, like the people running ZVES, it was illegal for them to do that.

“They said to us, whatever you guys think could be done or whatever you want to do, we’ll help you do it. So that was pretty cool. It led to great opportunities.”

Sarah points to conversations with her roommate and friends from the university Gymnastics Club as the most significant she was able to have in her time there. But just being there and being herself was a gift, as Christians are a rare breed on campus in Slovenia.

Yet Sarah says it was equally a time to see how much God is already doing in Slovenia.

“It was great to realise we weren’t needed, but God was using us anyway. He was doing so much already in Slovenia, through Slovenes who were being raised up.

“God didn’t need us there, but he placed us there in the best place we could be, to help grow ZVES.”

Using your time at university for God’s kingdom is something the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) is passionate about, but the idea of students from a country with a strong culture of university ministry going to a country with a smaller Christian presence to study during their degree is a relatively new idea.

For Sarah, it was as simple as identifying her passions (travel, sharing the good news of Jesus, uni students) and finding the way she could channel them into God’s work in the world.

“They didn’t need another missionary family to come or another church to start up, but they just needed uni age students to come and live there. It’s possible to go through uni in Slovenia and not meet another Christian. So just being there as Christian students made a difference, and a lot of countries in Europe need that. I was happy to help.”