Group in Leskovac
Group in Leskovac
Thursday, July 17 – What a send-off we got at the airport at
Praise God all of us got boarding passes including our connecting flight from
We
left LA about 30 minutes late but with the help of a strong tail wind, actually
arrived in
Friday, July 18 – We finally went to bed about 3 AM after
settling in, hoping to sleep in.
Meiring forgot to reset her alarm clock so woke up when the sun rose and said it
is almost 10 AM (but it was really 10 PM LA time and 7 AM
Saturday, July 19 – Last night, we went to Vrnjacka Banja to
sing at the
Since
it was getting late, we left after singing, talking to only a few people and got
back to the church a little after 11 PM.
We were starved, but were reminded we gave up our “rights” to 3 meals a
day and to be grateful to God that while in the world only eat one meal a day,
we usually have more than enough to eat 3 tines a day.
Meiring cooked an omelet that we then gratefully ate.
We
slept in a bit and had breakfast at 9 AM, still a little jet-lagged.
We did our group devotions and talked about last night.
Some of us went to buy lunch, some to the market, others to buy a jacket
for the colder evenings and some of the guys practiced. We started our music
camp, joined by 5 Serbian and a Gypsy youth.
Most of them knew their music so we spent most of the afternoon singing,
with Josh teaching them about proper posture and breathing.
They had already learned some of the songs in Choral Praise that we had
given Pastor Stefan when he visited last November.
We also did some sectional practices to go over notes and closed our
first afternoon of joint practices by singing together the older and new songs
they just learned.
In
the evening, we sang for the Chinese congregation followed by communion led by
Betty Anderson. There were a total
of 11 Chinese businessmen and women attending with 7 joining in the communion
service. Keiko shared her testimony
of how she became a Christian. The
non-Mandarin speakers among us then left while they sang heartily and
enthusiastically. Wahpui Sam then
spoke and continued to counsel several of the members who had both marital as
well as business problems late into the night.
Sunday, July 20 – Since today is Sunday, it is good to pause
and thank God for all His answers to prayer.
Here are a few:
1.
We all got boarding passes and made all the flights
to
2.
All our luggage got here with us.
3.
The weather has been remarkably comfortable here,
nothing like last year. The daytime
temperature is mostly in the eighties and the nights are cool, cool enough to
even need a sweater.
4.
No one is sick and Jaspher, who had a cold coming,
is getting better.
On
the other hand, God has chosen not to answer our prayer about the number of
Serbian youths joining the music camp.
So far, we only have 6, 4 girls who in fact sing quite well and have been
learning the music before we even came, and two guys, one a Roma Gypsy who
unfortunately cannot get a passport in time to go to Macedonia with us.
But God knows what is best for us and will bring to the team those who
are best able to minister.
Betty Anderson preaching, Nena Hovsepian translating in Leskovac
This morning we attended and sang at the Serbian church service at 10 AM. There were about 60 or 70 attending (not counting us). Alex shared about his experience worshiping God. Betty Anderson then preached with Nena translating. She spoke from John 11 about Jesus calling Lazarus from the dead. At the end of the message she asked for those wanting prayer to come forward. Most of the elderly came forward immediately and soon was joined by the young people so that almost all the Serbs at the service came forward to be prayed and anointed.
Betty prays for the Serbian youths and anoints them
Betty
spoke words of prophecy and encouragement to each person and ended with charging
the dozen or so young people left to be filled with the Holy Spirit and be bold
in proclaiming Christ in Serbia. The
meeting, which should have ended at 11:30, did not end until well past noon.
It was a time of release and breakthrough so we look forward to what God
will do in the days to come.
After
lunch, we continued with our music camp, with one more young man joining us (he
had been among those prayed for in the morning), so now we have 7 Serbian
youths. Tonight is the Roma Gypsy
service which starts at 6 PM.
The
only real problem we have had so far is getting the ATM machine to give us money
from the Vision account so pray for Robert Lo as he works this problem.
So far we are surviving with Joseph and Fiona Hsiung getting money from
their ATM personal account, so even when we have problems, God has provided us
with at least a temporary solution.
At the Roma
Gypsy service Sunday night, the place was quite full (maybe over 200 people)
when the service started. During the
awesome praise time which was very energetic and heartfelt, more people came in
so some of us in Vision had to stand.
We sang some songs alone and some with the Serbian youths and performed a
skit with the VBS song “Come to Jesus” (we sang this song arranged for SATB by
Marshall instead of using the VBS CD and performed the skit with a mix of Vision
and Serbian youths, who turned out to be quite good actors).
Janine gave a wonderful testimony of how she was touched by Christ’s love
during her sixth grade retreat that led to her joining Vision so she could share
this love with others.
Michael then brought a powerful message from I Corinthians 1 (translated by Nena)
about how God uses the weak and foolish things of the world to do great things
for Him. He used Vision as an
example of how God brought a group of ordinary folks to sing for Him (instead of
the world’s way of using only the most professional and talented “dream team” to
do His work). At the end, he said he
feels God is calling some in the audience to give their lives for cross-cultural
missions so Mike boldly and in faith gave an invitation.
Two men stepped forward so Mike began to pray for each of them.
During his prayer, 4 more ladies came forward to dedicate themselves.
The Holy Spirit moved very powerfully during this time as the entire
congregation stood to pray for these 6 as Mike and Pastor Mio prayed.
(Pastor Mio is Stefan’s father and “retired” from being Senior Pastor.)
A couple of the Gypsy youth expressed interest in joining the music camp
and we welcomed their participation.
After
the meeting, about half of the Vision team with a few Serbian youths did a
prayer walk around the church, preparing the soil for the work ahead.
The area around the church was quite “dark” both physically and
spiritually.
Monday, July 21 – Yesterday was a wonderful day where we
experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit and the release of God’s anointing
through Betty and Mike in two different and yet marvelous way.
We are so grateful that God is so good to us and for all of you for your
prayers. It is making a huge
difference.
After
breakfast at 7:30 and group devotion, we debriefed (as we do each day) about the
past day’s activities and what we see God doing.
Many of us felt that even if tour ended today and we returned to LA, we
would feel this has already been a good tour and we would be quite happy with
what God has done. But in fact, tour
is really just starting with a full day of music camp today and tomorrow
followed by all the concerts planned and the trip to
This
morning, we were joined by three more Gypsy youths bringing the total of Serbian
youths to ten, a number we are more than happy with since it gives us one
translator for every two Vision members.
Not only that, we ended up with 3 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 tenors, and 3
basses among the Serbs, a very nice core choir for any singing they might want
to do in the future. Their names are
Tania, Tamara, Maria, Sarah, Traci, Misha, Boyan, Alex, Ducha, and Ivan.
God is so good!
When
Vision was practicing, Betty was simultaneously conducting a session from 10 AM
with the Serbian and Gypsy church leaders.
About 60 showed up and it turned out to be a wonderful time of
deliverance ministry for many in the group.
They finally ended about 1:30 PM and scheduled another session with Betty
for Tuesday morning.
The music camp is turning out to be a great time between Vision and the Serbs and Gypsies. Besides reviewing basic music theory and a lot of practicing and singing, we played a lot of games together. Four of the Serbian girls (Tania, Tamara, Maria, and Sarah) are staying over at the church so we have a lot of time together with them.
Four Serbian girls that stayed over with us for music training
While
they are also helping us with our Serbian songs and pronunciation, we are
teaching them to sing the chorus of “Jesus Loves Me” in Mandarin so we can at
least sing part of one song in Chinese for the Chinese church.
Tuesday, July 22 – Betty had her second session today with the local church
leaders, a meeting that started at 10 AM and ended after 2 PM.
For Vision, we continued to practice with the ten local youths.
After lunch today, we went to pass out a few invitations to the Chinese
service meetings scheduled for Thursday and Saturday.
Our general impression was that the merchants are less open and welcoming
than they were last year so remember them in prayer that God will open their
hearts.
We
also visited the Leskovac historical museum, only 7 minutes walk from the
church. This visit was arranged by
Pastor Mio’s friend, Mille who Nena said is “president” (not mayor) of Leskovac.
Anyway, Mille is a man who has been good to the church even though he is
Orthodox. Betty and Marshall with
Mio and Nena altogether spent several hours talking to him Saturday and Sunday,
but as yet, he is not open to developing a personal relationship with Jesus.
The museum visit is interesting but also tiring.
We came back the church about 3:15 PM and rested until 4 PM and practiced
some more. During practice, it began
to pour and get cool. We had planned
to go to the park nearby and sing and pass out tracts, but were not able to do
that with the rain. God in His
wisdom had other plans for us. The
leaders in Vision along with Betty and Nena had time to process and we realized
that several in the group had been having nightmares.
Betty also pointed out that there were children coming to the gates of
the church and placing curses on us.
Joe sensed that this is all leading up to our going to
While all this was happening, Wahpui and Ellen were cooking dinner and leading a Bible study for the Chinese church. Over a dozen came for dinner and stayed for the Bible study. Instead of just expository teaching, Wahpui and Ellen taught them how to ask the right questions from the study and search out the answers themselves, something that will be invaluable for their own growth in the future. Some drove here from as far as an hour away to attend after a full day of work. Praise God for their hunger to learn God’s word.
Chinese Fellowship
Wednesday, July 23 – Praise God we finally can get money from
the ATM! Vision, together with the
Serbian youths, spent the morning listening to Betty talk about spiritual
warfare from Ephesians 6. She then
spent a couple of hours praying for each person on the team, giving prophetic
prayers as she listened to God. By 1
PM, only about 8 people were prayed for as we broke for lunch.
After lunch and a short rest, we resumed praying and prayed for another 8
or so members. We then had to leave
to go to Lebane for our evening meeting.
We praise God for sending Betty with us, as everyone who was prayed for
felt blessed and touched by the Lord.
A couple of us also had some familial oppressive spirits cut off and we
could see how much happier they were after the prayer.
We
were going to go to Caricin Grad on the way to Lebane, but since it had been
raining much of the day (it is quite cool and comfortable here), we went
directly to Lebane, Nena’s hometown.
After dinner there, we went to the church where we again met Nena’s mother, who
although cannot walk well, came to listen to us again (as she did last year).
We also again met Pastor Mio’s older sister.
These two elderly saints were the ones God used to bring the Gospel to
south
Thursday, July 24 – We continued our music camp this morning and also after lunch. Four girls sleep over at the church while the rest of the youths stay at home and walk to church for our music camp.
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| Bass section practice using roll-up Piano | Guys in their dorm room at the church |
Since
we have been here about a week, we have also been taking the time to get some
clothes washed. As a group, we sing
quite well together now. The Serbs
sing all of the Vision songs which are in Choral Praise I and II, and a couple
of other songs that we brought with us, about 2/3 of our repertoire.
It has been raining quite often and we are praying that it will not rain
tonight (so we can go evangelize) and Friday night as we are singing at the
Gypsy village. That is going to held
out of doors at an area which is rented by the Gypsy leaders and the event has
been publicized on radio for a couple of days.
Wahpui and Ellen have been visiting and inviting the Chinese merchants to
come to our meetings during the time we practice.
What a blessing it is for us to have them (and of course Betty and Nena)
on the team this year.
In the evening, we sang at the Serbian Thursday night service at 6 PM, then joined the Chinese meeting which started at 8 by playing some group games with the Chinese folks. We sang a couple of men’s quartet songs to them (Day by Day and Standing in the Need of Prayer). There were only around 30 at the mid-week Serbian service (Mike preached from the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, emphasizing having "listening ears"), and over a dozen at the Chinese service. After that, the Lord answered our prayer and it was not raining so we went to the nearby park to sing and evangelize.
Vision passing out tracts on Leskovac street
Because of the rain, there were not too many people on the streets, but Long got
a chance to invite a Serbian street vendor (selling hot french-fries) who agreed
to come visit the church on Sunday.
We got to meet the mother and sister of one of our Serbian youths (a new
believer) and also prayed for healing for the father who had hurt his back and
was home. More importantly, Meiring,
with Tania, shared the Gospel with a 13-year-old.
She was so ready and eager that even though her friends tried to
dissuade her and get her to leave, she kept insisting that she wanted to stay.
Mike was praying that her friends would go away and after about the third
attempt, they left, so when Meiring asked if she wanted to receive Christ, said
“yes” and prayed the sinner’s prayer.
There was such a smile on her face!
Praise God! Pray that she
will come to church on Sunday and be followed up.
Tania was so excited she didn’t want to come back to the church but to
keep evangelizing.
View of
Friday July 25 – After a day of practice, we went to the Roma
Gypsy village in Leskovac to sing.
The main group walked there to interact with the Gypsies and play chess with
them (we were badly beaten) while the elderly group (Marshall, Meiring, Wahpui,
Ellen, Betty and Nena) went to Pastor Mio and his wife Else’s home for dinner.
They were then driven to the Gypsy village for the meeting that started
at 7:30. At about 7, it started to
rain heavily and we prayed for the rain to stop.
Turning the corner to the Gypsy village is like walking into a different
country, but we felt so welcomed by everyone we met on the street. We later
found out that this village is maybe 10% believers which explained why we did
not feel a lot of oppression although we did feel some spiritual warfare going
on. Instead of singing at the social
hall (where we sang last year), the Gypsies had built a stage in front of the
porch of a believing Gypsy’s home that extended out about 15 feet from the porch
(the porch is about 15 feet wide and 7 feet deep.
Just as we started to sing, it started to rain heavier so we just moved
back and sang from the porch area.
The audience of well over 250 plus maybe 50 children, all stayed through the
whole program, although we had to cut the program short since with the dark rain
clouds and rain, it started to get dark about 8:30.
Since this area was provided to the Gypsies by the Serbian government,
they asked us not to preach but just sing and give testimonies and skits.
We complied, but Long, Tania (a local Serbian college student who had
been with us the whole music camp and Pastor Mio’s grand-niece), and Keiko gave
their testimony which contained the essence of the 4-Laws (God has a plan for
you, but sin separated us from God, Jesus is the only way and we must receive
Him by faith). After the singing, we
were treated to a wonderful dinner served by the Gypsies in the social hall.
We also sang some more after dinner and then the Gypsies sang to us a
couple of rousing choruses. It was
now raining heavily again (the Lord did hold off the heavy rain until after we
sang) so we had to wait for the church van to transport us back the church in
small groups. While waiting, we saw
a lame man and felt led by the Lord to pray for him.
So in faith, we (Mike with Tamara translating) prayed for his healing,
both in his lame leg and for a heart problem he had.
It was our responsibility to pray when the Lord leads us and healing is
the Lord’s work. Mike also prayed
for an older lady who was one of the first Christian and started the work there.
They were both blessed while all of us felt most blessed to have gone
there. After we came back (actually
during the singing), Janine felt ill (probably from something she ate) but felt
somewhat better after throwing up.
Remember her in prayer.
Saturday, July 26 – Janine is better this morning and ate a
banana for breakfast without feeling ill.
We had our daily devotion and debriefing time where we shared what a
great experience we all had last night.
We were told that of the 5000 people in this village, only 10 had jobs
while another 10% had some government assistance for living.
In the midst of such abject poverty, we marveled how they could afford to
cook such a wonderful meal for us last night.
They are like the poor widow with two mites who gave it all to God (in
this case, we were the fortunate recipient) while we are like the Pharisee who
had so much and gave a token.
Nevertheless, we collected an offering among us to give to the Gypsies through
the church here.
After
devotions, Betty Anderson had some time to pray for us.
These prophetic prayers are what she hears from God as His best for our
lives, but it is also something we can choose to walk into or turn to a
different path and thus miss out on God’s best for our lives.
Because each person is unique, so each prayer was specific and we were
exhausted after the prayers because of the toll it took.
Without being specific, some were prophesized to become mighty men and
women of valor, to be musicians and dancers for the Lord, to be in high places
to influence governments for good, to be evangelists, etc.
In the afternoon, the rest of the Serbian youths joined us for some polishing up of our music. We then spent some time to get their feedback on our music camp. They expressed their appreciation, including the time they had spent with us during devotions and prayer. They also suggested we have more fun times, group games, and physical activities together. After practice, we walked over to the Serbian Orthodox Church in Leskovac to see what it looked like but the sanctuary was locked, so we walked back to church to play some group games.
Serbian Orthodox Church in Leskovac
The
evening service was a blessing for all of us.
There were 16 Chinese merchants at the meeting last night, a good number.
Joseph led the entire meeting for the Vision program, which featured
Josh’s powerful testimony about how he learned to walk in faith.
We were blessed two testimonies from the Chinese merchants and they also
sang a song for us. One sister
eloquently shared how she changed her attitude about making a lot of money to
making enough and serving the Lord instead as her goal in life and also how her
marriage has improved after she became a believer.
A brother shared how his difficulty with getting his visa to come back to
Sunday, July 27 – Pastor Mio explained one of our questions,
how the Roma Gypsies could afford to feed us such a fabulous meal Friday night.
The money for the burgers came from the Serbian government (probably the
city), but the snacks and cookies were all offered by the villagers themselves.
Even that must have been a large part of their annual income.
We re humbled by such generosity.
We
sang for their Sunday Serbian service this morning and Betty preached.
After a quick lunch, we (5 Serbian youths are joining us, Tania, Tamara,
Maria, Sarah, and Alex) left about 1:20 PM for
Stip
is a beautiful town built on several hills.
One local told us you couldn’t take 10 steps without going uphill or
downhill. The streets are
cobblestone and curvy, very picturesque.
The people are much more prosperous than Leskovac.
For example, the couple Marshall and Meiring are staying with are
grandparents in their 50’s. Their
son lives in a separate house built on top of their house and they take care of
their grandchildren as both parents work, so it seems there is a lot more
opportunities here than in Serbia.
Their house has a high speed internet and computer.
Monday, July 28 – Pastor Philip plans to attend seminary in the
fall on a scholarship from some European organization, but he is concerned about
what will happen to the two churches he is volunteering o serve the youth.
When asked how he survives, he said only by faith and God’s grace.
The Pastor here (Peter) and his wife both work full time and serve the
church with no pay.
We
met at 11 AM to have devotions and debrief.
The church all 22 youths (including Michael) are staying has three
toilets and one shower powered by a small electric heater, which warms the water
between showers, and then the shower hose sprang a leak.
Needless to say, only a few got to shower.
During debriefing time, both Nena and Betty reminded us that God always
tries us at our weakness in order to strengthen us.
For most of us, the comfort of a daily shower is a luxury most people in
the world cannot have and we are just experiencing only small discomforts.
After lunch, we passed out more invitations for the evening program and
then took the bus to a small village of 500-600 about 15 km from Stip where a
small mission church had been meeting.
This church, although established for 10 years, only has an attendance of
5 adults. Pastor Peter said it is
because the villagers are too concerned with peer pressure for them to become
Christians, thinking themselves Christians already as Orthodox believers.
We crowded into the small room and started singing to the 5.
All of a sudden, children started to come in, about 18 of them, along
with one or two adults. Cynthia
shared her testimony and Betty brought a message.
Before Betty preached and after Vision sang, about 6 of the children
left. After her message Betty then
prayed for each of the remaining children.
Meanwhile, since the room was so small, most of the Vision kids were
outside and had intercepted the children who went out.
Keiko and the Serbian girls were talking to them and telling them the
story of David and Goliath. While
Betty was praying, these six kids were bought back in as the Serbian girls led
them all to Christ. Sarah was so
excited she was ready to return to Leskovac to share Christ at home.
God is doing a new thing in this small village; new wine skins for the
new wine, as well as empowering these Serbs!
We
returned to town and ate dinner about 8:15 PM.
We then walked to where we were to have our outreach concert in front of
a dinner restaurant where they usually had a band playing.
At 10 PM (the appointed time
for the concert), the place was quite filled, maybe 400 people.
Two of the Macedonian young people, Helena and Pastor Philip and our own
Long gave their salvation testimonies between our songs.
Betty then gave a short message and an invitation.
Initially, 3 men stepped forward.
They were joined by some children and about 10 more adults.
As Betty started to pray, a whole bunch of teenagers came, but some of
them seemed to be doing it in jest.
Betty would say one phase of the sinner’s prayer, Philip would translate and
then the group would repeat after Philip.
Some of the teens were mimicking Betty in English.
But they could not continue after a while (probably the Holy Spirit was
getting to them) so the stepped back.
Only God knows how many truly became believers tonight, but we praise Him
for He is moving a doing a new thing here in Stip.
After we sang, many of the girls were harassed by the local teen boys and
Eric was pushed around in the men’s room, but praise God, we all left safely as
a group. God is moving and so is the
opposition as expected. Betty had
been warning us for several days to “put on the whole armor of God”.
Keep praying!
Tuesday, July 29 – The restaurant where we had our meeting last
night is basically a nightclub. That
could explain why there was so much spiritual oppression when we were singing
and when Betty was preaching and praying.
Today, we met at 11 AM again, did our group devotion and talked about
what we learned yesterday and thanked God for all His blessings to us.
Betty had told an example during one of her messages about a little boy
with a small snow shovel following his father shoveling snow off the driveway.
When done, the boy told his mother that he had shoveled all the snow off
the driveway. His father, who did
all the work, would just smile and say “good job, son.”
We are like the little boy.
We are just mopping up after the Father does all the work and He says, “good
job, children.”
After
our group time, we packed up and drove a half hour to Kocani and were met by the
local pastor and his wife. They took
us to a restaurant where we ate lunch and then passed out invitations to our
program that night. We then bused to
the church where we rested and several people finally got to shower.
The church is located in a nice part of town and the pastor lives on the
floor above the church. As in all
the places we have sung in
Mike preaching at
At
least a dozen adults stepped forward up on the stage.
A little girl also came from the other side of the stage, dragging her
friend with her. After her example,
a whole bunch of children also came up and it is not clear if they knew what
they were doing, but this first girl was serious about accepting Christ.
The local church pastor and several of their members tried to take down
names and phone numbers, but they were just not prepared for this kind of
response (as was true the night before).
We thank God for what He is doing, but also realize these small churches
in Macedonia needed a lot of training in discipleship and disciple making.
After the meeting, we then got on the bus to drive to Negotino, a two
hour trip that took almost 3 hours because we had to stop for restrooms so many
times. At Negotino, most of us slept
at the church (Betty and Nena have their own room) while Wahpui/Ellen, Marshall/Meiring,
and Mike were taken to different host’s home.
Since we arrived after midnight, our first surprise is that in Negotino,
the city water supply is turned off at night, so we did not have water to wash
up. This was another faith
stretching point for us to learn, but we are happy to share, even a little bit,
in Christ’s suffering.
Wednesday,
July 30 - One other
wonderful news, on the long bus ride last night, Nena talked to the bus driver
and then Betty got in on the conversation.
The bottom line is that the bus driver said he accepted Christ Monday
night at the outreach meeting in front of the restaurant.
Betty was going over the 4-laws with him again and got to Law 3 when we
arrived, but it seems this man has indeed become a family member.
He will not be driving us to
We got together fairly early today to go to a nursing home and sing for the residents there.
Joseph talking to Elderly resident
One
of their residents is a French widow of 5 years who has been a missionary to
At 6
PM, we had a special time to play with the children who came to church.
There must have been 60-70 kids at the church along with some parents.
We had brought pencils, balloons and other knick-knacks with us left over
from VBS to give to these kids and we also bought candy.
After the fun and games, we sang a couple of songs to them, “The
Orchestra Song” and “Isus Me Ljubi (Jesus Loves Me)”.
We then walked over to the village center where the church had set up a
sound system for our 5 PM outreach program.
This is the third night (in 3 different cities) in a row we had an
outreach. The first two nights
had crowds of several hundred and quite a good response when the invitation was
given. Tonight, the crowd was much
thinner and the response was only a handful of people, but we praise Him and
thank Him for these who did respond to Mike’s message (and Ellen’s testimony).
We did not mention this before but we have added several men’s songs to
our repertoire, including “Standing in the Need of Prayer” and “Rise Up O Men of
God” and have been singing them at the outdoors events.
Some
of you may know that Keiko had felt called to go on the mission field in some
medical capacity. Yesterday, she
found out (through email from her family) that she had been accepted to the
medical program at
Tomorrow, we leave early for Strumica, another Macedonian city close to the
Greek border. We are gong to leave
the Serbian youth in a church close to the border (since they have no visa) and
we will go to
Thursday, July 31 – We tried to leave early for our outing to
The
church in Strumica meets 10 km from town in a farm village.
They meet in a very nice building with a piano and their worship team
lead an enthusiastic time of worship with guitars, drums, and piano.
There were about 80 people there with a lot of youth in attendance.
This church was started 10 years ago and has experienced rapid growth.
Seeing this church gives us great hope for the future of
Friday, August 1 -
We tried to leave at 9 but didn't get out until half past 10 since Betty had
many things to say to the local pastor, Goran and his wife Daniella.
It took about an hour to cross the border and we finally got back to
Leskovac about 2 PM. We ate lunch,
had a joyful reunion with Pastor Mio, Else and the rest of the church staff,
dropped off Tania, Tamara and Alex and picked up Misha and Boyan, two Roma
youths. The bus company treated us
to ice cream and then we headed to
Waiting to leave church in Negotino
We
ate a fast-food dinner and started our debriefing time at our hotel with Keiko,
who is leaving us early Saturday morning to go back to LA.
She had to purchase an expensive ticket to return to LA and Danielo, Nena’s
brother, is driving her to
Saturday, August 2 - When we visit a church, we usually give
them a small offering from Vision to help and encourage them in their
ministries. We have so much that
even a little from us helps them a lot.
However, we sometimes collect a special offering from our team to help
people we meet. Yesterday, we
collected two such offerings. One is
for Philip, the young man we met at Stip who translated for us.
He and his wife of one year “live by faith” (also with his grandparents)
but is a strategic link to the youth of
Last
night, Misha shared a room with the bus driver and was able to go over the
Gospel clearly with this man. It is
very significant that a middle-aged Serbian man would share a room with a Gypsy
youth, and even more, to listen to him share the Good News!
This morning, we had a great buffet breakfast as part of our hotel room.
We debriefed until noon and drove to Panchevo where we had a meeting with
the Chinese church there. We got there about 4 PM and shortly after, Sarah,
Maria and Misha were picked up a brother from the English camp.
It was hard to say good bye to these friends. The Chinese church in
Panchevo cooked a great home cooked meal for us, many vegetable dishes, mostly
grown in their backyard. After
dinner, we started the program about 7.
Joseph led the meeting and shared his testimony about how God took
different hardships in his life to prepare him for more ministry.
Ellen preached an evangelistic message and 2 people accepted Christ while
one rededicated himself to follow Christ after having backslidden.
Praise God.
Sunday, August 3 – Early this morning, Danielo took Stephanie
to the airport so she could catch her flight to LA.
After breakfast, we took the bus to go to the Chinese church in New
Belgrade. On the way, we stopped at
St. Mark Cathedral and later at St. Sebastian Cathedral, both large Orthodox
churches. There was a mass going on
at St. Mark’s,
and a child dedication in a small section of St. Sebastian’s
(the rest of the church is still being remodeled).
We then completed our journey to the Chinese church where we held our own
worship service with Mike preaching and sharing about how he learned to listen
to God and be obedient. We then
continued our debriefing, ate lunch, and debriefed some more.
The Chinese church here is cooking dinner for us.
We also met Ellen Wu, on a short term (1 year) missions here.
She is from
Ellen Sam preaching in
After
the service, the bus took us back to our hostel and left us to go back to
Leskovac. This bus and the driver
has been with us almost the whole time since we left for
In closing out our trip reports, we thank you all for your potent
prayer support. God was working so
powerfully and we just followed on His coattails, picking up blessing after
blessing. We all got back to LA
safely although the main group had some problems getting boarding passes and
almost missing the connecting flight in
This has been one of the most memorable Vision tours.
God was so good to us and blessed us so much.
The team felt like a family, with everyone contributing from the youngest
to the eldest. There were almost no
complaints and grumbling when meals were missed or delayed several hours, or
there was not enough showers or water for showering.
Each of us were stretched beyond our comfort zone, and found His grace
sufficient for us in our weakness.
Fiona sang and eventually memorized all the songs adding to the soprano section,
especially after Keiko and Stephanie left.
Wahpui was a wonderful role model for us in his enthusiasm to witness –
to Serbs, Gypsies, Chinese, kids, adults, everyone.
During our debriefing time, we found out how God had instantaneously and
miraculously healed one of our members of his headache and dizziness after
prayer. One spoke about how a couple
of people irritated him during tour and how he was able to pray blessings on
them instead. A couple of the Vision
members feel called to the mission field and one girl wants to come back to
Serbia and work with the children.
From an objective basis, we have so much to praise God and these
stand out:
God is good.
Thank you all for praying. We
each have our little stories of how we saw God work in our lives.
If you can make it, come to our Home Concert in