I learned a lot about hospitality this past month.
We lived in a city outside of Skopje, surrounded by beautiful mountains. We stayed in a home with an awesome third story porch and walked almost everywhere we went. Our contacts were incredible servants, taking us places, cooking us wonderful meals, even taking us on a hike up to a very old castle.
And while we learned a great lesson in hospitality from our contacts, I learned even more from the people we were supposed to be “ministering to.”
One of the first days, Brook and Jordan met a young man who ran the coffee shop at the private university we visited. He took them out for coffee, talked about his life, what being a Muslim was like and opened up an invitation to come hang out in the coffee shop at any time.
So we did. We played darts with some of his friends. After he got off work, we would walk down to the pool hall and have small tournaments where more often than not, Brook beat all the guys. Pool Shark.
One of the young men we met invited us over to his house to meet his parents. They provided transportation to get there, which was awesome because his house was halfway up the mountain, and from the moment we arrived, the entire family could not stop being hospitable. They served us coffee, tea, snacks and since we stayed, they went out and got us burgers for lunch. We stayed all afternoon, talking with them, enjoying the view out their front yard of the city, and watching a movie. It felt like I was at a friend’s home in the states. It was that comfortable, they were that hospitable.
This same young man met us for coffee or burgers all month long. And he paid every time. Even when we tried to give him money, he refused. The hospitality kept going and going and going.
Even to the point where we were offered cigarettes more times than I could even count. We politely declined, but continued to hang out with our friends, ceasing to care and learning to live with the fact that everyone smokes.
I’m not outgoing. I don’t make friends very easily. But God opened my eyes this month. I watched some of my teammates literally jump into relationships with these young men from the university. I firsthand experienced some of the best hospitality I’ve ever seen. I loved people that I normally wouldn’t have given a second glance to back at home.
We tried to serve. We portrayed a view of God and the freedom in Christ he offers so that they could get a different taste from what they had previously been told. Hopefully something stuck. All of those coffees, pool games and hours spent together, I pray that these young men were impacted as much by God and our team as they impacted us through their hospitality.
At the end of the month, I wondered why we hadn’t built deep relationships with some of the girls we had met. Plans kept falling through to follow up with them and it honestly left me questioning. I asked Brook about it one day and she made an excellent point. When we leave, our two guy contacts can follow up with these young men we befriended. Any girl would have almost been left in the lurch. I truly believe we met the exact people God had in mind for us to meet. And just because we’ve left Macedonia doesn’t mean He has.
