I can hardly believe that my very first month of the World Race has already come to a close. Month one of the Race was full of precious memories and fun times with my team. We spent most of our time meeting young people and building relationships with them in hopes to be a shining light to the Gospel. We partnered with Youth with a Mission where we taught English club, help kids with crafts at the city library, picked up trash on the streets of our village, prayer walked, hosted game and movie nights, hung out at the local cafes with Serbians, and participated in many outdoor activities (fishing hiking, etc.).
Chris and Mirjam (our contacts for the month)
I definitely felt challenged during our time in Uzice, as my view and expectations of what the World Race and life as a missionary was completely different than what I experienced. At the same time I realized how sovereign God is in His placement of where our first month of ministry was spent.
While many of the teams on my squad spent there months “roughing it” in small villages throughout Europe, my team and I were staying in a nice 3 story home, living in the small but urban city of Uzice. While other teams were busy doing things like working with orphans and visiting widows, my team was forming relationships and hanging out with young people (many around our same age) from Uzice and having extra personal time. My team and I struggled a good part of the month with our ministry and how fruitful it would be. We started to compare our month to other team’s month and got discouraged and started feeling guilty. We had expected to come into the Race and be so busy and exhausted from ministry. We expected to have to immediately have to use a “squatty potty” and take cold showers (or no showers at all). We expected to have little food to eat or odd meals that had to be consumed out of respect. None of these things made up our month.
Apart from the comfort we felt physically the first month of our Race my team and I experienced a lot of restlessness during our stay in Uzice. We really wanted to have an impact on Uzice and share the gospel with as many people as we could but this was not a quick or easy process. Coming into a city knowing NO young people and being asked to build relationships seemed to be a defeating task initially. We would meet people but they either lived too far away to hang out or they were too busy to want to hang out with us. We would go into town during the day to try and hold sports outreaches (basketball, Frisbee, etc.) and have no one show up. We were quickly humbled this month, realizing that it might be a month of not seeing much fruit of our ministry.
However, after a long three weeks of being in Serbia we started to build more and more friendships with the locals. We could walk down the street and visit our friend Olivia that worked in a local pizza shop to say hello… or meet friends in the middle of the Turg (the main town square) to go shopping or hang out at a concert. We would be walking to and from the bus station and run into people we had previously met or had become friends with. We started to feel like locals. It was during our last week of ministry in this small city that we really got to pour into the lives of people we had encountered during our stay. I got to share the gospel with 3 friends from English club and share my testimony at our small home church. Ben got to further educate a Serbian Christian and encourage him deeper into his faith. Staci shared her faith with an atheist and discipled a young girl about to enter her first year of college. Erin was able to share her faith with a young man while fishing. Michael broke religious stereotypes by hanging out with guys at a party. And Emily brought joy and laughter to so many children and Serbians that she encounters that it was obvious that the Lord dwells inside her.
Me with Jovana (English club friend), Ana, and Jovana's Brother
Our month may not have been one were we saw people step out and make decisions to follow Christ….and thats OK!! I have come to realize that our success is not always measured by the outcome of what we do but it simply measured by our faithfulness to the God’s call. We don’t always get to reap the things we sow. But what joy it is to know that God is faithful and that he will continue to bring more people to harvest to continue sowing until the fruit is displayed.
Looking at the first month of ministry God gave us on the race it is completely apparent God’s purpose behind us being there. Each of us were pressed further into personal intimacy with the Lord this month. We were drawn closer together as a team, we were humbled by the Serbian people and their generosity, we were humbled by the Lord in his calling us to serve in a place that we didn’t see much fruit, and we were given rest that was needed from the exhaustion many of us had already experienced from personal situations that happened back home before the race.
It was an amazing first month of the Race and I am ready for 10 more amazing months. My team is now serving in Draganesti, Romania working with a team of church planters. Please continue to pray for us as we will be serving the local gyspy community, working with children, speaking with widows, and sharing the Word of God.
