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!

Great pics of the girls

Dear friends,

Check out the blog/website below. It's the blog of a friend of ours who is a very talented amateur photographer. She took pictures of the girls before we left the States and we're so pleased! You'll enjoy them as well.

http://www.darsey03.blogspot.com/

Let me know if you'd ever like to use her as a photographer. She's very talented and one of our dear friends. She's located in Ft. Worth.

Blessings!

james

Great Friends and Croatian Independance Day

Today was Croatian Independance Day. We too took some time off (along with the rest of Croatia) and celebrated with some friends. This morning we went to a park with some fellow missionaries here. We have similarly aged children. Our kids loved playing together (along with a ton of other Croatian children and their parents or grandparents due to the holiday) at the park and then we went on to McDonald's for lunch and more playground fun. The kids wore themselves our thoroughly and we took them home for an afternoon nap.

While we were at the park, our friends Ivan and Juliana (they help me with worship leading and are a part of the worship team) called us with a "desperate need" to go to this restaurant in nearby Samobor and have their stinging nettle soup and steak with gorgonzola (sp?) cheese sauce. (Yes, I said stinging nettle soup. It's AWESOME!) We told them that our kids in a restaurant isn't exactly easy, but what if we got it to go and went to a park. So that's what we did. We picked up our food and went down to the creek in Samobor near the center of town, found a large park bench carved out of a tree trunk, threw a mat down on the ground, opened a bottle of wine and enjoyed talking and laughing, eating and drinking, and letting the kids play in the freshly fallen autumn leaves. If it sounds poetic, it's cuz it was. We had a blast. Then we went on from there to the center of town (a short walk) to a cafe where they've been serving "krem snita" (Samobor's famous desert) for hundreds of years. We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant with full stomachs and full hearts. God showed up in our conversations and that only continued as we took them home.

We're thankful for how God has given us great friends here. We have such amazing friends back in the States that we wondered if it was possible for God to match them here. He's blown our expectations out of the water.