New Things Afoot

Hello blog followers. New things are afoot in Croatia for our team and we have been doing some cool things. Steph and I finished our semester of language learning at the end of January, and since then we have been spending time with Roma people and those who regularly work with Roma people. Roma people are gypsy people who live in Croatia who came here after being roamers around europe, I beleive they come from Romania. Anyways, I have been going to an area about an hour away from Zagreb for a few days everyweek to spend time in ministry to these people. They are very friendly, when we get there many kids surround us and we stumble through talking in Croatian and they are awesome people. I have been able to spend some time with a 17 year old guy named Miljenko (Mee-lyen-co), he invited me to drink some Cola with him when we met and he always asks me if i am going to give him my cell phone but I am hoping that I can be a part of Gods grace calling and reaching out to him.

We go to 4 or 5 gypsy villages every week. These people live in very poor conditions and one village that we go to is much worse than the rest. It has less people, only 20 or 30 versus hundreds in other villages. It is very sad to see a 4 year old girl who has to take care of younger siblings and to see little kids walking with no shoes in the snow. They do not have running water and in the worst of the winter we went to try and insulate and patch up some of the holes that they had in their houses as well as give them clothes. Two of the mothers are in wheelchairs and there are so many difficulties in this village. Most of the adults are drunk almost all of the time and this village needs your prayers. In the village that we go to the most, a 31 year old man died from drinking too much alcohol so pray also for his family and that these people would stop their addiction alcohol and turn to God

Good things are happening in these villages as well. There was a convention for the Roma people in January and many of them gave their lives to Christ. We are praying and trying to partner with the people to try and bring adults together for discipleship and possibly help them develop a church in the future. We were invited to come here to do this ministry by a lady named Karmen and when we are not in villages we stay with her at her house. She is a great cook and an amazing person. She has been doing ministry in these villages for many years, mostly with the children and I have been able to help her with her Good News Clubs by playing guitar in Croatian.

When I am in Zagreb on the weekends I am still leading worship for the International service and playing some cajon for the Croatian service at the church we attend and it is going great. We are going to Scotland in a few weeks for the North British Isles district NMI conference and I am excited to get to travel some as well.

Thank you for your prayers and support!