Standing Firm

I just wanted to take a moment and show everybody the new bottle design of my favorite water. I’m definitely a fan of the new sleek design and postmodern feel of this plastic bottle. This carbonated natural mineral water is one of the products of Serbia, bottled deep in the mountains of Arandjelovac. I have enjoyed this product since the summer of 2004 when I first came to Serbia. Others have been enjoying it since 1811, the year it was first bottled and sold. If you ever get the chance to try it, do! It might take a little while to get used to, since it’s carbonated and has minerals in it, but it’s by far the best that I’ve ever tried! I know many people that gave it a chance and it soon became their drink of choice. Even at this moment I’m drinking a glass of this proven thirst quencher. If you want to know more feel free to visit their website by clicking here. Prijatno! (Enjoy!)

(Disclaimer: This entry was made at 4:00 am Serbian time. Perhaps posts should be generally avoided at this time of day, as the relevance may be questionable. The author asks that judgment be withheld in respect of his state of mind at the time of the writing. Thank you for your consideration in the matter.)

Our internet went out for some reason soon after I posted the last post so I haven’t been able to blog. It’s back on now, hopefully it will stay that way for a while. I called our ISP to try to resolve the problem. The first guy, after listening briefly to my broken Serbian, hung up on me. The second listened to me, had me try a few things that didn’t work, and then told me that there was nothing more that he could do but file a report and have someone call me later. We weren’t to hopful about this, so we finally called our landlord, who is a manager of a big shopping and sports complex in Novi Sad and has lots of connections, and then our internet started working the following day.

So I’m back now.

Thanks for all your prayers last week. Praise God, we did receive permission to distribute on the natural science department. We had great reception there, the students were friendly and some signed up for more information about the English Camps this summer. All in all over the last two weeks we distributed about 5,000 magazines, which have some evangelistic articles and an advertisement for the English camp, and about 170 students left their contact info saying that they are interested in finding out more about the English camp. We are putting together some information meetings that we will have in one week.

We are going to two different departments this week to ask for permission. Please pray that the deans of the Philosophy department and the Technical Science department would allow us to have a room for the info meetings.

Please pray for my health. I’ve been sick for the last couple of days with a cold. I’ve got a lot of congestion and my left ear is blocked too. I might be getting an eye infection, as well. Pray also that the rest of my team doesn’t get sick with this.

I knew that before, but it seems that I still try to underestimate my body’s need for sleep. Four to five hours a night just doesn’t seem to cut it.

To prove a point, my body let me get sick.

So that’s what I’ve been doing all day, fighting off these cold germs that are causing my body to cough, ache, and generally not feel good. Hopefully after rest I have given it today, it will decide to be well tomorrow…

But despite all of that today, I was really encouraged after a conversation I had with two students last night. They both went to the English camp last summer and I have known them for about a year now.

We were talking about the different retreats that we do and they were wondering if there is any way to make them multi-national. They want to see a camp at which students from different countries in the Balkans that are involved with Campus Crusade come together. They said at something like that we could see that we are all really just people.

This was really exciting for me to hear, because this is one of the things that I would like to see happen here. I would like to see students from the different countries in the Balkans get together and do humanitarian aid in the name of Christ. I think that would be huge in illustrating the love of Jesus to a people that have experienced tragedy and horror. I believe it’s also the only way that people here can experience peace, through the forgiveness and love of Christ.

Pray that guys like these would see the vision of what God could do through them. Pray that God would be raising up more change agents in this generation of students!

I feel like I’m finally starting to get a handle on the language here now. This sensation has been present for about a week, I guess it started when our professor told us to stop thinking about what to say and just to say it. So, I tried to do that, and guess what, it kinda works! If I don’t worry about getting it wrong and rather, just do it, I learn it a lot faster. I feel like I’m picking up most of the thinks that the professors say in Serbian, and I can talk well with taxi drivers too.

I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m fluent, but great strides have been taken. I hope that by the time this year is over I’ll be able to make casual conversation with students. Pray for patience and perseverence for all of us as we learn it.

Today was our last day with the American team that came to visit us, they leave tomorrow morning. It was a good day. We started out by buying calla lilies for the girls because it’s woman’s day today! I’m not sure quite how it got started here, but it’s one of the busiest days for all the flower shops because all the men are supposed to buy flowers for the women that they know. We got our flowers from our favorite shop, located between the girls and the guys apartments. One of the student’s moms owns it.

After that we had a good time of discussing how we’re doing as a team, ending with a “hot seat” for each of us, where everyone encourages the person currently on the hot seat. This afternoon we went to a little town near Novi Sad called Sremski Karlovci, where we walked around for a while. There is a theology high school that we looked in and talked to some students at. Most of these students will be priests one day. It was interesting to hear them describe their day. Early start, 6:00. Two prayer services in the church, morning and evening. And lots of study. They said that people come from all over the world to study here. Two of the boys that we were talking to are from the US, one from Texas and the other from Florida.

Tonight we ate dinner together in the resteraunt attached to the brewery, and then split up as guys and girls.

Overall it was a good day. This was supposed to be a team building day, and it was good just to spend time together doing things a little different than our normal routine.

A team of five arrived today in Novi Sad from Colorado. Aaron and Stephanie Shalosky, David Smith, and Steve Kammer from Colorado Springs and Joanna Meyer from Boulder. They will be here during this next week to encourage us and see how the ministry is going. Those from the Springs are part of the Springs Campus team, staff working with Crusade primarily at UCCS and CC. Joanna works in the regional headquarters of Crusade.

It was really exciting to welcome them tonight at the bus station! I know all of them already and have been keeping up with them this year. The Shaloskys led the Summer Project last summer in Belgrade, so they’ve been to Serbia before but the other three haven’t. This will be a great time for them to see first hand what the Stint ministry looks like by visiting the places we go and meeting the students we see.

It will also be a great week of encouragement and motivation for us. They are going to lead us each morning in a devotion and talk to us individually too. I’m really looking forward to talking with them and showing them the reason for the passion that God has given me for this place. I’m especially looking forward to introducing them to our students. We’ll have our weekly meeting on Wednesday night, so they’ll get a chance to meet all lot of them then.

Another big perk of their visit is the stuff they brought us! Most notable I think are the real tortilla chips and Starbucks coffee. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the Girl Scout cookies! Mmm, Thin Mint goodness… They are also going to make Mexican food for us one of these nights. Ahhh, life is so good!

Not a whole lot ended up happening today. I had thought that I would have trouble fitting everything in, but it didn’t work out that way. I’ve learned to be very flexible with my schedule here.

I was originally planning on going to Boško’s house and meeting his family, then meeting with Nenad to talk about what he’s been learning from the Bible and how his life is going, then we were going to have some guys over to play Nintendo Playstation. But none of that ended up happening. Boško’s family is out of town this weekend, Nenad left to go home for the weekend, and we couldn’t get a hold of the other guys.

So I stayed at home and worked on some finances and emails and cleaned the bathroom. So it was a productive day despite the schedule change.

Tonight we had our team fun night. We try to do something fun together once a week as a team. This gives us a good chance to relax and just enjoy being with each other.

Tonight we went to a really big grocery store on the edge of town. It’s called the Rodić Mega Market and it reminds me of a Sam’s Club. They sell large quantities of stuff at good prices. The reason we went there was to eat dinner at the MB brewery that’s part of the same building. They had good food, but it’s kind of expensive for here. I guess there’s also supposed to be a hotel there somewhere too. So there you go, the all in one megaplex: grocery, resteraunt, brewery, and hotel. What more could you want?!?

After dinner we came back to our apartment and played Cranium and Taboo. It was a good team night. I like my team!