From 6 pm-4 am during the summer holiday the streets of downtown Požarevac are blocked off; people mill about and hang out at the cafés. Kids run around screaming, playing tag, and the popcorn stands and ice cream shops give it a picturesque feel—like Stars Hollow (holla atcha Gilmore Girls fans). The first night in Serbia we walked around downtown with the mother and son who picked us up from the airport. Pokémon Go was mentioned, and suddenly the son and I were talking about distracted people and their accidents. He made a joke about death and paused. “People joke about dark things because there is not much light here.”
It’s an emptiness you can feel. It’s like they’re searching for something. Like they’re restless. It’s that feeling that something is lacking—maybe not so much a darkness, but a light that is missing. You see it in the furrowed brow of passersby. It’s in the posture people have—where a zdravo, a cíao, or a weak smile isn’t exchanged. That’s not something I expected from such a small city. This isn’t to say there aren’t extraordinarily nice, genuine people in this town. Because there are, and many of them. These people stand out to me that much more in comparison to the people who seem to be missing something. There are warm people with open hearts, who have shown my team and me so much love and compassion. So. Much. Love.
One of the first people I met, fresh off the plane in Belgrade, was our translator. Yes, she helps us find the restrooms (praise) and thanks to her we now know enough Serbian to be polite (because ne pricam Srpski), but she is so, so much more than a translator to my team. She has given us a family in our first month of the Race. Do you know how nice that is? Nice doesn’t cut it. To feel home when you are 5,000 miles away. To feel home in your first month of 11 when you are scared and missing your family and wondering what the heck you’re doing on this thing. She and her family have gone out of their way to love us and love us well, and have blessed us immeasurably.
Just a couple of days ago she took my teammate, Faith, and I to the doctor because we both were feeling weird for a couple of days (everything is a-okay now, guys). She helped Faith get medication and walked around for an additional hour with me in search of a private practice that could write me a prescription, even though she wasn’t feeling so well herself. Then she sweet-talked the woman at the pharmacy when we still couldn’t find the private practice, which meant I could stop trying my darndest to drink 192 oz. of water a day (I can’t tell you how hard that is, or how miserably I failed) and could take actual medicine. Which means restored health! This woman has a deep love for the Lord. She accepted Jesus in 1995 and is one of the most beautiful examples of faithfulness. Through the changes, the fears, and the hard things in life, she always returns to Jesus. Always. And she has been such a source of encouragement to us in this. The Holy Spirit is alive and active in her, and she radiates love from the Father.
There is this man who lives in the cluster of apartments next to ours. He walks with a cane (sometimes two), and dresses like a gentleman. He’s got big glasses, and kind old eyes. I have had several interactions with him, but so far my favorite was yesterday. My teammate, Patricia, and I were talking on our apartment’s stairs and he walked up. We exchanged zdravos (hello), and then he started speaking to us in Serbian. Yesterday he told us that his birthday was…either that day, yesterday, tomorrow…we at least understood that it was recently or will be soon. And he turned 95! Today he laughed at my team for being barefoot outside. He picked some fruit off the tree and went back to his apartment. I doubt very much that he knows this, but he brightens my day every time I see him. This is what I like so very much about him: He knows that we don’t have a clue what the words he’s speaking mean, but he continues to try. He continues to try to talk to us, even though he knows we don’t know what he’s saying, and talking to us more won’t make us understand. He has faith that we will do our part and try back, that we will gather enough context clues to decipher what he’s trying to communicate. He doesn’t let something like language barrier stop him from reaching out.
Way back at training camp in June, my Squad Mentor shared with us two words that the Lord had put on her heart for iSquad (the name for my squad of 41 people who are traveling to the 11 countries together), and those words were always more. At the beginning of this month during launch, she reminded us of these words and told us that always more is already our place setting at the table of the King. She asked us to sit with the Lord for a couple of minutes and to ask Him what it is that we each personally bring to His table—the thing we will bring to each city we visit.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve always had trouble sitting and listening to the Lord. It usually goes like this: I panic that someone has asked me to listen for the Lord, I start talking to the Lord like “okay, please tell me something because everyone else hears you and I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t.” Then it’s blank. I can’t hear anything. [You know how you can never NOT think of something? Well I can, and it’s when I ask the Lord to speak to me.] I was half expecting that to happen, but hoping for more. I wanted to know what I bring to the table, dangit! The word He brought to my mind was faithful.
Jump forward a couple of weeks, when one of my teammates has a perception only the Holy Spirit can give, and as she is speaking Truth into me, she tells me that the word she got that morning for me was faithfulness. Hi, wow. My God is faithful. And He’s calling me faithful. And I was created in His image (Gen 1:27), so that makes sense, but now I feel like I bear His image. I carry it.
I pray for faithfulness like the people of this city—the ones who refuse to leave it in darkness—the people who are bearers of Truth and of joy and of peace and of light. These people, in their image bearing likeness of God, remain faithful in a city that is literally falling apart. They continue to press in and push through, and are the people who remind me of our Abba’s faithfulness. Požarevac is a city not forgotten.
For you were once darkness (Požarevac, Morgan, Your Name Here), but now you are light in the Lord.” Ephesians 5:8
