How Great Was That!

(a note from Glen)

Serbia Team Report: Wednesday, May 29, 2013  

I went for a five mile run before breakfast this morning.  I’ve had a cold the last several days, but today I felt great.  The weather was perfect.  Wooded hills, mountains in the distance, wild flowers, little gardens, small fields with crops of corn or wheat, quaint farms with dogs and pigs and turkeys and goats…it was all beautiful.  At the beginning of the run I meet a young boy on his bike with his dog heading to catch the bus to school.  I had met him yesterday and talked with him briefly and found out that he spoke some English.  Today he greeted me with a clear “Good morning.”   About 2.5 miles into my run the tiny country road I was running on again met up with the main road.  That same boy was on the bus which was stopped to pick up more passengers.  He saw me and gave me a big smile and a wave.  How great was that!

But even as I rejoiced in the beauty around me and the wonderful people we have met, I remembered that on the spiritual level this land is extremely dark.  In Mt. Lake we have 9 churches.  Our church alone has about 400 people.  Here the only evangelical church in the town near here has six people and the pastor’s family.  The population of the town is about 50,000.

Evangelicals here are considered a cult and are strongly suppressed by the established church which tells people they get to heaven by infant baptism.

The camp we are helping to build is a little candle of light in a dark world.  Young people come to hear the Gospel.  Adults gather for encouragement and instruction in the Word.

This morning we spent some time in town experiencing the culture of the town market.  In many ways the people, especially the younger people who had been influenced by the West, look like us.  They are friendly even though we don’t know their language and most of them speak little or no English.  But so very few of them know Jesus.

The work at the camp that was planned for us to do, and more,  is nearly completed.  This afternoon we finished the last of the concrete work that we will do.  Tomorrow we will do general clean up and organizing to help them get ready for another work team that is coming and for the campers.  The camp leaders have told us they are very happy with our work.  They appreciate that everyone on the team works hard and enters into the work with enthusiasm.

We did have some excitement today.  Novica was bringing  a load of dirt with the tractor to fill in along the drainage ditch that we helped build.  He got too close and one front wheel fell into the ditch.  The ditch is lined with concrete slabs and is about four feet deep.  The front axle was resting on the top of a slab.  The good news was that no one was hurt and that the slab didn’t break.  The bad news was that we had to get the tractor out.  With the help of a small bottle jack and lots of “woods” (that Novica’s term for any piece of wood) we were able to gradually jack the front of the tractor up enough to drive it back.  There was much rejoicing and thanking the Lord