Serbia is special.
It is something you have to experience to understand. Much like movies, and verbal explainations cannot replicate the actual energy you get from being at a night club.
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i LOVE Serbia!
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The people are extremely friendly.
And just as, if not more, blunt.
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The architecture records time and regimes like the shelves of a library sports so many different sizes and textures of books.
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The streets are a mishmash of different kinds of stone slabs and cobbles.
The food is like mini feasts.
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The language is like the calming yet jarring sound of a whole bus load of buckles going on at once…or like when the buckle light goes off on the runway of a landed plane. The buckles pop in a scattered caskading way that is both releasing as well as suddenly trapping.
For me, it is beautiful.
Although i am clueless to the meaning behind the mouth well formed words. – The lips make love to open air.
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Its harder to bring you here with words.
Here, it is winter and i am in the main heart of the main city. The sensory is lacking nature…
Shoes moving along the stone set off a rhythmic clack, the strides of people matching their heartbeats. Crowds of people who come and go, where and where from, i dont know.
Each building holds its own stories, the architecture announces age. The top storied windows are veiled with darkness. Street level they boast floor to ceiling windows and columns and lights. They are banks, or clothing shops – human figures frozen in pose, or stripped for their new wardrobe robing. Bookstores, cafes, shops, and shops, and shops. And people. Always people.
The air is cool and crisp.
We step around puddles, we crunch through snow, we bend into the wind. We cannot remember the humidity – but we cannot wish away how alive we feel. There is an expectancy here that i can feel.
A wriggling restless expectancy. But for what?
I don’t know. Only that everywhere i go i feel that i am in a living and active coffee shop.
Unknown, and observing.
Peace….
Street performers sing sad songs that echo between the fleeing feet.
The smell of sausage – and savory foods…we go from place to place as if time doesnt exist.
Because here, it doesnt.
There is just being alive.
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This past weekend we spent at a conference of believers gathered from all over Serbia.
They came to worship together, encourage eachother, listen to eachother and hear how God is working and moving, and spur eachother on in their faith.
It amazes me how all the believers know eachother! And truly are part of eachothers lives, and know and love eachother.
It’s also shocking to learn things that make america a nation where freedoms are truly unlimited.
The orthodox christianity we know is not anything like what is here. Here it is just cultural. It is like singing the national anthem. For some of us, that evokes feelings. We have family who has died in service of the flag. Then there are people who do it because its a habit.
Like sports games. They sing the anthem because it is the tradition of a sports game show…
I went and visited a cultural Serbian orthodox church. I know i mentioned in one of my blogs, the way the people wondered around like they were in a museum. They did their thing: a touch, a kiss, a mumbled chant. They cross themselves. They light a candle. They touch their forehead…they back out.
To become a born again christian – to really love the Lord and worship with joy, to weep at the Lords goodness. To profess His lordship and live following dreams and callings placed on your conscience through your living relationship with the God who made the universe…here, in Serbia, it is like a cultural betrayal in the same way that it would be for a muslim to confess Jesus as Lord.
A person could legally lose the right to their children if they are found to be christian and their family took them to court.
It is shocking.
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For the conference event we went to, there has to be paperwork filed with the government.
The paperwork needed is pretty much the same paperwork that we have to file in America to start an NGO/Non-proffit. And fees have to be paid too.
People cannot have a club or a public meeting without filing this kind of ngo paperwork.
They can meet in peoples personal home (gather as friends) without paperwork, but there cannot be any public invitations or advertising for it, or it becomes illegal.
Wow.
I could not even imagine having to create a non proffit to start an open bible study for people to attend….
We have been attending church events, bible studies, emailing people, calling people, and going out and making friends with locals and spending time with them!
It hasn’t always been easy, there’s a lot of walking involved, and a lot of waiting for buses and emails to be answered. Things get canceled, and rescheduled. People send back mean emails. People give us strange looks or mean comments sometimes. We as a team have had less direction and more time to have missunderstandings –
But one thing.
God is faithful.
Every single thing that has happened this month has been a result of the last thing.
We have met people who introduced us to another person, or who recommended us to some shop where we met someone, who told us about some event where we met some other people…its been crazy, how each meeting has been so exactly connecting us to the kind of people we were desiring to meet/searching for.
Crazy to see how even our team conflict has brought about the work of God.
Both inwardly with perspective or mind/heartsets with people and the Lord, and outwardly in the realm of new relationships in Serbia!
I am so grateful for all God has done here and all He will continue to do!
And i have more things to share that i will with time.
For now, its this:
Do not underestimate God.
What He can and will do.
I told a friend here that i dont really like the person the race is making me. She said, “If those things are coming up in you, then they were already there before the race.”
How true.
God, i am willing to follow you through this. Please help me!
