Where were you? Podgorica and Kotor, Montenegro and Mostar and Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina
How did you get there? A variety of buses.
What did you do there? Unsung heroes: finding new ministries, encouraging the believers, and creating potential connections for future World Race teams.
Accommodations? Trailers behind a church, staying with host families, more host families, and a mission apartment.
Currency? Euro. $1US = 0.74€ Bosnian Convertible Marks. $1US = 1.42KM
Anything you miss from America? Nothing in particular… maybe the normality and easiness of life?
What was the best moment? Meeting all the amazing contacts in these areas. One day, we met a man who does adventure sports ministry (rafting, climbing, camping, etc) and we went rappelling off the side of a bridge. It was a lot of fun, and definitely outside of my comfort zone… in a good way. 🙂
What was the hardest moment? A lot of traveling, it got really tiring.
Top 3 foods? We made a lot of our own food, but we were able to sample some local foods, like burek, cevapi, and Turkish coffee. That counts, right?
Bottom 3 foods? While cevapi was good, it always made me feel sick after I ate it. We also were trying to stretch our budget as far as possible and ended up eating jelly-ish bologna “meat” sandwiches a lot.
Language(s) spoken/learned? Most of former Yugoslavia speaks various dialects of the same language, called Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Croatian, etc, but they’re all relatively the same. I remember two words: hello is dobar dan, and thank you is fala. (gives a whole new feel to falalalala)
Biggest time you saw God show up? I tried a food/sleep fast for 24ish hours and learned a lot. You can read about it here.
Anything else? While traveling was tiring, it was really interesting. In two months, we got to see almost all of former Yugoslavia and learn a lot about the history. We saw Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia this month. While Dubrovnik, Croatia is a known tourist location for many Americans, we visited it after 5 days in Kotor, Montenegro and I actually preferred Kotor. They have a very similar feel, but Croatia lacks the snow-capped mountain backdrop that I loved about Montenegro. It had a very “hidden treasure” feel about it that I absolutely loved.
