8:30 came quickly this morning, as most of us seem to have gotten about three to six hours of sleep. But God will see us through the day. Breakfast was a choice of Muesli, ham and eggs, cereal and some other delicious breakfast entrée. I personally like the super protein breakfast of ham and eggs. Of course no breakfast is complete without a great cup of Serbian coffee. The Serbian coffee is also the same as Turkish coffee. The Ottoman Empire ruled for four hundred years over this part of the world and one the best things that they left behind was Turkish coffee.
After breakfast, we hopped onboard Air-Serbia (Saša’s van) and flew further down South to the town of Vrbas, where our first stop was a hardware store. Sasha had to pick up some caulk to seal the roof of a travel trailer located behind a house in town. We quickly headed in town to the Red Cross organization. Our contact at the Red Cross is Slobodan Gajic and he is a super guy. He’s young, smart, speaks several languages including English and he’s a leader.
Slobodan gathered us all in a room that was long and narrow in a very old government building. When I first entered the room I thought we were going to have Alcoholics Anonymous therapy session instead of an information meeting. We were seated in a semi circle introducing ourselves. Slobodan saw the same picture and he jokingly stated his name and said he was an alcoholic. Everyone busted out laughing….
After the introductions, Slobodan asked for us to explain what we do or were doing in Serbia. LaJuana spoke up and briefly told the Red Cross personnel our mission and what we had done in Serbia.
After LaJuana’s brief explanation of Linking Partners, Slobodan informed us of the activities of the Red Cross in this area of Serbia. He stated that the Red Cross taught the students in school about human trafficking and how to avoid being a victim of this crime. Also, the Red Cross teaches first aid and some birth control measures to the school children.
Upon completion of our meeting, we received a grand tour of the facilities. It was an old government building that they shared with several other government agencies. One room was their storage room, which was piled all the way up to the ceiling with miscellaneous stuff that was collected for the flood victims. There appeared to mountains of clothing and other assorted household items.
We were getting ready fly again when several members of the team stated the need to exchange US dollars to dinars. So we hiked off to the middle of downtown Vrbas to find a money-changer or an ATM. While wandering through this town like a group of lost wanderers, we discovered some non-Orthodox CHURCHES!
There were three protestant churches in a row. We had the Methodist, Reformed and Lutheran church right together on one of the main streets. The Reformed church was open while some Dutch people were working on the interior of the church trying to restore it. We were able to go inside and poke around. The pastor of the church, Laslo Harangozo was there and very nice to explain many things about the building. Something unusual about the building were some triangle markings that seem to indicate that the building was built by some “Free Masons”.
This church also had a large pump operated pipe organ in the back balcony of the church. Saša pumped on the organ and Teodora played it. It was beautiful and very loud. After our impromptu church visit; it was off to visit the hospital.
The hospital administrator came and greeted us in foyer of the hospital. It was fairly warm inside so it was decided to go outside and talk about the equipment needs. It was a little strange to me that we went to a bench under a tree by the hospital front drive to discuss some very vital equipment needed by this hospital – but this Serbia.
We were there to just get some specific information about some of the equipment on the list and Ed was the man to ask the questions. The administrator really didn’t know what Ed was asking, so she called in reinforcements (a doctor) to answer Ed’s question. The doctor was there in a few minutes, the questions were answered and we were on our way to fix a roof (remember that stuff we picked up earlier.)
So, Sasha took us to this house where he gotten a travel trailer for the family to live in and it needed a little repair work on the roof. Sasha said it would have cost 300 Euros to fix this and we (Caitlin) did the job for the cost of the caulk and caulk gun.
Lunch was next on the agenda and we ate in the “Red” room of a city restaurant (red room must have been an old Communist eating place). We had Schinchel and it was fantastic.
When we got to Saša’s church, he busily got the swimming pool blown up and filled with water for the baptism this evening. During the service three ladies were baptized and then Saša did something really neat. After all the ladies had dry clothes, he brought them up front and the other pastor and him got into a circle and prayed for these new believers. I feel many times we sort of throw our new believers out to the wolves and this prayer for them I think is a good way to start them off as new Christians. The baptism was followed by communion which is always great and the service ended.
Quickly after the service we moved some chairs into the kitchen and circled many of them in the sanctuary. The women had a women’s class taught by Bethany Oswalt in the sanctuary and the leaders went into the kitchen for Multiply classes. We had 18 people in the kitchen with the door closed and it was HOT! But through the heat God blessed us with two good classes on Multiply. The women had 26 in their class and it was blessed also.
Since we had three groups going at once we needed three translators. Rodja was in the kitchen for Multiply, Natasha was in the women’s class and Teodora (11 years old) was doing the children’s time with Marabeth outside.
Now – back on Air Serbia and flying back to our hotel in Temerin, Serbia. Well, we more or less glided this time instead of flying… We had a delicious meal as always and another day working for Jesus in Serbia came to an end. We seem to have done lots of little tasks today and it busy. But I believe we strengthened some relationships in and around Vrbas.
Please pray for Sasha for he has lots of work everyday with not much rest and pray for us as we go forward with another exciting day working for God. We’re going to Belgrade tomorrow.
