The last working day of the trip arrived too soon! Sasa picked us up at 9:30 and quickly deposited us to his home church where 16 kids were waiting for us. Janice told the children the story of the fall of man and brought it home with Jesus came to save us all. Ed helped by doing the large pictures that we brought from FBCS. After the Bible we sang Several songs like “Jesus Loves Me”, “Deep Deep Down In My Heart”, “God is So Good”, and then we san some of there songs in Serbian. The kids love to sing songs. We finished our songs with a fun song, “Hokey-Pokey” which reinforces the English language class when we taught them body parts and “left” and “right”.
After Bible study and songs we played games with them. We used the parachute games and the bean bag toss games in two groups and then we rotated each group. We followed up with some games with a soccer ball. It doesn’t seem to take much for the children to have a good time. They may not have much money or “stuff” but they are very happy with many of the simple things in life.
After games, we gave out little gifts for each child, provided by our friend Judy Coleman. We had bracelets for the girls and Matchbox-type cars for the boys.
We were also able to give a baby blanket & cap gift to one of the babies in the home church, thanks to Sabra Jennings and her “blanket ladies.” We also talked about the possibility of providing cloth diapers for the babies, after last year seeing mothers in the Chinese store buying one disposable diaper at a time. Bethany Oswalt sent a couple of baby Charlotte’s diapers to see if they would be used in Serbia. You should have seen the smile on the grandmother who took the two sample ones to use with her granddaughter. It will definitely be on our list next year.
After the games, Ed and I saw Uncle was beginning to water the plants in the green houses so we decided to check it out… He primed the pump and then he connected to the irrigation system of hoses that Sasa got from the dump. We could hear the water going into the hoses but we couldn’t see it because their system waters the bottom of the plants and it had black vis-queen over it to keep it from evaporating. It looked like a good system and the plants seem to like it. Then we wander all around the green houses looking at all of the various plants. In one little area of the green house, we saw herbs and a few flower plants. All in all, the green houses looked really good…
Around 11:30, we headed Southwest toward the city/village of Kulpin. On the way, we made a cultual stop at this castle/estate in Baki Petrovaci. The main house was a very large four column structure build on a Greek architecture style around 150 years ago. It was very well worn and the Serbian government does not the ve the money to fix much on the property. Our tour guide was very nice to the Americans who speak no Serbian. She guided us though the house telling us about all of the different furnishings in the house and Slovodan would translate the info into English for us. All of the furniture was from different families that had owned the house. Of course the house had transferred to different owners throughout it’s wonderful lifetime. At one time, the NAZIS owned it (I think). Currently it is owned by the local Serbian government. The grounds around the house are a city park with trees donated from different countries from around the world.
There several other buildings on the grounds and they were being used to house agricultural mesuem equipment and other historical information about the agriculture in Serbia. We saw tractors, plows and many other farm implements. One building was three stories and had all kinds of information about crops and livestock.
The people who ran the estate and museum we all preparing for a grand opening of the two museum buildings that we got to gro through before anyone else. One man who appeared to be in charge, spoke english and ask us where we were from in the US. Of course, none of them have heard of Arkansas but that’s OK. He ask Mirko if he wanted to play (his guitar) tomorrow for the grand opening but Mirko declined. (he said they couldn’t afford him).He was very nice and wished well on our trip.
Since we had eaten a late breakfast, we decided to only eat a lite snack to hold us over till super at the end of the day. So we went to a small hamburger joint called “The Pink Panter” (Yep, that’s how they spelled it.) I believe everyone had some kind of hamburger and the hamburger was just right thing to eat and the right amount food.
Now is was time to go to one of Mirko’s home churches in Kulpin. These people were super nice (as always) and we had a real good service. Mirko and the leader of the house church did the music and songs followed by Ed giving the introduction to us and brief info about Linking Partners. After Ed’s introduction, Chuck Chuck gave his testimony. Then we followed with a few more songs. The people seemed very attentive and they all spoke to us and were very nice.
After saying many warm good byes, we headed to a house church in the village of Ruski Krstur. This house was very small and had no windows or electricity. (well, it had electricity only certain times of the night) Since it was so small, it was decided to move outside to the back yard. The sun had gone down and it was cool outside. The back yard was a good decision. With 11 adults and 2 kids we started with music, then prayer and then the intro from Ed. The introduction was follow by my testimony and Janice read and talked about some scriptures and went through the “Roman Road” verses. As Janice began, all the adults picked up Bibles and diligently looked up the verses. The Bibles were given to them by Sasa, and were the first Bibles they have ever owned. Sasa stated that all the people in attendance were believers already.
Once we left this house, we took Mirko’s mother-in-law home along with two other folks. We ended up back at our hotel around 9:15. Waiting for us to eat with us was Slobodan’s mother and younger brother, Miljan. We had invited them to eat with us at the first of the week and they were finally able to be with us. Slovodan’s brother, Miljan had just finished school for the year. We ate another hearty Serbian meal and trudged up the stairs for a small meeting with Sasa and to Skype with Mr. Greene. When it was all said and done for the evening, it was once again after midnight. So as the lights went out room by room, we had finished another day and were almost done for another trip. It went by so fast….
