The Club

First things first. Beverly is alive and well again! She even came out with us last night to meet the girl from the China shop.

We met her at a cafe by the river and the music was calm and relaxing. The mood was great and we were speaking back and forth pretty well with her. Enter sister. She was a fireball of energy, much unlike shop girl. She comes in and immediately lets us know how cool she is. We're asking questions and finding out about her and she's all over the answers. Her English is a little bit better than her sisters so she translates some for her and then tells us she would like to take us to her favorite club.

Now, "club" up to this point has been nothing more than a cafe with slightly louder music than one you might find in town. When we went with our friend and her boyfriend the night before we went to an American rock and roll club. Not tonight. We went straight up techno.

But first they wanted to show us around town so we walked with shop girl, her sister and her sister's friend we found in the center, up and down the main walking area of the center of town. Then our friend had to leave because she had to work in the morning but her sister was going to take over from there. She led us straight to the pool where a tent had been set up with lights and speakers and standing room tables. We paid 150 dinari each to get in, got stamped, and followed her into the light show and heavy bass.

We all held our breath and gave each other looks of reassurance. We could do it. We had to.

The music was loud but we had gotten there early enough to find a table. We all stood around it looking at each other and giving nervous looks and laughing nervous laughs. The sister was instantly into it, bobbing and head nodding, so we started to bob our heads too. We took pictures, we danced a little bit (bounced up and down enough to be considered technically dancing), and we smiled, a lot.

The first hour was fun and awkward but mostly fun. It wasn't a scary place, there weren't too many people and the people that were there were pretty still. Everyone just kinda found a place and head bobbed while trying to talk to their friends, which was a total waste of time because the music was way too loud to be understood even at close range.

Two and a half hours later we decided it was time for us to go home. The sister and her friend had been going steady the entire time but we were a bit exhausted so we told them we were going to head home for the night. We exchanged contact information and walked half-deaf back to the girls hotel. I've never slept as soundly as I did last night.

Sarah led our devotional time this morning. Today we will be working on putting up fliers advertising our English conversation class we're running Monday through Wednesday. The sheets have tear off contact information with my number on it as well as the address of the place we're having the practice sessions. The thing is tomorrow but even if just a few show up, it's a success for us and they can tell other people and grow the group over the course of the following days.

Tonight we should be heading back into town to prayer walk and maybe find someone else to meet. The city is kind of dead on Sundays because most of the shops are closed. This will give us plenty of time to put up fliers and hand out cards with the same information in the center of town.

Please pray for Beverly, that she is completely well and that she continues to be healthy, as well as for our efforts with the English class, that people would come and that some good contacts will come from it. Who knows, maybe we'll meet someone while we are handing out cards and putting up posters? We'll be ready for anything.

Thanks! :) Ciao!

Prayer for Recovery

Beverly is sick. She was feeling a little weird yesterday morning but decided she was ok to go out with us into town. We played some tennis at 5 and after our match she sat down and held her head in her hands. Thinking it was just dehydration Sarah and Jovica's daughter went to get some water. Before they came back though Beverly decided she couldn't sit there anymore and needed to go to the hotel to lay down. She didn't go back out with us last night and is still feeling bad this morning so please pray for her, not just that she gets better, but that she wouldn't feel bad about not being with us and staying at the hotel while we're out and about.

Last night went well though. We met up with our friend from the first week and her boyfriend who also spoke English well. We talked with them for a good two hours and then they left us to meet some other friends of his but we were able to exchange names for Facebook and adder her this morning. She said they would love to meet us again at least once if we could before we left and we promised her that we would try. The boyfriend picked up our tab despite our insisting that we could cover them. Very nice. We finished the night by getting drinks at a cafe nearby and watching the opening ceremonies on a big screen. Pretty neat.

During the afternoon yesterday Jovica took us to the gypsy town to meet with some friends there but also just to make conversation with families and see if the kids wanted to play some marbles. He also brought a few boxes filled with toys and cooking salt to pass out to the families nearby. One family as we were walking invited us to come have drinks with them on their porch. They showed us pictures of their family, the kids showed us their puppies and they were super nice. We asked Jovica about them and he said he had never met them before. He asked them, "why are you being so hospitable to us? You don't know who we are." And the dad replied, "Why not? We could see that you were a good man and anyone who comes to us with a smile on their face is welcome here." (I'm paraphrasing Jovica's translation but that seemed to be the gist).

Several kids wanted to play marbles but none of them wanted to obey the rules so marbles turned into tree climbing while the girls showed Shelby, Sarah and Beverly the hill nearby. They ran up the hill, around the hill and down the hill cheering every time they reached a checkpoint. It was pretty hilarious. Jovica shared a bible story with all of the kids before we left. They gathered around him and listened as he talked about Jesus. It was really cool to see that.

Josh and I got a chance to climb the tree too. The kids loved that.

When we tried to leave, the kids swarmed the car. It was actually pretty terrifying. It reminded me of a zombie movie the way they jumped on top of the car, arms outstretched, yelling for us to get back out and play or for me to take their picture. Jovica kept yelling at them to get out of the way but they weren't moving and were on every side of his car. Finally Jovica started slowly moving the car forward to scare them into moving and after several horrifying fake attempts they made enough space for him to drive off. We are really looking forward to going back before the trip is over.

Today we're going to head into town for lunch, shop a little bit, try to touch base with the contacts we've made in some of the stores and then hit the tennis courts again before getting ready to meet one of the shop contacts and her sister for coffee. This is the girl that was following Shelby around in the China shop excitedly. Her sister supposedly speaks very good English and will be mostly likely doing all of the translating tonight. Should be a fun time. That's at 8:30 but it will most likely go for most of the night which is good because we really like this girl and she seems to really really like us too. Pray that we can connect with her and befriend her despite the slight language barrier.

Thank you for your prayers. They're always needed and always effective. We love you all and can't wait to see you :)

Ciao!

Reunited

Yesterday was different in a lot of ways.

For one, it rained, and hard. We were at Jovica's house for lunch when it started and it continued for a few hours. We were planning on going to the courts to play some ball but that plan was foiled. Instead we decided to hit the china shop to get some umbrellas, the same shop where we met one of the girls who worked there a day or two ago. She was there and recognized us immediately and excitedly slapped Shelby on the back to get her attention and talked with us for little bit. We're meeting with her this weekend and she's going to bring her sister who she says speaks much better English than she does. It was good reconnecting with her and to see how excited she was to see us, especially Shelby.

As we were leaving the shop it was still drizzling a little bit and we all got our umbrellas out of the plastic shopping bag. As we start to open them up some random guy comes running up to us and points to the bag speaking in Serbian. When he realizes we're not understanding him he points from the bag to his head and it finally hits us. Sarah and Beverly hand him the bag and he quickly straps it over his head like a helmet and runs off away from town. We couldn't believe what had just happened. We needed a good laugh and that was more than enough to satisfy. 

After that we decided to split up. We told Jovica that we would check the courts to make sure they were still wet because he wanted to come play with us so Shelby and I investigated while the rest of the group went to the hotel. The courts were wet but I then talked with Shelby about her thoughts on how the group is doing and what we could be doing better. After a short conversation I felt like I really needed to address the group one on one and then together as a whole to get everyone on the same page and to calm some tensions that may have been springing up amongst ourselves.

We went back to the hotel and I told everyone what was on my mind. After dinner we would simply prayer walk the center of town. Three people would walk together up and down the middle while I took turns talking to everyone in the center by the statue. There my hope was to understand where everyone was at in thinking about strategies for witnessing, things that have been hard for them, irritations with others but most importantly their ideas on how to make the most of our time here most effective.

It worked.

Everyone was able to share with me something that had been on their minds and I was able to take what they said and express it to the group after we were finished. The prayer walking teams enjoyed prayer walking too and even met another girl who spoke really good English at another shop in town. They are going to go back there sometime today and talk with her a bit more.

At the hotel I expressed what I had learned and opened the floor for more ideas and everyone agreed that the new changes would be helpful. The team unity has already seemed to improve, at least as far as I can see. That should prove really important going forward.

Tonight we're going to meet up with one of our friends from our time before camp and her boyfriend who is now back in town after having worked in Western Europe for the last month or so. We're excited to see her again and to meet her boyfriend. She's been a good friend to us and every conversation has been really good. Definitely pray for our relationship with her and for a good night tonight.

In an hour or so we'll be heading to meet Jovica to go to the gypsy village just outside of town. He's going to play marbles with the kids there and introduce us to a couple of his gypsy friends. We've already met one family who came to the bible study our first Sunday in Kraljevo. We're looking forward to going out there but don't know what to expect. Pray that we will be prayerful and ready for whoever we meet or get to talk to, and that we can be a blessing to those people.

Today marks the half-way point of our trip. It's a little exhausting thinking that this is halfway but it's also exciting to think that we still have time to make friends, expand on relationships and work the sports fest. There's enough time for us to minister here still :)

Please pray for strength, patience, courage, discernment, trust, for the English class we're trying to organize (I've started working on the posters) and for our missionary and his wife who is due within the week :) they're packed and ready to get to Belgrade to deliver their 5th!

Ciao!

Back in the City

So it's been more than a full day since we've left the camp and despite our plans of resting and doing nothing a lot has happened. For starters, the girls had a spider in their room...

The day we got back we went straight to our rooms and napped. While Josh and I were walking back to meet the girls at their hotel I get a phone call. It's Shelby, hysterical because "there's a HUGE spider" in their room. "Really, Dylan, it's massive! Get here ASAP, you have to kill it! We have it trapped..."

Visions of tarantulas flood my mind and I rush with Josh to their door. I knock on the door and you would have thought 100 girls were screaming. After a few seconds I hear the keys rattling against the door. When the door finally opens I look into to see a line of chairs running from their beds to the front door. Beverly is perched on the nearest one to us, arms outstretched to let us in without letting her foot touch the floor.

I ask where it is and they tell me they've lost it but that it's a monster of a spider. We look in the bathroom, in the closet, under beds... this thing is nowhere to be found. After a couple hours of searching we decide to leave and get something to eat. Flash forward to yesterday - Shelby was getting something out of her backpack by her bed and saw it in the corner, screams, and Josh smacks it with a sandal. Hero status. The thing was bigger than your normal house spider you might find in the corner of your living room but it was certainly not the monstrosity the  girls made it out to be. They even said, "I don't think that's it. I remember it being bigger than that." Nu-uh. Spider problem neutralized.

We went shopping at this Chinese shop in town to get some simple things like deodorants and other cheap goodies and happened upon another contact for us. She was following Shelby around the store and at first Shelby thought she was being stalked because the girl thought that she might be wanting to steal something. The girl eventually spoke up and asked if Shelby spoke English. The conversation led to us all meeting her and getting her number. She wants to get coffee with us sometime soon. It was really encouraging seeing that God doesn't just work in the time's that we give him to work, but that even in our break time, God is actively leading people to us.

We also had a short conversation with our popcorn guy, Paul while we were out looking for a place to eat last night. He asked us why we were in Serbia which kind of caught me by surprise. Surely we had told him why we were here but he said he had been wondering that since he last talked to us a week ago. I talked to him about Josh and wanting to talk to people and make friends and then shared about the Christian camp we were just at teaching the kids about the bible and Jesus and how important he is to us, etc. It was definitely a good plug for our relationship with him. It'll be interesting to see what our next conversation goes like. --> Side note: Beverly tried some chili powder on the popcorn she bought at the end of the conversation and without realizing that it was chili powder, Sarah reaches in for a handful and takes a bite and coughs. She was ok but it took her by surprise. Pretty entertaining.

The girls attended the women's bible study at Jovica's house with his wife and the missionary's wife. While they were studying, Jovica, Josh and I walked around town putting up posters advertising the sports festival. After that was finished we all met at his house for coffee and to play with his little boy, Marko. We've really bonded with Jovica and his family and are even meeting them again today for lunch. They wanted to make us a Serbian specialty and we gratefully obliged. After that we may ask Jovica to go with us to the tennis courts to arrange a tennis reservation for sometime this week and to help us mail some post cards.

Tonight we'll most likely go back into town and call some of our contacts about meeting for coffee, or meet some new people.

We're also thinking about putting up some posters to advertise an English speaking club that we would host where Josh and I are sleeping. We would put up invitations around town with contact information and invite them over for an hour or two of conversational English practice with our group. That would be a great time to make some friends and also maybe share the gospel. We'll be working on getting those up over the next 4-5 days.

The sports festival starts August 5 so preparations for that will be getting serious in the coming week or so. Prayers for strength, patience and a heart for the Serbs here. Also pray for team chemistry as we've been together for a while now and it's easier to get chippy with one another (we've already had a fight over whether creamed corn counts as a vegetable). Our work will be a lot easier if we can cooperate and encourage one another.

Thank you for your constant support. We're still enjoying our time here and are excited to see what God has planned over the coming weeks. I put up a heap of pictures today - sorry there are so many. I should have gone through and erased some before I mass uploaded but hopefully it wasn't too painful to sift through them all.

Love you all :)

Leaving Camp :(

The last night of camp was great!

I got to share my testimony and it went really well. We also worshipped, and even had a little birthday party at the campfire for one of the campers.

One of the highlights of the night was when Danjel (“Daniel” - one of the Serb leaders) asked if anyone wanted to do some karaoke. Crickets didn’t even sing. Right before Danjel was about to move onto the next event, Jovica (Yo-veet-sah) volunteered himself, Josh and I to do some beat boxing. We had been joking about it earlier in the day and joked about doing it at the evening worship, but now it was for real.

We got up in front of the crowd under the tent and each grabbed a microphone. We chose a theme: A train departing from a train station. It went beautifully. I did the chugging of the wheels, Josh nailed the horn, and Jovica did a wonderful job on the clacking of the tracks and the background noise. We started the train, accelerated it and turned it into a decent beat box. The kids loved it. After a minute or so of the beat we wrecked it and the campers cheered.

That was all we had really “prepared” but the kids yelled for more so we asked them to give us a theme. The only person with an idea yelled out, “An airplane falling into water!” So we tried. I did the quiet ambient noise inside the cabin and Jovica was a lady flight attendant. The kids erupted when Jovica started talking in his lady voice, even I couldn’t hold back laughing. It was a lot of fun. Eventually we crashed the plane and I did some water droplet sounds for the plane submerging under water.

My testimony was different from the way I usually tell it. I told them that I found a lot of pride growing up being liked by everyone and I would constantly compare myself to others to feel good about being a better person than them, but that I wasn’t and was still a sinner deserving of hell. I think went into focusing on the difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone. From there I gave the example of the prodigal son, feeling ashamed of his life and not wanting to go to his father because he knew he had let him down. I talked about how the father surprised the son in his reaction. He didn’t scold him or ignore him or send him away; he ran to him and embraced him and had a celebration.

I hope it spoke to the kids there and because I really felt like God was putting it on my heart to share, I know some good will come from it. I may never see it, but I can be comforted in knowing that it wasn’t in vain.

One of the campers’ birthday was today so we brought her a cake last night while we were sitting around the campfire. She was surprised and everyone sang the Serbian birthday song, which easily trumps the English one in my opinion; very catchy. After everyone ate cake, we hung out around the fire and took pictures and talked. It was a lot of fun.

This morning we picked up where we left off around the fire. We took pictures and exchanged names for Facebook and email addresses. It was really hard for us saying goodbye, which is kind of amazing considering just a couple days ago we were all feeling super discouraged and didn’t have a lot of friendships with the kids. We wish we had another week with them.

We’re back in Kraljevo now. We packed ourselves like sardines into Jovica’s little car and took off right after breakfast. We’re at his house now having some iced coffee and then we’ll head to the hotel to get the girls set up and then to the locale to get Josh and I settled. It’s kind of nice to be back in the city. We have friends here we are looking forward to connecting with and there are new ones to be made.

Today and most of tomorrow will be a resting time for us. With the late nights in the city and going straight to and through a week of camp, we’re pretty exhausted. It’ll be good to reset and revive before we launch into the last couple of weeks.

Please pray for rest, and for the kids leaving the camp today that they would get home safely. Most of them take buses home and some of the trips are several hours. Also pray please for them to remember what they learned at the camp and that the contacts we made there would continue over the coming weeks, months and years.

I should have camp pictures up before the end of the day : )

Ciao!

Camp: Day 5

Breakfast this morning was slices of bread with a cream cheese/butter textured spread made completely out of hot dog ingredients... just another reminder that we're not in America. (For the record, it wasn't terrible.)

Anyway, let's get to the important things.

Today is the last full day of camp. Darko challenged all of the leaders this morning to go all out today to capitalize on built relationships and say everything you need to say and do everything you need to do with every student you feel led to do and say those things to and with (most confusing sentence ever?)

Also at the meeting, some of the leaders reported hearing kids talk on their own about some of the things talked about in the service and in the group quiet times. This was really encouraging for us. The teachers all talked about what they had learned so far at the camp. I shared about how God has shown me that I can do nothing without love and that my goal for this camp had changed from trying to have a gospel conversation with as many kids as possible to loving these kids as much as I can with God's help and allowing God to mold me into any role, even one that's not in the spiritual spotlight. A few others shared about love as well and a few on faith and the power of prayer during a camp like this. It was just a really good time for us to share with each other a little something personal and encouraging.

Tonight I will be giving my testimony with a few others. I feel like God has been working with me this week in changing the way I present my testimony. Instead of the usual chronology of my life and my spiritual walk, I feel like I finally understand how my testimony can help others and really relate to their lives. I'll be working on it this afternoon to prepare for tonight. Please pray that it will go well and that the testimony I have will positively affect the students who listen.

I added my first Serb friend on Facebook yesterday and tonight will be that times a million. Everyone will be exchanging information and preparing to leave each other. Some will come back for the winter camp in 6 months, but for some this is their last camp, and will most likely be the only time we attend so tonight is really important if we want to keep in contact with these campers. It's weird to think this week is almost over. The week started so slow and now we're wondering where time has gone.

James and Katy return sometime today and then will leave with Tyler for Belgrade to spend the night there tonight and wake up early for their 6 a.m. flight. Please pray for safe travels and a smooth transition back into Texas time.

This week has been great but draining, as all camps are. Please also pray for strength for today, especially since tonight is going to be long and late. Pray for good contacts, a strong end to camp, and rest when we return to Kraljevo to continue doing work there.

I'll try to update tonight or tomorrow morning to report on the final night of camp and wrap up the week. Pictures from camp will be up hopefully sometime tomorrow when we return to Kraljevo. I need to get the ones Darko took because I was usually participating in the events I wanted to take pictures of. Hopefully I can get those up soon too.

Thank you for continuing to pray for us here. Your prayers are not in vain :) 

Camp: Day 4

Yesterday was water day, and things got CRAZY.

We spent our morning filling up about 600 water balloons and it almost wasn't enough. We had water balloon volleyball, water balloon egg toss, and a water balloon "gauntlet" where one team would stand behind a line and the other teams joined together to form two lines with a lane between them. Everyone grabbed a water balloon and tried to peg someone on the running team as they tried to get through the lane safe and dry. The kids loved it.

The water balloon egg toss was fun too, but I felt bad when I tossed my balloon a bit prematurely and as my camper tried to catch it it exploded on impact with her face. Water went up her nose, in her eyes, and the shock of the whole ordeal was traumatizing I think. I apologized with several "Izvini"s  (sorry) and she said it was ok and smiled after she had collected herself. Pretty frightening.

We also played a game where two teams would each run with a bucket of water down to a place on the field and stand on a chair. Beside them a person would be kneeling down next to an empty bucket. The person with the water would pour some water into the knelt person's mouth and then they would spit as much of it as they could into the bucket. Then they would take the bucket full of water back to their line and pass it off to the next person who would do the same thing. As soon as they ran out of water we compared how full the spit buckets were and decided a winner. The kids were laughing the whole time.

I feel bad saying kids, they're not really that young. Most of them are in and around 18 years old.

Last night, Darko divided the camp into girls and guys and they had talks about relationships. The guys group was really hard for the campers from what I understood. The kids struggle a lot with sexual sin. Relationships here are really loose and sex is all too common. One of the leaders started chewing them out for living like children and challenged them to do something with their lives instead of wasting it away with drinking, sex, and destruction. There is a specific group that is causing trouble and they seemed to really take it personally. I'm interested to see more of the fallout from that conversation as the week continues.

The girls said that the girl conversation went pretty well too but not at all like they were expecting. Apparently the girls talked about what love really looks like and what kind of guys they should be looking for and which ones they shouldn't be looking for at all. It seemed cold and awkward but good messages were said. We'll have to wait and see how that pans out too.

Beverly didn't get to share her testimony last night because Darko didn't think they had enough time to fit in the couple they had planned. Hopefully she gets to tonight. Tyler was supposed to do his tonight too so we'll see what they want to do but I really hope they both get to share. So far, the testimonies have been some of the most obviously effective ways to reach and relate to the campers. I would really like to give mine tomorrow, the last day/night of camp but we'll see.

There has been significantly more conversation between leaders and campers since the start of camp. A lot of times we will come together and practice English and Serbian. These conversations have been good ways to get to spiritual conversations or at least strengthen friendships with the kids that could lead to a conversation like that. Already we've been getting requests to add people on Facebook. It's weird to think that we only have two days left.

It's also strange to think that Tyler is leaving on Tuesday for good. It'll be a different group and a different feeling with our smaller group when we go back to Kraljevo. Pray for him as he prepares for home and uses the rest of his time here effectively. It'll also be weird knowing that James and Katy are going home. We haven't seen them too much on this trip but it's comforting to know that they're close and that they've been able to see us a couple times. They have been a real encouragement to us every time we've seen them.

Please pray for a strong end to camp and for God to keep knocking on the doors of these kids hearts. Change is hard for most of these kids because faith in Christ is not a popular position in this country. A decision to follow Christ and be a "Protestant" is a big deal. Pray for strength of these campers and for confidence in the truth they're hearing to make the decision to follow Christ and submit their lives to him. They are filled with seeds and the seeds have been watered. It's only a matter of time before fruit is harvested. I can't help but feel that a lot of these kids are close, and that when the first decision is made a wave of others will follow closely behind.

Ciao :)