My name is Petar Stankovic, I was born in 1997 in Prokuplje. I am student of the 3rd year of secondary technical school in Prokuplje.
I almost don’t remember period of my life when there was no God, no prayer, no church. Since I was small boy, I visited with my mother church in Prokuplje.
Since then we didn’t have space, place where we were gathering, “church” was in room of our brother Marijan. In that small room there was a lot of people. I didn’t like it much, but in that room there were some children also, so I changed my company soon. I started to visit children’s class. There were children that always had one book with them. They were always looking in that book, I couldn’t understand but I knew it was something important. I found out that was children Bible (it was different than Bible my mother had). Since I just started to read I got from teacher Caca a Bible with pictures. That is my first book which I was looking every day and thought about it. By the time lessons which we had with teacher Caca started to work on me and my life. When I was 9 or 10 years old, I gave my heart to Jesus.
Even when I was small child I was totally aware of what was happening in my family, a lot of different life storms and troubles were bringing more problems in our humble family. Hard material situation just made hard life more hard to live, but words I heard on children’s class from our teacher Caca: “Whenever you have some fear or it is hard for you, just pray to your God wherever you are” it helped me in a lot of moments of my childhood by giving me comfort and encourage. Since I gave my life to Jesus, I knew He will never leave me or left me, just like teacher taught us from Hebrews 13:5, that was promise which I held on strong and believed, during my growing.
Later I became member of youth group. Here we came to God’s word in a much more serious and intensive way. A lot of prayers, house visits, different activities in which I was involved helped me to understand that serving God isn’t just standing on preachers place and be just on one place in church. Then I started to think about how it would be if I help our brother Marijan. Since I knew that our brother Marijan is visiting surrounding villages, I asked him to go to visit with him and to see how it looks. After that visit, I wasn’t same person anymore. My heart started to think how it would be good to be more engaged for God and to help in growing and progressing one of the house groups. God opened eyes of my heart where I saw how much field of God needs workers. Hungry souls for word of God in villages which we were visiting were just one more reason to confirm my decision.
At the beginning of 2014 i started to take responsibility for one house group. It is still fresh thing and slowly going but I strongly believe that God will lead it all on His way. This is one of the first group which we as church started, there is a lot faithful and turned to Jesus which is easier for me.
Since we are long time already in realization of our vision “disciples who make disciples”, in that house group we already have two wonderful brothers which have some responsibilities for that house group. I started to have same principle which I learned from Pastor. He teach us, we teach others. It looks simple but it takes a lot of sacrifice.
I am thankful to God for His grace and love showed to me!
