Many streets in Uzice and the surrounding villages are lined with garbage. I noticed one cause of this first-hand when I was out with friends Friday night. I witnessed a careless teenager throw a glass bottle in the grass. As I picked it up and said that these things need to be thrown in the garbage, I received a peculiar comment from this fascinated teenager that Americans are so clean haha.
Therefore, after a suggestion from our ministry contact, my team has decided to clean the streets of Bela Zemlja as part of our service to the village we live in. While half the group visits the library and does crafts with the children, the other half of the team spends some time in the morning picking up trash along the streets. Personally, I love this! I love this and find this to be a great way to bless our village, so much so, that we have decided to do this every morning.
One of our new friends, Ivice, spent the night this weekend and joined us for street cleaning Monday morning. When I mentioned our plans for the day he jumped right on this opportunity and I gratefully saw why when we were actually out in the village. Like me, Ivice loves to pick-up trash!
[On a side note, I love to clean most everything with the exception of my bedroom…that’s my messy space. While working at the camp in Cacak, Serbia I was quite anal, as my teammates can testify to, about cleaning the chairs in every crevice and the wooden benches twice. At training camp, even earlier into this journey, I was overseeing dish washing at times since our entire squad was responsible for dishes after lunch.]
Back to cleaning the streets of Bela Zemlja…Ivice, Erin, and I went out in the morning and cleaned for over 1.5 hours. We were enjoying the progress in the middle of the early morning’s hot weather. As we reached a WWI memorial and Ivice spotted the abundance of cigarette buds scattered, it was hard to get him to stop cleaning. He hates to see cigarette buds scattered on the streets more than any other thing.
Many mornings we encounter people who begin talking to us in Serbian, or pass by with a comment. We have no idea most of the time what is being said, but just smile and say sdravo, which means “hi”. Monday morning though, with the interpretation from Ivice, we witnessed a glimpse of encouragement in a passerby who said, “good job kids”. The only other time we were able to understand appreciation from people in the village was our first day out. The owner of a mini market came out and gave us each a coke as we were cleaning in front and around his shop.
As a way to get away with God this morning, I decided to clean the village apart from the others on my team. During this time, I gained a greater appreciation for the phrase, “actions speak louder than words.” In being reminded how the words of passersby can’t be understood and how I can’t communicate with them the reason for me being here and why I’m cleaning up the streets, I was shown that the only thing I can do is just keep smiling and continue to clean.
The significance of this is that through my actions ALONE I am able to communicate my care and dedication to the village and to the people. I am encouraged by this and convicted at the same time. This has caused me to desire a deeper commitment within my relationships back home and any where I go. To follow up with what I say I’m going to do, to be a better steward of my time, to be dedicated to follow through with what I begin, to do things for others without expecting to receive praise or appreciation, to make my words my actions. To do all this and know that, if no one else notices, I at least see the resulting beauty in it and so does God.
My prayer is that we are able to leave an impression and that Serbs will continue the work after we leave.
