Greetings to you dear Jim.
First of all I want to ask you about your health. I hope you are much better now. Be assured of our Church prayers. We pray for you, your family and everything we do together for the praise of our Heavenly Father.
We stepped into the month of September courageously and determined to spread the gospel everywhere we go, so at the beginning of the month we organized prayer time of intercession and thanksgiving, praying for certain people and their conversion and giving thanks to God for all answered prayers. Since we were blessed in a special way during this time of prayer I am conveying some of the atmosphere from the meeting:
1. We thank God for hearing and answering our prayers.
More than a year ago we prayed for the ladies who were not able to conceive a child. We prayed for Alen’s wife (LaJuana met Alen during her summer visit. He will be one of those who will attend a seminar we will organize in November. He lives in a village near Nis). He and his wife got a daughter last August, after being married for four years. Young people are especially encouraged with this answered prayer. Then we were giving thanks for all of you, your ministries and visions, for everything you do, your giving and sacrifices to bless us – we pray with honest heart always, but when we pray for you something special is happening inside us. It is probably because we don’t look at you as ones who help us, but as part of our family and because of that we cherish bond of special love toward you. We give thanks for the place where we meet. We thank God for speaking to the owner’s heart to let us knock down the wall to put the stove. We thank for the surrounding villages, house groups, children, lap-top, projector, key-board, chairs, school supplies and many more things. God has decided to pour out His grace upon us, even though we are weak, small and despised in the eyes of men. He made us rejoice by answering our prayers.
Whenever we meet together the Spirit of God leads us not to ask, but to give thanks. We are very happy for this period in our lives and the life of our Church.
The work among children is stabilizing slowly. The problems we had with those who called themselves believers but were not are fading away, but we are still careful. Two children came back to the Church. Because of what has happened we decided not to have a Bible stories with children for a few meetings, but only quiz, competitions – something more relaxed in order to unload them of all what was going on previously.
2. When we met with children for the first time this month, we organized small Olympic games – first part was a quiz on the verses they learned by heart (our goal was to teach them Bible verses so when they face opposition, trying to stop them to come to our Church, they can quote Bible verses to them. Second part of the Olympics were different games led by David, Pera, Niki, Caka (unfortunately we don’t have photos), since we were not present. We promised children to give them rewards at the end of the games, but we were a bit “short” right at the end, but on September 13th our mother told us to buy school supplies, so we managed not to disappoint children. God is good.
During distribution of school supplies a parent (Aki) whose children attend the church also came. Aki was coming to the church with his wife in one period, but then the problems with the opposition started and they stopped coming. We used this opportunity and invited him to help us in distribution of school supplies. He was very glad because we remembered him and joined us in distribution, saying to every child: “May God help you to be good student in school”.
We were very happy because we wanted to use this situation to regain Aki’s friendship and we hope this fellowship will continue to grow. After we finished the distribution, few children prayed and thanked God for what they received and for the people who helped in buying school supplies.
I want to use this opportunity to thank in the name of our church and me personally to everyone who helped in this way. I want to specially thank my dear mother LaJuana who has big heart for God and His people in Prokuplje.
We bought 120 sets of school supplies for children in Žitni Potok and Prokuplje.
Twenty children came on that occasion (few of them did not come because of sickness, but we saved a parcel for each one of them). We gave parcels to eight young people too.
When children left, we stayed with Aki and talked about our ministry and everything we do. Aki said that he noticed our hard work with children and that he was willing to help whenever we need his help. That’s exactly what we wanted to hear and we already think about ways to include him in our activities. This event opened the door toward this man and his wife and maybe we will visit them once a week, but we will also invite them to come to our home. We hope for the best. They attend the church again.
Since new school year started we had to change few things since few young people go to school in the morning and few in the afternoon. Some activities we used to have during summer we now have on weekends. On Saturdays we have a street prayer, sometimes also we go for a visit, children’s class and a youth meeting. Milos and Remzija started to attend high school. It means we have two more young people who will share gospel in high school. Milos used the opportunity in the very first week of school, when the pupils introduced themselves, to share who he is and what he believes. Few days after that he had a long conversation with his Serbian teacher. Milos became very interested in church history and Protestantism. He inspired other young people to be interested in that too. They discussed especially about Edict of Milan. Few young people in the school started to attend religious education in order to find out more about that. They are heroes of faith who have great desire to know God more. Niki was given a task for his homework to prepare a Bible lecture and to share it with his class in 15 minutes. He used the opportunity and talked on Romans 3:23 and John 3:16.
As for the young people, now we have nine high school students and three who go to primary school. There are four high schools in Prokuplje and in each one of them we have young people from our church. This is very important thing. Each one of them has a passion to share the gospel. Their faith is not formal, but living faith which can be seen in practice. They are not only hearers, but doers of what they believe and evangelists who share the Word with others.
I pray and believe that we are the generation who will influence Roma people and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit we will raise awareness of Roma people to understand that the life with the Lord is the way of change and success. We do our best to share the gospel with people. Sometimes we do that by words, but more often by our life and our deeds. Since we know that life is stronger witness then words, we do our best to live quite, holy and dedicated life. It is not always easy, but God’s Word encourages us that everything is possible with Chris who strengthens us. This is our motto and our light in difficult times.
3. In mid-month Caca and I attended three days Mission conference which was held in HUB (seminary in Belgrade). We were very much encouraged with lectures and fellowship we enjoyed during that time.
4. Pastor Erman from Belgrade invited me to preach in his church. Since we don’t have opportunity to meet together more often, we enjoyed this time in good fellowship and long conversation.
While we were in Belgrade, Caka – Niki’s sister – was responsible for Sunday school for children. David was responsible to lead Sunday service. We are very excited about this because there are people who can take responsibility for the church without me being present. We thank God for these young people.
5. In the second half of the month we had visitors in our church (Paul and Ann) who came with our dear brother Rodja. We prepared our choir for the occasion and sang few songs and recited Psalms. Our guests gave a lecture in the City hall in Prokuplje. Head of the city was present too (he was with us for a lunch when the team visited Prokuplje). After the lecture, the mayor invited us for lunch with him. During lunch we talked about many things, but mostly about cooperation between Roma Church and linking partners. We were very encouraged. We believe that God is preparing good things in Prokuplje.
We also organized two meetings with young people in the Church. Paul was talking about Saul and David and Ann was talking about man being as iceberg. Both themes were compatible and we understood very well what was said.
As for the Church, things are happening slowly. We have more people attending our meetings, few new people are coming on regular basis, some promised to come… we do our part of the work and trust our Heavenly Father to work everything for good.
As for our family, we all are well, thank God. The school year has started, our children are growing and are good students. They also started music school. Andrija plays piano and Phillip play guitar. We are happy because of that even though it is another responsibility for us. We believe that in the future our church will have two more musicians.
We are looking forward to seeing you.
Your family from Prokuplje
Marijan and Slavica
Roma children in Zitni Potok receive school supplies, with their teachers looking on.