Commit your life to the Lord and rely on him
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Jan Pořízek, Scout name Bobr, was born on 25 January 1958 as a first-born son of Ludmila and Jan Pořízek in the village of Vavřinec in the area of the Moravian Karst. His grandparents owned a butcher´s before 1948. The whole family was religious, so he was not admitted to a grammar school or a university and could not study Humanities. His mum was forbidden to work as a teacher at elementary school and they even wanted to force her to a psychiatric hospital. He experienced 1968 very intensely as a ten-year-old boy and he was an object of ridicule at school for his religious beliefs during normalisation. He eventually managed to graduate from the Secondary School of Civil Engineering in Jedovnice and after graduation in 1977 he unsuccessfully applied to study in Leipzig. He shortly worked in the Metra Blansko company and then he had a much better reference and was admitted to study in Brno at the Faculty of Construction, majoring in Steel Structures, where he focused on wooden constructions in his fourth year. He worked as an organ player in the Pilgrim Church in Sloup and that is why a State Security officer came to see him and wanted him to report what was happening in the church and who went there. He resolutely refused to cooperate. He was imprisoned during his military service because of listening to foreign stations and possessing banned religious literature and he spent three days of imprisonment isolated and afraid. Despite his university degree, he then had to settle for a job as a locksmith in the lowest pay grade. He later worked in Wood processing plants, he designed for example a burnt-out sawmill in Rájec-Jestřebí. In 1985, he got married to Jaroslava Blahová who he met during the organization of Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH) camps where they both worked as camp leaders. They raised three children together - Anna (born 1986), Vít (born 1989), and Jana (born 1995). He spent the 1989 Revolution in Blansko. He put up posters and on 26 November he attended the mass for the canonization of Saint Agnes of Bohemia in the Saint Vitus Cathedral and the huge demonstration in Letná. He worked as the head of the construction office in Blansko and later as a teacher at secondary schools. He very actively participated in the revival of the scouting movement, he founded a troop and then the Lights Scout Christian centre, which he and his wife are still involved in today (2021).
