Unsung Heroes was our ministry this month here in Novi Sad, Serbia. Contacting ministries and Christian organizations in the area and talking to them about possibly becoming future World Race hosts.
We lived at a hostel in the city center to be close walking-distance from everything we’d need throughout the month: groceries, coffee shops (to meet with potential hosts), churches, restaurants, etc. But never once did we take a potential host to coffee…
At the beginning of the month we set the goal to find 10 potential hosts by the end. While we’re still in contact with a few others, we’ve currently only reached that goal, and the month is ending…
We were encouraged to go to these different churches/organizations and investigate what ministry and life for future teams could look like there. We only did this with one ministry all month…
So what DID we do? On paper, according to what we were supposed to do, we failed.
In real life, we were used to encourage and strengthen a man who has been ministering to so many others (mostly on his own) for years by simply joining him on house-visits and Bible studies almost every night for the last two weeks.
We went to the same restaurant on a regular basis where they noticed how we said “thank you” and tipped well (20% is NOT normal here) and prayed before we are. One of the waiters there even asked to talk with a couple of my teammates because he wanted to share his STORY and was curious as to why we are “so different”.
We listened to a pastor and his son as they expressed the difficulties of poverty and hopelessness and how that drives people out of Serbia instead of them staying to try to improve things.
We took our hostel hostess out for coffee to invest in her as a person and tried to respect her in how we lived in the space we were renting, and by the end she told us that we’re the best guests she’s ever had and gave us our last two nights rent-free.
And through it all we were soooo blessed! Blessed by the unforeseen opportunities to share God’s love for the people we met. Blessed by the people we got to spend so much time with, listening to their stories and sharing our own. Blessed when the man we got to join in ministry with offered to take us sledding (even though he hates snow). Blessed to be invited to a woman’s farm for a day just to converse and encourage each-other in Christ, and eat our first home-cooked meal in months. Blessed to have a poem written for us, encouraging us to keep moving forward. Blessed to be seen treating those considered “lesser” as equals by the same people who watched us pray before we ate. Blessed by so many more things, some of which I haven’t even identified as blessings yet!
And through it all, we still were blessed with some connections to make ourselves, and MANY to pass off to another team that was doing Unsung Heroes in Belgrade (another city about an hour away). We were also able to get a good start on making a list of churches and organizations for other teams to contact in the future.
This is what ministry as God ordains looks like. Often it doesn’t look very successful on paper when your true concerns are for the people. But if your priorities are surrendered to Him He’ll use you to make it more “successful” than you could have ever dreamed.
Until next time,
Madi
