Olga Kovářová — Divine Guidance to the Underground Church

In the early 1980s, while living under the restrictive Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Olga Kovářová felt a persistent and unexplained spiritual prompting to seek out a yoga class, despite having no prior interest in the practice. This guidance led her to a class in Brno taught by Otakar Vojkůvka. She soon discovered that the class was a discreet front for the underground Latter-day Saint community. Olga recognized this prompting as the Holy Ghost directing her to the only source of the restored gospel in her region, eventually leading to her conversion.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in Christian Yoga, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints):

In the mid-1980s, Olga Kovářová was a doctoral student at Masaryk University in Brno. Kovářová, who had become interested in yoga, was introduced to Vojkůvka and his family by a classmate. From her first visit to the Vojkůvka home, Kovářová felt that there was something special about them. Vojkůvka gave Kovářová a Czech translation of the book A Skeptic Discovers Mormonism, by Timberline Wales Riggs. “I listened to my own words,” she recalled, “and felt the reality of God in my life as his love filled my whole being.” Nearly six months later, in the summer of 1983, Olga Kovářová was baptized in a nearby reservoir. To avoid local authorities, the ordinance occurred after dark and with only a few members attending. Shortly after her baptism, Kovářová began teaching Christian yoga classes of her own. With the Vojkůvka family’s support, she started a summer camp where young people throughout the country came to hear the message. Through these lectures, 130 people embraced the gospel and were baptized, and branches were organized in Uherské Hradiště and Jičín.