Humanitarian Aid and Cell Group Breakthrough

I wanted to report about my day yesterday because it was pretty encouraging for us! We found ourselves in the middle of some answered prayers a number of times.

First, I went with my colleague to distribute humanitarian aid out in the villages near Karlovac. This is the area that we have 14 households we give to. We were encouraged again when a woman from down the street from one of our bakas (grandmas) saw our car and came to hunt us down. She said that her mom had recently broken her hips. She lives on 300 kuna a month (about $50). Her general health is in bad condition. Recently this daughter had to come back from Serbia to take care of her mom...and the daughter's situation is almost as bad (financially). Anyhow, this mom lives nearby so we went to visit her...and the situation was as bad as her daughter had explained it. We told her that when we came through next month we would for sure bring her a package of food.

On another note, we asked our people if this package of food got them through the entire month. They said with the exception of a few items, this package was getting them through the month! To give you an idea of how much these people need, we spent about 170 kuna per family (less than $30). They don't need much and are thankful, content people. We learn a lot of them.

Finally, while we were out there we were able to pray for multiple people. There's one lady in particular who lives with her son up on an isolated hill in one of the villages. To get to her house we have to park the car and walk 5 minutes up a rough road (passable only with a 4x4). She's mostly deaf and can barely see. She doesn't go outside because she can hardly move around. There is very much a sense of depression and sadness all around this home. When we ask her how she is she always says she's horrible. We tell her that God has not forgotten her and that He loves her...that's why we're here. She says she doubts that God remembers her. It's a heavy, sad place...but we just keep praying for her and telling her about who Jesus is. We feel privledged that in such a remote, isolated place we're able to get to her and bring the Kingdom of God that's in us into that home. What a great opportunity!

When I came home from distributing aid, we started to prepare for our cell group which was at our house that evening. We were not expecting a lot of people to come and honestly, it has been a bit discouraging lately. Some people that we had great expectations for had let us down, etc...so we were trying to move on from that. So, last night we weren't expecting too much, but God had different plans.

I'm not sure if any of you remember a guy I have asked you all to pray for before. I won't mention his name for his privacy...but he is the husband of a woman in our church. He is a believer, but for the majority of their marriage he has been deathly afraid of sickness. It's a long story of how this all happened, but the bottom line is he didn't leave his apartment for a few years. His mental illness was severe. But we prayed for him. We visited him often. We had prayer meetings and even cell meetings at their house so that he could be included. Bottom line is, we just kept praying for him. In recent months, he finally started to take little steps of going out....to get groceries, to pick up their son from daycare, etc. We were so encouraged by this and it only fueled our prayer...so we kept praying. Well, last night, for the first time in his life he came to a cell group at our apartment! We were SOOOOO encouraged! He participated well and experienced what I think was a life-giving time at the group. Praise God with us for this breakthrough. He's a deliverer even of the most difficult cases. Though there's more deliverance needed in this case, God is not done with him.

Ministry and Family Life Update

Just wanted to give a little update on both family and ministry life right now.

Ministry:

We have been a bit busier in recent weeks and have had to compensate some for that. Here are a few bullet points of what's happening and what's ahead.

• Our Slovenian friends who have asked us to help them prepare for church planting in their home town of Maribor, Slovenia have recently moved to Maribor. Not only have I travelled there a couple of times, but there has also been more Skype calls and chats as well as emails due to all the decisions their having to make right now. This is fun for us for a couple of reasons. One, because they're our dear friends and we love being around them. Two, because I sense the joy of the Lord as I work with them and help them prepare and strategize for the long road ahead of them. I feel like this aspect of ministry could be something I do more of in the future.
  
• We are preparing for our spring camp as a church. Our camp will happen in mid-April after Easter. We plan to go to the mountains about 1 hour from Zagreb. Our theme this year is "Freedom in Christ". We hope to prepare our church to take the next step in their personal lives towards more freedom in Christ. For some this will mean going through deliverance ministry for the first time in their lives. For others, it means just continuing to ask the Holy Spirit how to live their lives in more freedom. Our own dynamic threesome of Roger, Goran, and Damir will preach the sessions this year and I will be leading worship.
  
• Along those lines, we added Damir and Maja Mehanovic to our leadership team on a part time basis. They are vocation (not full-time ministers) therefore can not make it to every meeting. We are however thrilled to see them step up into a role of leadership they deserve as they have shown much faithfulness.
• Worship team: This is going great and I'm personally really enjoying this aspect of ministry. We have recently switched Ivan from guitar to violin and it's awesome! He's a talented musician who has a real sense of timing and atmosphere in a song. Damir is co-leading with me and does a great job of following when it's time to follow me, and leading when it's time to lead. I'm getting so much joy out of working with him lately.
  

From left to right: James, Nerka, Maja, Damir, and Ivan. There are 2-3 others who participate on a regular basis as well. God has continued to give us new songs and we're really feeling the flow.

Family Life

• Mimi (Laura's mom) and Aunt Yvonne (Laura's mom's sister) are planning a visit at the end of April. Our plan is to take some vacation time and travel with them to Prague and Krakow, Poland. We're looking forward to this adventure with them and the kids can hardly wait!
  
• The girls are so stinkin' cute these days! Lizzie is doing great with her potty training. She's having a hard time going #2, but we're not concerned. Apparently this is a very normal thing. Bekah is talking away in a language we can not understand...and it's hilarious. We are starting to be able to recognize some words though. Among the top phrases are, "I don't know", and "Help me".
  
• Lizzie has figured out that 2 languages exist. Before she just thought that it was one big language (Cro-english) but now she has realized that this other language called Croatian exists. The other day a friend of ours was over and she was talking to Lizzie in Croatian. Lizzie turned around to me and asked with a confused face, "Daddy, is that Croatian?" Made me laugh...as I realized she just figured out there was another language. She's learning Croatian just fine though. Just like other 3 years old her age, she shouted out to me the other day, "Neću!" which means, "No, I won't!" This was shortly followed by discipline. :-)
  
• There's no snow on the ground right now, but it's cold. Lizzie's constantly complaining of it being too cold though. It's like the Texas slipped in her blood without her ever having lived there! She also loves snow though and talks about it all the time if it's on the ground. She's like her daddy in that way. I've attached some other photos of them enjoying the various winter weather we've had lately.

Above & Below: Lizzie and Bekah playing in the rain sporting their rain jackets and rain boots. They've been waiting for an opportunity to use them.

Above & Below: One Saturday it was pretty warm for a February day in Zagreb (near 50 degrees) so we decided to go down to the lake near our apartment to get ice cream, throw rocks, look at birds, etc. We had a blast!

Visa and Cell Christmas Party

Santa Roger handed out gifts to children and adults. The adults did an ornament exchange.

Prayer for our meal and welcome to all (my head is behind the pine decoration on the right).

Fireworks are a regular part of Christmas here and sparklers are a norm for children. Lizzie loved it!

Children enjoying the sparklers. (The white specks in the photo are snow flakes.)

Everyone eating and enjoying the feast we had. Majority of the people in this photo are guests!

Above you see some pictures from our cell Christmas party. We're so proud of our cell! There are about 8-10 of us (adults) in our cell group and we had about 30 people at our party plus children! We were amazed at how we gave our cell vision to invite their friends in hopes that they would see Jesus in our group and they completely latched on to the idea and succeeded. Now comes time to pray that we will see some of those faces in our cell group on Thursday nights. Above are a few images from that night. Please pray with us for:

• Growth in our cell - spiritual and numerical
  
• New leaders - faithfulness and maturity
• Renewed vision for the cell group
  

Visa Situation:

Some of you have asked about our visa situation. You haven't heard anything new because we don't have anything new to report unfortunately. We currently have a 6-month visa that gets us to May 4th, 2009. After that, it is still unknown. The rumor is that parliament has an amendment in process right now to the law and that this amendment would resolve our problems...however, it is unclear how long this will take to pass all the way through the proper channels. So, we wait and trust that God will have us stay here exactly as long as we're supposed to.

Christmas Fun

Freak out session with Santa. :)

Enjoying a bratwurst in downtown Zagreb at the Christmas market.

Cute Christmas girls.

Laura and I took Lizzie to the Nutcracker at the Croatian National Theater.

Here's Lizzie all ready to go to the Nutcracker with Mommy and Daddy.

Bekah's 2nd Birthday Party

Princess Bekah looking at her beautiful cake.

Enjoying a spot of tea.

Still enjoying it. She loves this stuff.

All the girls present at the party.

Bekah's 2nd birthday is tomorrow, but we're celebrating Thanksgiving then with some other missionaries. So, we decided to have Bekah's party today. It was a great party! Laura made the theme a very girly tea party...and that it was. The party was complete with little finger sandwiches, pumpkin-chocolate muffins, cake, tons of tea (of course), and only 2 guys present. Bekah really enjoyed it and loved being around all her friends.

Baptism Last Week and Rockin' Time Today

Just a short update. We had a great couple of weeks here. It seems every time the church gathers (cell groups, Sunday service, or our worship practice/prayer night) the presence of God comes and we're all able to meet with Him. It's been such a wonderful time lately.

As for today, here's a pic, but it just doesn't capture what happened. Today there was an amazing Spirit among us. We had many guests there which is always encouraging. We also saw our core group of leaders (approximately 6 families total) really rise to the occasion. They were full engaged in worship and really to give themselves to Jesus. Also, my friend and worship co-leader Damir preached on giving and did a great job! With out any religion and with full freedom he spoke the word that was on his heart and really ministered to the body. (Interestingly enough, about 4 weeks ago we were wondering why we felt under such attack. Now we know why.) We're excited for all the progress in the last few weeks and are believing for more. One other thing, there were 22 (ish) adults there this morning and 23 adults last week (plus kids) and our little space is packed out. Please begin praying with us for a new space in the city that would facilitate the growth we're experiencing and a place where we could worship more freely. There's not even room to stand up in this space.


Last week we had a baptism. Ivana is a girl who had a very difficult past full of disappointment and difficult family dynamics. She resorted to lots of different things to fill the empty spot in her soul, but nothing worked. Finally she found herself in a place where she was so afraid of people that she would avoid contact as much as possible. She couldn't hold a job. She had few friends. One of the girls in our church was a childhood friend of Ivana's and she kept reaching out to her. Eventually she came to church and found Jesus there, but was still paralyzed by fear. One day when a guest speaker came and the city church had a larger gathering of churches, she asked for prayer and was dramatically (in that moment) set free from her fear. The next day she went out and found a job as a salesperson in retail! She now talks to people all day everyday! It's a dramatic story of turn around. She still struggles with those lies, but has the power to overcome them now...and so she decided that she wants to be baptized. She invited her whole family to the event as well as co-workers and friends. Many of them came and flooded our little church. The whole experience was brand new for them, but they were touched even to the point of tears. It was a beautiful baptism where she boldly and with tears gave her testimony in front of a group of friends, family, and her church. There are a few pictures below of the baptism (and one of Lizzie at the baptism that was just cute).

Ivana being baptized by Goran.

Worshipping after baptism with a few of my worship team (Juliana, Nerka, James, Ivana)

Cute pic of Lizzie. :-)

Various things

There are various things I've wanted to blog about, but have not had the time lately. I apologize to anyone who checks our blog on a regular basis...I'm sure you've been wondering where we went. So, here's a few updates.

Interview at the Police

Today I had an interview at the police station in connection with us receiving our visa. Just a quick side note, it looks like we'll be receiving a 6 month visa right now. Please continue praying about the law being changed in order for us to stay longer than that. Anyway, this interview was not anything I had done before. After being here over 4 years we now know the routine...go to the police to apply for the visa, gather any missing documents they want, have an interview at your local police station (in your neighborhood), the next week you get a call and go down to pick up your visas. This time they called me, but for an interview that was out of order. I questioned them as to why and they assured me there was no problem and that this was very routine. So, I went downtown today for this interview and it was interesting to say the least. They asked me everything about my life. Who is my mom, my dad, my siblings? What are their jobs, education, do they have kids? Where did I go to elementary school, high school, college? What jobs have I held and for how long? In what cities? How did I decide to come to Croatia? What are the differences between what I believe and what the Catholic Church believes? Specifically! What do I do here in Croatia? Who are the leaders of our church? Do we have a Pope type figure in my faith? When did I decide I wanted to study theology and become a "priest"? Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. It was about an hour total of questions. I was expecting them to turn the lights out at any moment and bring out a hot lamp. It was unusual to say the least...yet I understand them wanting to know who is in their country. Anyhow, that was a very interesting experience today.

Getaway to the Coast

Laura and I were able to get away this weekend for one night to a region in northwestern Croatia called Istria. It's a coastal region that resembles Tuscany...rolling hills with beautiful hill top towns nestled on the top. Most of these towns are frozen in time and are drop-dead gorgeous. Anyway, the Masseys (our teammates) watched the girls for the night and we had a wonderful time.

This is Rovinj, Croatia in the background.

This is Laura in Groznjan, Croatia.

This is sunset looking from Groznjan towards the sea.

This is me at some Roman ruins in Porec, Croatia (I know...I look like Anderson Cooper there, don't I! :-))Typical looking street in Istria. This happens to be in Rovinj, Croatia. Most signs in Istria are both in Italian and Croatian.

Church Update

The church is doing well, but it's a battle right now. We are feeling like it's about to be a season of growth in leadership and in new believers coming to Jesus...yet in the midst of that there is so much battle and difficulty. We have had a few difficulties in terms of raising up of leaders lately. We have some church members who were very regular starting to really drop off in their attendance. There are other various issues going on, but at the same time there are such good things going on too. Our church is meeting in a great little basement space in the city. We are very accessible to people now and we have had many guests visit us. Some of these guests do not yet know Jesus and are being drawn by the Holy Spirit. We're thankful for that! We have a young college student who has started to come. She was converted in a coastal town (Zadar) and has now come to Zagreb for college. We are thankful she has started to connect with us. Because of the sudden growth, we are starting to look for another place we can meet that would meet our needs even more so. We're also trying to really focus on our cell groups and getting those in shape.

I guess that's about all for now. The kids are doing great. Bekah is starting to really talk. Lizzie is getting potty trained. She's well on her way. They're both doing well with the adjustment back to Croatia though it wasn't super smooth at the beginning.

More later. God bless you!