Day 4 in Bosnia

The Evangelical Church of Capljina

Today is the 4th day we've been here.  It's Thursday afternoon and we've been busy since Tuesday landscaping the church and painting at Novi Most.  Our original bridge project has been postponed for a later group due to the government working in the area to help the river bank.

So far we have done a lot.  Our main goals while we are here are to build relationships with the church leadership and encourage them in what they are doing and we also want to help with manual labor that they can't do on their own.

In terms of encouraging the church, things are rather difficult for them right now.  The local community sees the evangelical church as a cult since they aren't one of the three traditional religions here - and Protestantism is a cult to them breaking off from the Catholic church.  There are rumors that the church has heard including ones saying they are sacrificing babies and posting pictures of kids all over the internet to sell them to other people.  The persecution is extreme but the pastor's heart for the people is ever stronger.

On the manual labor side, the guys have been busy tearing down weeds and bushes that have grown into the backyard and playground.  Also, the trail to the river where they are doing baptisms is mostly overgrown so we are cleaning that out.  The girls are painting at Novi Most which is where kids go to play and learn more about a variety of subjects including English, computers, and the church.

In addition to the work, we had a worship morning where we sang different songs in English and Bosnian.  Hearing songs in another language that we still recognized was pretty cool and it's great hearing people worship God in other languages.

This morning, Nono also gave his testimony.  He grew up in the area and was always an outsider.  His life was tough, but right before the war things were getting better and he was ready to get married.  Right before he proposed to his girlfriend the war started and they got separated.  By the end of the war she was married to another man and between that and the state of the county after the war he went into depression.  He then started drinking a lot and doing drugs to get through the pain and said days would go by and he didn't know what happened because of the state of his mind.  In the depth of depression, he cried out to God who he really didn't understand and begged for a way out.  Then one day he was walking by this church we are at and asked if he could come and maybe learn English (I'm not sure why he wanted to know English).  The pastor was so excited that someone had randomly come up that he said he would help him and find a way to teach him English.  The pastor though had  already scheduled a trip to Atlanta to visit his sponsors and thought that when he returned to Bosnia he would not ever here from Nono again, but they day he returned Nono was waiting for him.  Then Nono started attending the church and after the first sermon he asked to be baptized.

It was an amazing story and great to hear that the church is helping some people in need.  Nono is now an employee at the church and one of the hardest working men I've ever met.   He sings in the band, is in charge of production, is in charge of maintenance of the church, and he maintains the grounds around the church.

Thanks again for your prayers and for taking the time to read about our trip.  It's been amazing to see how tough it is for the church here to reach out, but we can tell that it's slowly catching on and people are opening up to the idea that church can be relational instead of just cultural.  Hopefully our work will continue to fuel the staff here and provide them with confidence in what they are doing and maybe the manual labor will help them provide a comfortable environment for the community to come learn more.

Thanks!

Ryan

p.s. - after speaking in broken english for days it's amazing how hard it is to write.