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.