Faith is a gift everyone can get
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Božena Beňová, née Božena Kratková, was born on 5 April 1951 in Sklené, Slovakia, in a modest farming family. Soon after her birth, the family moved to the village of Jenkovce in eastern Slovakia, near the border with the Soviet Union. Her parents were members of the Methodist Church. Her mother helped pass out Bibles in Russian to religious Ukrainians living on the other side of the border. After graduating from the grammar school, Božena was accepted to the Faculty of Philosophy, to major in psychology, but her mother did not support her studies, so she ended up studying only librarian follow-up. Soon after, she met her husband Andrej Beňa, a member of the Church of the Brethren. In 1973 she moved with her husband and two little daughters to Horní Počernice near Prague, where Andrej Beňa worked as a lay preacher. Božena Beňová, who was also actively involved in the life of the Brethren congregation, worked in the Počernice municipal library and later in the technical library of the State Research Institute for Machine Building. After November 1989, Andrej Beňa became a full-time preacher and the couple worked together on the reconstruction of the church rehabilitation centre in Chvaly near Prague. Božena Beňová has four children; her husband passed away in November 2020.
