Hello everyone!

Well, I am now back from
Macedonia, fully over the jet-lag and ready to share all about the trip!  Let me first give a huge thank you to you all for your prayers for me and the team while we were there.  We all felt your support and the Lord was so gracious in answering those prayers.  We had no major problems whatsoever and I fully attribute that to God’s faithfulness and all your prayers!

We left July 16^th in the evening and were treated to a two hour delay sitting on the runway.  This would normally be irritating but I was sitting next to one of my friends so we chatted away and didn’t really notice.  The first leg of the flight to Frankfurt went great and we had enough of a layover in
Frankfurt to catch the train into the city and walk around.  I haven’t been to Frankfurt before and from what I could tell it was a cool city.  I just love the huge half timber buildings in Germany, they are really neat.  The second flight from Frankfurt to Skopje was quite amusing.  We fondly refer to the old 737 that we flew in as the cattle car!  It was packed to the brim with people and more luggage that I would have ever thought possible.  There were putting luggage in the bathrooms as there was no more space anywhere else!  With all the bags I wasn’t sure we would get off the ground but we did and made it safely.  Upon arriving in Skopje we got in two vans and drove the 3 hours to Lake Prespa where the camp was located.  In all it was a long travel day (over 24 hours) but safe and relatively comfortable.  Only 2 bags were lost as well which the missionaries told us was quite good!  (they arrived 2 days later)

At the camp, we ran 2 five day camps that included programs for all ages.  In the first camp, the attendees were mostly believers from house churches in Skopje.  For the most part there folks spoke some English and when communication difficulties arose, the missionaries and 2 other translators could help out.  It was incredible spending time, talking, praying, studying the Bible and fellowshipping with these Macedonian Christians.  Although Macedonia is a religiously free country in law, in practice these Christians are persecuted for their faith by the community and many by their own families.  Many lost homes, jobs and were banished by their own families for following Christ and yet they had such joy despite this.  It was such a testament to the fact that Christ is all we need and that through him we are able to bear all things.  Such an encouragement and a realization as to how lucky we are in the US or UK to be able to worship freely.  The second week, most of the attendees where Albanian refugees from Kosovo and Gypsies.  All of these people had been invited by Christian friends or else are currently in seeker Bible classes run by the missionaries.  Most come from a Muslim background and are very poor and uneducated.  This was quite different from the people in the first week who were mostly middle-class by Macedonian standards.  Almost none of these folks spoke English, many of them didn’t even speak Macedonian which made communication very difficult at times but it all seemed to work out.  However, I found this second group very open and very friendly and genuinely interested in getting to know you and very curious about the Bible and about finding out who Jesus is.  I felt such love from this group, particularly the Albanians and it was so moving as they had nothing else they could have given me.  I made special friends with 3 Albanian men: Orhan, Orfe and Suat.  They always wanted to hang out and involve me in things.  I also had a pack of Albanian teen groupies who claimed me at game time every night!

DAILY ACTIVITIES

In the morning, I would wake up around 7 and spend some time reading and praying then head to breakfast.  Breakfast usually consisted of some type of meat, cheese and enormous quantities of bread.  After breakfast we had about 30-60 minutes to talk with people and hangout before the morning sessions began.  At 10, we started with singing.  The songs were all in Macedonian so we had to learn to read Cyrillic, and the people love to sing and dance.  They had a lot of familiar songs but also so worship songs set to gypsy type music which were really cool.  After that, one of our leaders would give a sermon which myself and 3 others took all the kids for our activities.

Myself, Matt, Dustin and Melissa planned a whole program of VBS style activities for the kids.  Everyday we had a different Bible story which we told through skits and then we had crafts, games and other activities planned.  The kids were so much fun!  Culturally, children are often let off by themselves and adults usually do not give them attention unless it is scolding them.  Due to this, when the kids saw that we were there just for them and would play with them and show them attention, they were so excited!  They were so hungry for affection and after the brief minutes it took for them to get comfortable with me, they were all over me like a cheap suit, 24-7!  It was so much fun seeing their faces light up when you taught games or had a water fights with the older ones and the younger ones were always wanting to be held and would climb up onto my lap whenever I sat down.  They don’t have many material things so they really enjoyed the crafts and especially were amazed by puffy paint!  They would spend hours painting rocks, making t-shirts or coloring.  I feel so blessed to have been working with the kids and being able to show them Christ’s love.  It was awesome!

Anyway, back on schedule. (oh, during the kids time, after the sermon the adults broke off into discussion groups which consisted of men’s, women’s, couples and teens, depending on the day)  One of the other benefits of us taking on the kids was that it allowed parents to be able to attend the groups and grow that way.  After the morning sessions we had lunch (also meat, cheese, bread).  Lunch was a great time to work on building relationships with folks.  I tried to sit with different people everyday at lunch.  If the person spoke fairly good English the conversation would be quite lively covering family, work, their church, what they were learning in the mornings etc.  If they didn’t speak much English the conversation usually consisted of me pointing at an object and saying the English name and then them teaching me the Macedonian name then laughing at me as I tried to pronounce it.  In either case it was fun.  After lunch in the afternoon we had planned varying numbers of activities and also had free time to hang out with people.  Different activities we ran we soccer competitions (Americans got creamed!), tie-dye, carnival games like balloon stomp, water balloon toss, basketball, friendship bracelets and other crafts and activities.  Incidentally, it was fun to see people of all ages participating.  Nothing like seeing a 60 year old grandma doing balloon stomp!

At night, after dinner, everyone would gather for the evening worship service and discussion groups.  After the singing, people would breakdown into men’s, women’s and teens groups and a group with kids.  During this time I was mostly with the teens and had an opportunity to share my testimony with both the teens and the men’s group and then people were given the opportunity to ask questions and discuss it.  All of the other team members also shared their testimonies.  The amazing thing was that although we all had different things that led us to Christ each persons testimony sparked interest and hit home with different people and really help the growth of relationships.  It was exciting to hear the testimonies of Macedonian believers as well.  Although Macedonia is technically religiously free, Christianity is not generally acceptable and many believers there have lost jobs, homes and been kicked out of their families for following Christ.  Despite this, their joy and love of Jesus was such an encouragement and a blessing to see.  Many of the teens were the only believers in their families and were going to church secretly as they would be banished if they were caught.  A few others are fortunate enough to have Christian parents but also face persecution from their peers and they struggle with the normal teenage desire to fit in.  Your prayers for these young believers are greatly needed, specifically for Nicolai, Voyche, Vesna, Ivan, Kire and Metso.  After the discussion groups, everyone would hang out until 12 or 1am playing cards and board games, singing, dancing and talking.  Macedonians are very social and love games and singing!

LESSONS LEARNED

Well, that is the general jist of what I was up to, now I just wanted to share some thoughts for you now that I have had a bit of time to process them.  The Lord really blessed the trip and was so faithful to the team and to the time there.  The answers to prayer were many and I really got to see God’s great faithfulness in action.  The whole team stayed healthy, there were no problems at all with the activities, great relationships were formed, the missionaries and Macedonian believers were encouraged by us…..the list goes on.  I learned a good lesson about prayer while I was there.  I was exhausted the whole trip.  Between getting little sleep (both from staying up with people as well as an unnamed snoring roommate!) and interacting with energetic kids all day, I was physically drained for most of the trip.  This had a real potential to make me cranky and irritable and I didn’t want that attitude or feels to interfere with what I was doing.  I prayed constantly for energy and sleep…the Lord did not answer this prayer!  What he did give me was much better it turned out.  Rather then give me physical rest, he changed my attitude to one of joy in spite of my fatigue.  He strengthened my attitude to be cheerful and loving the entire time and to rely on him for my strength when I was tired.  This was incredible and so much a better answer to prayer then just giving me sleep!  I am so thankful for that lesson!  Another thing that I was so encouraged to see was a great working of the body of Christ.  It was so awesome to be together with believers of several nationalities and languages all coming together to worship and seek the Lord.  I found that even though I didn’t know the Macedonian words to the songs, for example, my heart sang along in unison.  I was reminded of Psalm 133 which speaks of the greatness on brotherly unity in the context of the Jews on the ascent to Jerusalem.  The imagery in this Psalm is beautiful.  It was also awesome to see the Body of Christ working in our team.  God had blessed each of us with different and unique gifts that all fit together perfectly.  It seemed that each person had something that only they could do and it was incredible to see how God had blessed people and also how he had called these specific twelve to work together in so seamless a fashion.  In most of these folks, I have known them for a long time and had no idea of their gifts, indeed some of them didn’t even know themselves.  How exciting to think of our home churches full of believers and each blessed with gifts to build the church, encourage others and spread the Gospel.  How incredible if we can fully utilize our gifts as God intended!

Lastly, it was a personal lesson to me to see Christians who have very little materially, especially the Albanians and Gypsies, and who also are regularly ostracized for their faith and yet live life with such vivacity and joy.  It is a good reminder to me that true joy and peace can only be gained by surrendering your life to Christ.  That is something I so often forget here in
America.

A FEW FUNNY STORIES

On one of the first nights we were there, we were awakened in the middle of the night by yelling and big commotion outside.  Myself and a few others guys went outside to check it out and we saw a yelling group of men dragging a mattress out onto the basketball court.  They then proceeded to stomp on it and beat it with sticks.  Then a few rakes were sought and the mattress was ripped to shreds in front of our eyes!  They totally ripped out all the stuffing and everything….then lit it on fire!  Ha ha!  It was hilarious!  We later learned it was because the wife thought there was a snake in the bed!  Hmmm, burning the mattress seems a logical response!  (incidentally, the snake was never found!)  I spoke earlier about my little posse of Albanian teens, well the first night they were here I was sitting out with them trying to engage them in conversation.  They were all asking question and wanting to talk but there was only one missionary there to translate.  This created a lot of general funny confusion and me answering the wrong questions and creating quite a laugh followed by awkward smiling silence.  I decided to try and play a game with them since that would require little deep conversation.  I tried to find some cards or something but they were all taken so I came across the game “Pass the Pigs” in which you roll two small rubber pigs to get points.  I brought it over and spilled them out on the table which was greeted by a general initial sense of shock and dismay.  The missionary leaned over and whispered to me “They’re Muslim!”  Ooops!  Ha ha!  After the initial shock they started laughing loudly and we played for several hours!  I taught them the word for pigs and from that night, every night they would find me and say “Daveed!  Pig!  Pig!”

A final funny story (there are many but this is already quite long) relates to one of the other guys on the team called Marty.  Marty was giving his testimony in the men’s group when a man called Tashko interrupted him asking “Marteen, how old are you?”  Marty replied “39”  Tashko then asked “Are you married?”  Marty: “No”.  Tasko: “Did it not work out?”  Marty: “No, I’ve never been married.”  Well that caused quite a ruckus!  In their culture, if you are not married by the time your 25 there must be some serious problems with you!  So when the found out that Marty was nearly 40 and not married they decided decisive action was needed.  Goran said, in the middle of Marty’s testimony “I’m sorry Marteen, we must pray about this now!” and they stopped everything and prayed he would find a wife and then announce to him afterwards that he would be married within a year!  Ha ha!

So that’s a rough summary, sorry it is quite long.  I would love to talk more about it so if anyone is interested or has questions, please just let me know!  Also, my photos are getting developed right now.  Once I get them back I will find a way to shared some of them with you.  Thank you again for all your prayers and encouragement, they were a life saver and blessing!  Please also remember the missionaries and Christians in
Macedonia.  It is a part of the world that is dimly light by the Gospel but there are a faithful few who would change this.  Thanks again and God Bless!

Love, David