Wow, so much stuff has happened since I last blogged. Where to start?
Well, we’re no longer in Serbia. It was very sad to leave Serbia and all of the friends that we were able to make there. Our last night in Serbia, Pastor Radovan had a special dinner to celebrate our time together and invited the whole church to attend. We were able to share stories of our time together and Praise God for the things we were able to accomplish during our time there.
Some of the things we did at Trinity Church in Serbia:
– Cleaned all windows of the church
– Hauled old bricks out of the basement
– Chopped down a forest to create firewood for the church (almost landed a tree on a camper, but the camper survived by about 3 inches)
– Removed old seat covers from chairs
– Cleaned out rooms that will be finished for the home next to the church that will someday house people recovering from alcohol and drug addictions
– Painted a fence (this was no ordinary fence… this fence became a humongous task and we worked on it for about 2 weeks and did not completely finish it by the time we had to leave)
– Hung curtains in the recovery home
– Prepared for heaters to be installed in the recovery home
– Attended Bible studies and prayer meetings with people in the congregation on weeknights
– Shared songs, testimonies and the guys preached in church on Sundays
– Organized Bible lessons/skits/crafts and played with kids from a gypsy village on Saturdays
– Planted flowers and prepared the church grounds for Spring
– Cleaned out a ditch that surrounded the church’s property
– Dug a trench and fixed a pipe that ran across the driveway to the church
– Dug a ditch in front of the church
– Cleared the church’s grounds of rocks so that grass would grow properly
– Formed relationships with Artsa (a guy that works at the church and is heading up the recovery home project) and many other people who we worked with on a daily basis.
– Probably many more things that I cannot remember
One of my favorite experiences from Serbia was that Chris and I got to go and stay the night with one of the young couples from the church. Darko and Jelena wanted to get to know people from our team better but they lived far away and we couldn’t justify going to visit with them for just an hour or so, thus we got to go and spend the night with them! It was a lot of fun getting to know them. They served us lunch, dinner and breakfast and it was fun to truly be able to eat some Serbian food. I was blessed by our visit with them.
I loved Serbia and our experience with Pastor Radovan. Now we are about 3/4 of the way through our month in BULGARIA, so stay tuned for an update on what we are doing here.
