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.