Jožica Gerden presented Slovenia at the Sacred heart Church, Mildura and concluded her story of Slovenia and her personal story with the following words:

” . . . I am grateful for your invitation and the opportunity to present my homeland Slovenia, the country that was chosen for this year IPD by the ecumenical global movement for prayer, for unity among divided Christians… And Slovenia needs prayer too, today more than ever before.” 

And concluded:” . . . I came to Australia from Slovenia 50 years ago, which was then a part of a federal communist Yugoslavia. In those days Christian faith was strong in Slovenia, as religious people had to be strong to survive under in atheistic society of a communist regime. 

As the theme of this service is to pray for women in trauma, I would like to say, that women in Slovenia do not experience any worse trauma then any other women of the neighbouring countries, similar as in Northern Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia.  During the WW2 Slovenian women had taken an equal part to men, therefore today they are respected and regarded as equal. More frightening to me is a realisation, that when EU was established, it was based on Christian values, which law has since been removed and it opened the doors to Islamisation of Europe. And we have seen many sad stories about women ‘equality’ of our Muslim sisters, which is in total opposition to the European culture . . 

Let’s pray for women of Slovenia and Europe, that it will prosper in the freedom of our Christian faith.”   

Jožica presented Slovenia as well at the Uniting Church, Merbein and is very grateful to the organisers Jill Duda and Lyn Adams.