I will be posting another vlog sometime here soon telling more about where I am staying and what an average day looks like here in month 1. In the meantime though I wanted to post these sponsor blog updates.
Sometimes we ask God to move and He tears the roof off the place and works in blatantly obvious ways which is an amazing experience, but sometimes, He works in subtle ways that we don’t always see. Sometimes we won’t even see the fruits of that labor and we just have to take heart in the fact that God is still a God who is good. At the end of the day, this isn’t about us. It is designed to bring Him glory, and at the end of the day if we are striving to do that day in and day out, His work will be done. These two sponsored days had a little bit of both God tearing the roof off the place and God walking nonchalantly through the front door.
October 16th was our first adventure day. This month every Monday we have adventure day which is a day designed to explore the area that we are in and immerse ourselves even more into the culture. This adventure day looked a little different than we anticipate others to look. Technically the day started at 12am so that is where we shall begin. After going out to eat that night where we had a spiritually deep conversation with one of the locals we invited him back to the church where we are staying in to continue the conversation. We got back to the church and we learned more about him and had some worship time and afterwards we listened to this locals life story and we were able to help teach him some truth about who God is and how he desires a relationship with him. This took us late into the night, until about 2am. God’s presence was so evident and though we were all exhausted by the end it was so worth it. It was one of those feelings were if we all went on this trip just to minister to this one guy the trip was already worth it.
The late night did put us in a place where we didn’t wake up until late into Monday. Personally I didn’t wake up until about 12pm. My adventure for the first half of the day was exploring my dreams in my bed. After waking up I hand washed my laundry for the first time and then went to town to get wifi catch up on some treasurer work.
Side note: I haven’t mentioned this yet but I am the treasurer for my team which means I am in charge of our finances and budgeting out our money throughout the month. Basically, I am given a budget for the month from headquarters in Georgia and I work within that budget to try to make that money go as far as possible. I am loving the job so far. Turns out that business degree has been good for something already. Alas I digress.
After going to town to get wifi we went out as a team to a restaurant in town with one of the local contacts from the church. The food was soooo good. After that we went back to the church for a little bit, had a team meeting, and then went bowling with a couple of the locals. Bowling was a great time and it was a great way to end the day.
Thank you Grandmom and Papa Jack for sponsoring this day. I hope you had as great of an anniversary on this day back home as I did here in Serbia with your support.
October 17th was our second “regularly structured” ministry day here in Serbia. When we first got here the first three days were designated for us getting our footing in the city and meeting the locals. Now that we are all comfortable we have started to get into a rhythm. The day started off with a prayer walk for an hour. This time is designed for us just to walk throughout the town and pray for the people in it. It is a really great way to start the day which I might have to adapt into my regular routine when I get back home. From there we did 4 hours of work throughout the church doing our best to make it look better. My job for day was to continue digging a trench in the backyard of the church. The trench is designed to run electricity from the church to the shed in the back yard. I will try to show this in a later vlog but that trench took my teammate Ethan and I a total of 11 hours to dig (we finally finished it today, the 18th). After this we had lunch and fun team bonding pictionary like activity. From there some of us went to town again to get some more work done and to reach out to some people back home. We then met up with one of the locals to hang out at one of the local restaurants to get a drink. I got a coke, but this coke was special. They put an orange slice in it and it made me frustrated because I was mad at myself for not trying this sooner! Next time any of you have a coke put an orange slice in there and you will not be disappointed. Anyway, once again we had great conversation with the local. He loves America without ever having been there. He has so many questions for what it’s like and how our lives look back home. It makes you gain a greater appreciation for having grown up in such a nice country. I will say though we do face some opposition. Like on the way to get drinks a local on the bike swore at us because we were American, and today one of my teammates got spit on and told to get out of Serbia. Not to get into politics but to add background information for those who don’t know, under the Bill Clinton administration the United States bombed Serbia and there’s still some bitterness towards those from the United States by some of the locals. Anyway, to end the night we went out to eat as team to celebrate Ethan’s (one of my teammates) 26th birthday.
Thank you Erin Williams for sponsoring this day and coming alongside me in my pursuit of following God’s calling on my life here in Serbia.
