Ministry began at 9:30 Monday morning. My team and I loaded into Chris’ (our contact) van and he drove us 1.5 hours to a camp in Mrcajevci, Serbia. We began working as soon as we arrived.
This camp was just bought June 30 by a Texas couple. Woot woot! Camp started today, so a lot of work needed to be done to prepare. My awesomely hard working team helped with:
Staking down large tent
Washing railroad tie benches
Washing plastic tables and chairs
Cleaning out sport’s activity room
Trimming bushes ( I used an electric trimmer for the first time and added “character” to the bushes)
Uprooting lots of bushes
Taking large amounts of brush to burn pile
This was an intense 2.5 days of hard labor and we were greatly repaid by having some super delicious homemade food and welcoming company. Last night the girls on my team helped make a traditional Serbian dish for supper. It included tomatoes (which are so abundant and widely eaten with feta cheese in Serbia), green pepper (similar to our banana pepper), onions, and scrambled eggs in a pot. Along with this we made Serbian pancakes, which are similar to our crepes but a bit thicker. We filled them with something like Nutella…my obsession.
Today starts the camp for kids ages 15 and up, while the next two weeks are for younger kids, and the fourth week is for Roma Serb kids. This is the third year this camp is going on and it appears to be thriving, with 44 kids coming today. Some things that will be taught at camp this year are English, stories of Joseph, leadership, and responsibility. We met a couple of Serbians, that are helping this year with camp, that decided to have a personal relationship with Jesus after either attending or helping with this camp. These include Sneyshana and Filip. Filip is a country music loving Serbian…so great…he made me feel at home in Serbia with his twang.
My team met a few other missionaries from the surrounding areas as well and I was so excited to hear their story to becoming a missionary and the work they are doing…it’s inspiring to see their joy and hope for an area of the world that is predominantly Orthodox and living life not knowing they can have a personal relationship with Christ. Along with this, I have learned so much already about the history of Serbia, the wars that occurred, the difference between the north (lots of diversity) and the south. These will be follow-up blogs.
Darkos, Snezana, Michael, Emily, Ben, Erin, Jenny, Me, Karl
Tomorrow…ministry in Uzice begins with prayer walking.
