Thanks for your prayers tonight! We had eight students come. We talked about what true love is. We did this by looking at what three different sources had to say and then discussing them. Those sources were a song by U2, a quote by a philosopher, and a passage from I John. The students were engaged well and we were able to share the Gospel clearly.
On Wednesday night we will have our weekly meeting with the students. Please be in prayer during this time (12pm - 3pm MST) that God would be working in the student’s hearts and guiding the discussions. Since 4 of the 5 in the American team are married, we decided to make our discussion topic relationships so that they can be the voices of experience! We hope that most of our students are available, it’d be great to have about 20 students come.
Please also be in prayer as we go this week to reserve the places at the University to distribute the VOX magazine next week. We need to get permission from the dean of each department in which we want to distribute. Those locations are: the courtyard in between all the buildings, the courtyard by the student dorms, the Philosophy department, the Law department, the Sport and Physical Education department, the Technical Science department, and the Natural Science department. Pray especially for the Natural Science department. They have been the most resistant toward us in the past because they don’t like the articles in VOX that imply or say that God is the creator. We are taking students with us to help. Thank God for the willingness of the students and the help that He is providing.
Before Jesus sends His twelve disciples out in Matthew 10, He tells them to “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” - Matthew 9:38 That is one of the things that we are praying for Serbia; we can see that God is in the process of not only bringing laborers here, but He is also raising them up from among the Serbians. There is a student conference coming up this summer called Campus Mission 2007. I am super excited about this because it will gather about 20,000 students from all over the world who want to learn how to build movements on their campuses that would grow to impact their country and the world. Many students will be challenged to go to other parts of the world at this conference as they see the bigger picture of what it looks like when people “from every nation” gather to worship God!
Dijana has been praying and fasting about going this summer. She is a student here in Novi Sad and we have seen God working in mightily. Her passion to share her faith is steadily growing and God has shown her, through experiences during the past few months, how He can use her in other people’s lives. This has blown her away and increased her faith and vision dramatically. Oh, when I think of what seeing a vast fellowship of international believers who are as equally passionate about following God as she is would mean to her, I tremble. She is one of very few students here that have the vision and passion for her fellow students. I have met no other Serbian student equal to her in this.
Pray for her as she prepares to go this summer. There are still some significant barriers that must be overcome for her to go. The first is what her father will say. She doesn’t know for sure, but she fears that he will be resistant to her going. She is spending this next week with him and will talk to him about it. Please, please pray that God will work in his heart and soften it so that he will let her go. The other barrier is the cost of her transportation. Most of the conference cost is already taken care of, but Dijana is responsible for raising her own money to pay for her flight and application fee. Pray that God would bring in this money for her.
This spring semster is starting to fly by. As I look ahead at what the next few months will be I realize that soon it will be summer already and I better make the most of the time I have or it will get away from me!
The months of January and February consisted of a lot of traveling for us. The students are studying for and taking exams during these months, so it was a good time for us to be gone. One week in January we were in Nerja, Spain for our mid-year conference, to which STINTers from all over Europe, Russia, and central Asia came. It was a great time to be refreshed; we heard solid teaching, experienced great praise and worship, and caught up with old friends and made new ones.
For a few days in February we went to Budapest, Hungary to have training for an outreach strategy called Story of the Soul. This is designed to create discussion about what the greatest needs of the human soul are in a coffee house environment. It incorporates a Gospel presentation as the answer to man’s greatest need. We hope to put this on sometime this spring here in Novi Sad.
It’s great to be getting back into meetings with students. Pray for me as I meet with guys to disciple them and share the Gospel with them. Pray that God would be moving in their hearts and open their eyes to see the truth.
This past weekend marked an annual youth conference in Serbia. It was held in Novi Sad, so we attended two of the big group meetings on Sunday.
While we couldn’t understand much of the content, it was incredibly encouraging to see about 250 young Serbians who were committed to following God and seeing His Gospel preached to their countrymen. The title of the conference this year was Break Through and was in part focused on students gaining motivation for sharing the Gospel with others back in their towns throughout Serbia.
Praise God for raising up a people excited about sharing His love with their people. Pray that God would greatly encourage them and strengthen them in a land that is hard to live an authentic Christian life.
I write this on the eve of the summer project arrival. Tomorrow around noon thirty people arrive from the States. They will be here until the end of July. Boy, the pace of life is about to change drastically around here.
I’m wondering a little what the culture shock will be like for us. It’s been a while since we’ve been around US culture, and being around 30 other Americans fresh off the plane certainly qualifies. We are going to be living with the project for the rest of the summer. First, we’ll live with them in a hotel, then we’ll be moving to a youth hostel.
It should be a GREAT summer! I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be great to see friends again and to be in ministry together. I’m also looking forward to spending the summer with my brother. It’ll be good to get to know each other better during this project.
Please be praying that God would guide their travel here, and that during their first few days here they would get adjusted well and have a good briefing.
Every now and than I experience things here that make it very clear that I’m not in America anymore. (I guess everyone always speaking Serbian around me might be a dead giveaway, but you know what I mean!)
I was sitting in a park eating lunch when a woman asked me a question. She was speaking Serbian so I didn’t quite understand her. I can make it out when people ask for directions somewhere, or for the time, or for money, so I knew that she was asking something different. I told her that I don’t speak much Serbian. She asked me where I was from. She then asked her original question and gestured to her palm. This time I made out a few words: “Do you want me to read? Life? Heart?” I smiled and told her no thank you, and trying to make sense with the limited words I know, I told her that I only read the Bible. At this point she sat down on the bench next to my and we talked to each other for about 15 minutes.
The rest of our conversation was kind of slow. I really don’t know that much Serbian yet, but I gathered that she believes in God and reads palms for money. She told me that she had traveled all around Europe and has 8 kids. Right know she has a two year old. She doesn’t have a source of income.
Pray for Rusha. She says she believes in God and reads the Bible, but she’s also involved in reading palms and coffee grounds. She, like a lot of other people here, is deceived and in need of the truth to set her free.
Please be in prayer for the students that are coming to our weekly ‘Alfa Kurs’. This is a course designed offer non-Christians an opportunity where they can freely explore and discuss what the Bible has to say. It is designed to be non-threatening, but intentional. You can find out more about it at:
We will hold this for ten weeks total. Last night was the third week.
So far we have had about 10 students that have come for at least one of the weeks. All of them have really seemed to enjoy it while they were here. Pray that their interest would remain high as God opens their hearts to the truth of the Gospel. Pray particularly that their doubts or suspicions wouldn’t keep them from coming back.
Pray for Miljena and Jelena. These two girls came last night. Miljena accepted Christ at the beginning of April. Both of these girls attended the emotional intelegence seminar that we held at the end of March.
