Easter Sunday at Transforma

Normally we meet in the city in a gray, blah building back behind a few night clubs and gambling facilities near the center of Zagreb. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for our building and all that it offers for us. Today, however, we planned a special service at 11am (in place of 5pm) for Easter out at Roger and Erin Massey's place in the village. The weather was 75 F and sunny...the grass was hyper-green, the flowers were in full bloom, the birds sang a prettier song, and the wind was blowing the other way (so that we didn't smell the chicken poop at the chicken farm next door :-). It was a gorgeous day! To top it off, the Lord gave me a new song yesterday in celebration of Easter and we all really enjoyed worshiping with it today. After our service at 11am, we had a big Easter feast complete with ham, chicken, green onions and radishes (Croatian tradition), and tons of salads to choose from. Then came the deserts...oh the deserts. Lots of guests came today as well...people with broken lives looking for freedom and healing. We think they found good company with us as we shared our stories with them and they saw that God can take a broken life and restore it. Overall, it was an excellent day and we thank God!

Leading worship (left to right: Maja, Juliana, James, Ivan)

Uncle Roger showing the girls his new spring chicks.

This morning the girls woke up to Easter baskets on the table. Happiness abounded.

West Zagreb Cell Group

I thought it'd be interesting for you to see a picture of our cell group. We took this picture 2 weeks ago and have a number of people missing from this. Here's the group from left to right: James, Laura, Ivan, Sanja (Ivan's mom), Addie, Roger, Lizzie, Ian, Erin, Bekah, Nerka, and Juliana. Roger and Erin are our cell leaders. Nerka is our intern (meaning she will take the next cell when one multiplies off of this one). Her husband is an awesome man, full of God, but is not able to come very often due to work and masters studies. There are missing from this picture Dalia, Robi, Danko (Sanja's husband), Jaksa (Nerka's husband), and Dzevad (Nerka's brother). Praise God for our little group! We are getting stronger and more mature. We're learning how to love one another and how to be community for one another. We have intimate times of worship together and we have a genuine desire for our friends to know Jesus. It has all the makings for a great group. Please continue to pray for this group. Specifically, you can pray for:

• Nerka, our intern, to learn how to be a successful cell group leader.
  
• For the friends that we're reaching out to to come to know Jesus.
• For deeper community and love for one another.
  

Thanks! We cherish your prayers.

Berlin Trip - Cell Church Conference

Our group standing with our speaker Joel Comiskey at the end of the conference. We really bonded with him and appreciate all he did to help us. (Left to right: Roger, Joel, James, Damir, Andrej, Goran)

Joel speaking to us. Our group is seen up in the front couple of rows.

Here we are in our modest little apartment we rented in Berlin enjoying our muesli and coffee breakfast.

Here we are processing some of the things Joel had just finished speaking about and discovering how we can apply this in our church.

Andrej standing in front of one of the only pieces of the Berlin Wall left

Self portrait in front of Brandenburg Gate - this was the old Prussian entrance to the city.

Andrej and Roger in front of Brandenburg Gate

Self portrait of Andrej and Roger on the bus on our one sight-seeing day

Andrej in the U-bahn station. We took Berlin's extensive public transport system everywhere.

Update:

So, I wanted to give you all an update from our 5 days in Berlin for the cell church conference. I want to thank many of you for praying for us! The weekend was a total success. In every way our goals were met. We thank God for this.

I'll start with how Laura and the girls did while we were gone. They were...alright. Not great. But alright. They had a bout with head lice (kids share everything...another kid came over and played...that child happen to have lice...and the madness began). This caused a good bit of extra work (laundry, hair combing, etc.) that made things difficult. Other than that, my wife is an incredible trooper and continued to keep the vision in front of her of what this trip meant to the church.

As for the trip, we had a few hiccups, but in the end everything turned out just fine. For example, Tuesday night at our worship practice (the night before we were leaving) Damir happened to look at his passport and he discovered it had expired a week before. The next morning he went straight down to the downtown police station to get an expedited passport. He actually did receive his passport in record time...but it was still too late. He was about 10 minutes too late to the airport. We were so sad to not have him with us, but he did reschedule his flight (for a small fee of 180 euros...if anyone wants to give to that cause) to Friday. In this way he and Goran (our pastor) could travel together.

The first day we met with a missionary from Antioch Community Church who has successfully planted a youth church in Berlin and is now on another team from Antioch reaching out to students and young professionals. We really reaped from his experience. This was especially helpful to Andrej who is planning to plant a youth church in Maribor, Slovenia. Their connect will be priceless in the future as Andrej and Nina have more questions.

The second day, Andrej, Roger, and I were able to look around the city a bit. In just one day we were able to see the majority of this huge city. We were fascinated with the history of this town. We're thankful for a restful day of sight-seeing.

The third through fifth day we spent in the cell conference. We had a beautiful connect with Joel Comiskey as well as the host church Berlin International Church and their pastor Steve Mack. This on top of great teaching made the conference a real joy. Our primary goal was to see Goran, Damir, and Andrej receive a huge download of vision and encouragement about what the future could hold. This goal was met with full success! At the end of the seminar and in the days following we were able to immediately apply some of the things we heard as well as ask some great questions about the future.

Again, I want to thank those of you who prayed for our trip and for the girls back in Zagreb. We were so thrilled at how well the trip went and look forward to seeing more good results from this time.

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.