Oct. 2nd Montenegro

In the morning, Jovica took us to their church that was remodeled from an existing house and an adjoining garage. After flooding and other issues at the original place they were using as a church meeting hall, he gathered a sacrificial amount  of money as down payment from his members and was given three months by the owner of the new property to come  up with the remainder. A man from Germany who heard about their ministry came and asked how much more he needed and Jovica told him the sum outstanding. The man called his church board back home and was told they were looking to donate that exact amount to an evangelical Pentecostal ministry in Montenegro. Miracle!

At 11 we then took a 45-minute bus ride to the city of Niksic where we met Stan and Vicky, a Serb from California who has a heart for the Montenegran people. Montenegro has an extremely small evangelical Christian community of about a 100 people. Folks in the former Yugoslavia have many economic challenges and are very creative in their solutions. Stan found a curly maple that grows in the local forests and was used on the original Stradivarius violins. They rough cut and outline the wood stock and then sell to European dealers of fine instruments. His team also helps people cut and split firewood, since that’s much cheaper than using electrical heating.

Another interesting tidbit we learned was that Stan’s team does adventure trips through the rivers and mountain gorges of Montenegro and could use teams from the states to help with English speaking tourists from around the world while doing missions. We’ll have more info on all their projects and opportunities in the near future.

After lunch we went for an invigorating walk through town with the local youth ministry leader, Daniel who is part of Samuil Petrovksi’s EUS ministry in Belgrade. We learned all about the current spiritual and political climate in the Balkans and the many challenges their ministries face when engaging people in discussions about improvements in this life and thoughts about the afterlife.

Now we’re packing, settling up and getting ready to meet a friend in Belgrade for dinner and then fly home in the morning. Please pray for Janet and Dale as they continue to Bosnia to meet their missionary friend and encourage him in the work there.

Friday, October 1st

Today was our first full day in Montenegro, in the city of Podgorica. One of the few days we have had that the sun was shining, at least for most of the day. We arranged to meet with a missionary couple (Jovica & Savka) here that were referred to us from our missionary friends Greg & Jelena, who we spent time with at the beginning of our trip in the smaller village of Sombor.

Jovica & Savka met us at our hotel and then we followed them in a taxi to a restaurant not far away where we had the place almost to ourselves and spent a few hours learning about their work here in Montenegro. They have lived here for 11 years and in all of the former Yugoslavia... this part of the world seems extremely difficult to break in to. They do have a small church here, that meets twice a week and were very receptive to having future teams come to help them here with evangelism, reaching out to the youth maybe even through teaching English classes, etc. They shared some heart breaking stories, similar to those we heard in the beginning of our trip of refugees here that can't get work because they don't have papers here and are not welcomed in their former countries (of former Yugoslavia) either... such dire needs, but some still have that sense of pride that even though they may be starving, they don't want to accept humanitarian aid.

Jovica was sharing a story with us of when they first came here 11 years ago and rented a small place that the neighbors were welcoming to their family until they put up a small sign to let the neighborhood know that church would be held in their garage... once the sign went up, those same neighbors started throwing rocks at their 2 young boys as they would walk home from school. It wasn't until Jovica was able to include that family in a food distribution of humantarian aid that an organization in Switzerland had sent down to the area
did the people's hearts begin to soften a bit... and they now call their church, "the church that helps".

Jovica and Savka shared what an encouragement it was to them to have teams come down to help in the mission field, even short term missions and he was thankful that we explained we came to serve them and did not want to be a burden to them in any way. So often, people will come down expecting to be housed at members houses not understanding that sometimes it is only the kids who are christians and their parents might not understanding why they are having to spend money to feed guests when their own family can barely survive.

Tomorrow we will meet Jovica again at his church so he can show it to us, and then we will take a city bus about 45 minutes away to meet the two other leaders of evangelical churches in the country... there are just the 3 teams working here in the whole country of Montenegro so they really need prayer.

Thursday, Sept 30th 2010

We are so thankful for another safe day of travel. Today, we checked out of our hotel in the huge city of Belgrade and were able to return our car with a partial refund for the unused days since we decided to fly south to Podgorica, Montenegro instead of driving the 10 hour drive on windy roads thru the steep mountains.  We ended up waiting in the lobby of our hotel for almost an hour waiting for our rental car guy to come pick up the car and where we were sitting was kind of a library setting, so we left a “What on Earth Am I Here For” booklet in the library in case an English speaker happen to see it. We had a very nice taxi driver we were able to get into conversation with about what our purpose was in town.

So now we have arrived at our small hotel in Podgorica. Lord willing tomorrow we will make contact with a missionary family that lives near by that has a small church in town and we might have another contact to make a connection with as a referral from someone we met in Belgrade last night.

Please pray for continued health as my (Julie’s) cold is now in my head and I have totally lost my voice and for Janet as she suffered from shingles about 5 weeks before our trip and a small patch came back last night that is really itchy.

Another prayer request is for a friend we met yesterday in Belgrade who just graduated from a university in Belgrade with a degree in Orthodox theology… but his heart is evangelical and he wrote a paper on how the protestants and orthodox need to build a bridge to work together. He is praying to be accepted to do his masters degree in the USA, either at Yale school of divinity or at a college in Seattle depending on where he can be accepted and then he will return to Serbia to continue the bridge building between the Protestants and the Orthodox here.

Wednesday, Sept 29th

We are thankful today is over... but in a good way! Today was the day of our "big presentation" in Belgrade to many of the protestant church leaders that our contact Samuil Petrovski arranged for us. A lovely couple (Jinah & Lars) opened their home to us and about 20 other leaders of various churches / ministries in the Belgrade area who graciously sat thru our 1 hour "healthy church / purpose driven journey" presentation. Thankfully, this time our presentation was in English since 99% of those in attendance could understand it. They also put it on video for the pastors that could not be there in case they wanted to see it.

We are so thankful to God for protecting us and opening all the doors we needed for so many to be able to turn out and to give us the words we were trying to share. Yesterday I (julie) started to not feel so great and by today my voice was very hoarse that it was really hard to hear me... but I didn't lose it completely and I do have a big mouth... so, the show went on as we had practiced aside from a few technical difficulties that with the Lord's help we were able to overcome.

Tomorrow afternoon we will be heading south to Montenegro for the next leg of our trip... please pray that we will be able to find the airport with our rental car as it is incredibly difficult to navigate in this city and the drivers are crazy! We originally were going to make the 10 hour drive but have since been talked out of it as the drive can be quite dangerous over mountain windy roads / cliffs... no now we are going to fly there.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers... it is such a blessing to us to know that we have your support.

Tuesday, Sept 28th

Oh my... words do not express the chaos of trying to drive in Belgrade... this is one of those cities a visitor should never try to drive in, even if they speak the language fluently.

We left Sombor this morning saying farewell to our host there, ready to make the drive back to Belgrade during the day time since we arrived it was very late and raining and difficult to see the few signs that were posted. We did much better in the beginning quite happy with the progress we had made until we reached the city limits of Belgrade... GPS was of zero value, for some reason all the street names we entered were not listed in it so we got instructions on the cell phone from our contact that was to meet us at our hotel at 1pm... needless to say we were totally lost going round and round for hours not finding any street signs to help... we prayed that the Lord would give us the wisdom needed to find this place... Dale had the idea to have a taxi lead us there so we flagged one down and were there within 5 minutes. So many little streets, all unmarked of course, turning left and right... ah, just happy we made it!

Our gracious hosts, Neboysa & Gordonna (who had waited for us for 2 hours), lead the way as we walked 15 minutes to the restaurant where we could take them to a very late lunch and get to know each other and learn about their ministry. The evangelicals in Serbia all know each other, and we learned that they were invited to be at the presentation we will be making tomorrow night through another contact we had received from Saddleback.

After lunch we walked back to our hotel totally exhausted after the stressful drive... and almost no sleep as all of us but Rod were seriously impacted by the large amounts of turkish coffee that the locals drink around here none stop. Yesterday, as we would visit different people, each would offer us a a small coffee... and they don't have a clue what "decaf" is here... needless to say, when it was time to go to sleep at 11pm, Dale, Janet and I were wide awake until 2-3am... lesson learned, only drink that coffee in the morning!

Tomorrow (Wed) we will meet with the leader of one of the largest evangelical churches in Belgrade... his congregation has a lot of young people and he has arranged for us to present to the board members of his church and a few other pastors of smaller churches in the area at a house so we would ask for prayer that the Lord would give us the right words to say and to calm our jiters for speaking to people we don't know.

We also decided not to drive the 10 hour trip south on Thursday after talking to several people that scared us off of the windy mountain roads that are quite dangerous in Montenegro. At first we thought we might take a train but now we have talked to several locals who say they have heard nothing but horror stories of that train ride and it takes much longer than driving and that the buses are not much better... so, pray the Lord gives us wisdom on whether to pay the high $$ for a flight or go back to our original plan of driving.

Monday, September 27, 2010

We had left today unscheduled to see what plans the Lord would have for our team, and what do you know... it completely filled up! We were so thankful to the missionaries we visited here, Greg & Jelena, who met us for a couple hours in the morning to show us around their quaint village... when you say "village" it sounds small and when you are here, it really does seem small but there are about 60,000 people here and it seemed we coudn't walk 5 minutes without running in to someone that stopped to say hello because they knew Greg and Jelena from their outreach to the community even though their church has about 75 people.  Greg took us on one of his humanitarian aid visits to a wonderful Serbian refugee family that we got to meet... it was indescribable the servant's heart of this man who himself was not well, but is caring for his wife and child who are sick... from the moment we got there he couldn't stop serving us to the point where we felt uncomfortable, when Rod communicated this to the man in Serbian, he responded, "my wife is sick and it would be a sin for me not to welcome you in my home by serving you"... Greg told us that was the culture, so hospitable, it would be an insult not to let him to serve us.

From there we went to the assistant pastor's home where his wife had cooked an amazing goulash dinner for us. We were really blessed by this couple (Zoli & Tanya) getting to know them and their background and how the Lord has lead them to the exact spot that He wants them to be, which several years ago would have been the last place in this country they would have wanted to go. They also have servant's hearts and are so involved leading the youth and women's ministries.

Then we went back to Greg & Jelena's house for a couple hours more of sharing with each other and learning about their work here in Serbia and their love for the people here. You can really see a purpose driven church in action here with evangelism, reaching out the the community, serving in the congregation, sound bible teaching all wrapped together in worshipping our amazing God!

Tomorrow we hit the road for our 3 hour drive back to Belgrade for a few days... pray for traveling mercies and that the Lord would direct us to find the places we need to be since it is incredibly difficult to navigate the streets / traffic of Belgrade.

Greetings from Serbia!

It's almost midnight and we just got back into our room! Thankfully we did pretty well sleeping our first night since we kept ourselves up til midnight local time and only woke up once during the night so we feel like we got a jump start on our jet lag. We had a wonderful breakfast in our cute little hotel but then had to get out for a walk in the fresh air since Rod and Julie were not feeling so well... thankfully that passed and our team came back for a short review of our presentation before our host (Greg) came to pick us up in the early afternoon. Greg brought us to his house where his wife (Jelena) had made an incredible lunch for us of rabbit stew, shephard's pie and tiramisu... yum! Can you tell we are going to come home a few pounds heavier!

Their church services here are in the evenings since Sunday is a big day to spend with your family so we gathered around 6pm for worship and then our team gave a compressed 1 hour presentation on Saddleback's Purpose Driven Journey as the evening service. Rod was able to do his part in Serbian, and we were so thankful to have Jelena translate for the rest of us. After church we were able to meet and spend some time getting to know people... it was so encouraging to see how this church reaches out to the youth... they were so thankful the Lord had brought them a group of young people as the result of an English Christian Camp that was held a few weeks ago in a city not far away... these teenagers are on fire for the Lord and anxious to get connected with the church to how they can serve and be part of the family of God.

Well, that's it for Sunday's update... Lord willing we'll blog again tomorrow.

We made it to Belgrade

We are so thankful to have arrived safely in Belgrade, Serbia.

Our flight from Orange County was an hour late taking off... too much weight onboard so they offered 400 for 9 people to get off for a later flight. Thankfully they made up time so we could make our connection in Minneapolis. Eight hours later we were in Amsterdam for our connection to Belgrade.

We were met by our rental car guy who brought our car to us and also a wonderful man named Dane who is the publisher of Purpose Driven Life in Serbian. He had driven all the way thru the crazy streets of Belgrade so we could follow him back to see the almost finished construction of the church they meet at. Then he took us to his house to meet his wife, Melita, who had made us a wonderful snack! He also gave a tour of his publishing offices upstairs from his flat where he had a variety of evangelical books in Serbian.

As I type this blog on Rod's blackberry we are driving 3 hours north to where we are presenting tomorrow night. We are so thankful for Dale's friend Richard who swapped his GPS that works in Europe, well it works 60 percent of the time but enough to get us in the right direction.

We hope to arrive by 10pm local time and will surely crash after being up 31 hours.

Keep the prayers coming. We are so thankful for each one of you.

Julie
Rod Jevremov - Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Our mission...

Dear Family & Friends,

In just over a week from now we will be leaving for a short mission trip to the countries of Serbia and Montenegro in Eastern Europe. We are really getting excited and wanted to ask you to keep our small team of four in prayer during this time. We leave on Friday, September 24^th and return home on Monday, October 4^th.

Our church (Saddleback) organizes their mission teams by region of the world and we are part of a small group there that is focused on spreading the gospel to Europe, most of which has less than 2% of their population as evangelical Christians! For the past couple years our regional teams have been working toward recruiting regular members (not professional missionaries) to go to each nation promoting the P.E.A.C.E. Plan and Serbia & Montenegro are the last two countries on the Saddleback Church list for Europe – to make an initial contact and then hopefully follow up with future teams.  Since Rod speaks the language fluently we were happy to step out in faith hoping the Lord would direct us to where He wants us to go and who He wants us to meet.

The P.E.A.C.E. acronym stands for:

            P          Promote reconciliation

            E          Equip “Servant Leaders”

            A         Assist the poor

            C         Care for the sick

            E          Educate the next generation

Lord willing, we will be meeting with a few groups in Sombor, Belgrade, and Podgorica during the week that we are there. We are so thankful to Katarina, Vesna & Aleksandra for helping us translate our presentation into Serbian so the Lord can use it to work in the hearts of those who hear it to reach out to others in their community to fulfill the great commandment and the great commission.