Skopje

This was Lee's first time to Skopje, so having booked into our hotel, one Ann and I had been to before, we went to the city centre.  Here there is a fantastic fountain. It beats anything I have ever seen and makes Trafalgar Square look old and tame.  Atop of a column in the middle of the fountain is a huge sculpture of Alexander the Great on a horse.

Here is Lee with Marija and Sasha. Marija has been a couple of times to REAL, our womens conference, once with her daughter Tamara who became a Christian at our church and then came to our Youth Camp in Albania.  Sasha came to the Willow Leadership DVD Conference last autumn and would like to come again this year.



The 13 arch stone bridge that crosses the Vardar river and is a symbol of the city.



Time then for a drink and lunch together before going on to see the apartment that Sasha nd Marija gutted completely and then refurbished as their Bible teaching centre.  They teach students during the week, and have staterd a new church in their part of the city with a 70,000 population.  Skopje has a pop in total of about 700,000. Marija gathers 7 women on Sunday monring and Sasha 5 men in the afternoon.  Once a month they come together with other friends at a cafe where the American University College is. This is an ideal venue for student work. 

Early, really early, the next morning Lee was up to get his flight from Skopje to Belgrade and then onto London Heathrow and home to a waiting Linda and two daughters.  I wanted to spend another day with Sasha and Marija to talk through a number of things, before going on my way now westwards by minibus to the Albanian border and onto Elbasan. It gave me opportunity to see their three children again Tamara, Luka and Naomi and catch up on the details of their family life and the state of the church in the nation and learn more about the people and thinking in the Balkans.

In practical terms the next part of my journey is the trickiest part and so I really prayed...and my prayers were answered!  I will tell you about it in the next blog. 

Now it is Thursday as I write this in an a smoke filled internet cafe (no smoking by law, but hey!) and the first time to add in my camera photos. Ann arrived in Tirana, Albania  last night on a BA flight and soon, in 30 minutes she will arrive here by furgon, so I will finish now and go to meet her.  It will be so good to see her.

All our love, Ken

Ken

Church life in Nis

Sunday morning saw us together for worship.  Here are Misha and Karolina leading us. Karolina is from the Czech republic and invited a group to come and do evangelism.  The Czech group gave a couple of personal stories and then I spoke.  They finish with worship which they believe is more helpful for people who come from an Orthodox background.  And no, I don't understand the words either!

Earlier in the week Lee and I had a meeting with some of their leaders in Vlada's apartment.  Vlada's wife Sonja was in the UK during the week so we met her on Saturday night.  Here are Karolina with her husband Sreten, a Bosnian Serb, Mejli, Vlada, Vlada's daughter and son and Misha. This is when we learn what is happening in their church, the problems they face, the help they feel they need, practical, financial or personnel wise.  This is when we ask question after question to get a picture of what is happening and they also ask us numerous questions on how we do things.  It is where relationships are built as we appreciate each others openness and desire to see God move in peoples lives.

After Sunday lunch Lee and I left Vlada and Sonja with their family to spend time together, whilst we talked through all that had happened and wrote down our thoughts for discussion. 

Monday morning Vlada picked us up from our hotel and we sped on our way south over the Macedonian border to meet Sash and Marija from Skopje at a convenient petrol station.  Our time in Serbia had come to a close for now and the way to Macedonia was open.

Ken

Kragujevac and a Men's Breakfast

Yesterday, Friday, Lee and I travelled with Vlada to Kragujevac which is in central Serbia, right in the heart of the nation.  It is the fourth largest city in Serbia and is well known for two events.  It was occupied by the Germans in WW2 in April 1941.  The local communist party decided to start an uprising against this. As a reprisal the Germans in 2 days shot more than 7,000 men including many boys.  There is a memorial to this event that we saw.

Then in April 1999 during the troubles here NATO bombed the Zastava car factory destroying it totally. 38,000 people lost their jobs overnight.  You can imagine the financial impact that had.  Now just recently Fiat have taken over the factory, but if you would like an old Zastava or Yugo car or spare parts, this is the place to be.  The streets are full of them.

We met with Ivan and Adriana in their home. Ivan is a former drug addict who gave his life to Jesus six years ago. He now runs a half way house helping drug users seek help from their addiction. He also runs a second hand clothes shop. Anything with English things on,  Union flag, names of music groups, etc. sells straightaway he says.  Adriana works at the Fiat factory. Together they gather people in their house and just recently nine people have their lives over to Jesus.  We talked together and prayed that God move more powerfully in this large city, said our farewells and headed for home.

Then this morning, we were up and about ready for the men's breakfast at 9.30.  An ample supply of bacon rolls was provided washed down with thin yoghurt to drink.  We worshipped, many of the songs we knew, and then Lee spoke really well about taking risks for Jesus.  He brought his talk alive telling us of the first time he made a bungee jump.  Definitely not for the feint hearted! Then we prayed for the guys, asking God they would be risk takers and bringing encouraging prophetic words to them.  We finished just after 12 and then it was time for us to walk into the centre of Niš and sit and have a coffee.

One thing I wanted Lee to see was the inside of an Orthodox Church. So we went to the local church.If you  have never been inside one it is an experience.  It is very brightly decorated with the paintings in a set style of Jesus, the disciples, events from the New Testament but also with Mary and her baby son and many, many saints.  There are no seats. You stand. People come and go all the time lighting candles, bowing low to the many icons and kissing them.  The Orthodox Church is tied to the State, so though few people go to church, the church receives money from the State and can therefore afford fine buildings etc.  To change from the Orthodox faith is seen as a denial of your nationhood, that you no longer wish to be Serb or Greek or whatever and you are in many cases made outcast from your family. This is the battle the local church has here in seeing people becoming added to them.

With a team from the Czech Republic having arrived this morning (they drove all the way in a minibus for 12 hours) we have vacated our room at the church building and are now installed in a small hotel for 2 nights.  Tomorrow I speak in the morning and we will have our last meeting with the
leaders so that on Monday we are ready to go south to Skopje, Macedonia.  There we meet Sasha and Marija and are ready for the next part of our journey.

Our love from Lee and me.

Corinth and the Edict of Milan

One of the joys of being in the Balkans is that you are not far from where the New Testament letters were written and where the early church was started. Thessaloniki for example is a few hours bus ride from here. Next week when we are in Macedonia and Albania we will be even nearer. So the culture here is much closer to that of Paul's day then we experience in Northern Europe.  This makes it fascinating for me and makes the words in scripture come alive. Events are much easier to imagine being here.
This morning Vlada led a fairly in depth bible study of the first nine verses of 1 Corinthians.  The group were reading from their Cyrillic script Bibles while I read along from my iPad.

Afterwards, Lee and I went for a walk to the local open air fruit and veg market. It is only 24 C here,  so people are still wrapped up in their winter coats, apart from us, who are enjoying this heat wave! Last year it reached 48 C to tell you how hot it can get.  The stalls are already laden with fresh locally outdoor grown lettuces, radishes, spring onions and potatoes. In addition there are all the other salad vegetables that have been brought on under plastic, tomatoes, chillies and so on.

Then a walk around the Niš fortress, the remains of a Turkish fort with walls 8 metres high and 3 metres thick. Niš is a university city and so it is full of young people from the city and surrounding area who have come here to study.

The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (photo above) was born here in Niš and in 313 he issued the Edict of Milan when Christianity was given equal  status with other religions in the Roman Empire. So this year 1700 years on, they are celebrating the Edict here in Niš.  Vlada has been approached by an Orthodox priest  to obtain Bibles and put them into the schools. Such an approach and openness to putting Bibles into state schools like this is unprecedented in Vlada's experience. So now we are meeting Vlada and another leader from Belgrade to talk this through.

Tomorrow we are of to a new church that has started in Kragujevac. But that is another day.

Lee and Ken

According to plan...

There are times when I like things to go according to plan.  Yesterday was one of those days. We left Heathrow on time with JAT airlines flying direct to Belgrade. On landing the captain must have thought he was a formula 1 driver.  I believe we were doing over 100 mph taxiing to the airport. I have never been so fast in a plane that was not about to take off! So we arrived on time, straight through immigration, bags duly arrived, changed a small amount of money, and then caught a bus with no fuss straight to the city centre. I chose the hotel we stayed in because it is right opposite the main railway station where the airport bus stops. 100 yards to the hotel and they were expecting us! All according to plan! And joy on joy. It was warm! I have not felt warmth like this since last summer!

Lee and I enjoyed our breakfast this morning. There was a choice of 3 types of breakfast , or you could have your pick from all three!! Southern European, fruit juices, fruit, yoghurt, cheese, meat, breads and wonderful pastries; Slav style, black bread, more meat, sausages, pickles, or English with bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, fried eggs sunny side up, and toast and marmalade tea and coffee. Guess what we had?

Then we went for a short stroll taking in the train station before Vlada arrived. He then walked us up, up, up to a high point in Belgrade to Kalemegdan Park which overlooks where the river Sava joins the river Danube on its long journey to the Black Sea.  It is a favourite place for the locals to walk especially in the warm summer evenings.  Vlada got very passionate about Serbia when I asked him how it felt to be Serbian after the breakup of Yugoslavia and see this once proud nation held together by Tito, crumble into its many parts.

Back to the car through the pedestrian shopping areas and then on our way south to Niš, a two and a half hour journey. As I mentioned before, this road is a main route south to Greece or east to Turkey and so the toll road was full of trucks. Now we are installed in the church building where we sleep and stay for the next few days until a Czech group arrive this weekend. 

Come 5 pm, Miloš the worship leader took us to a restaurant to eat real Serbian food. Lee and Miloš tucked into pork with cheese while I sampled the local, very long, very spicy sausages. Very good. We will definitely go back there! Over the meal Miloš picked our brains and experience on forming and leading teams, with loads of questions. Do you have ground rules, how do you build team, how and when do you delegate responsibilities, what if you make mistakes, how do you correct people and so on. Time flew by. Now we are back in our room and writing and emailing.

It is exciting to be here and we are looking forward to the days ahead. Do keep praying for us as we look forward to seeing God move in this pioneering situation.

Lee and Ken

Serbia

 
Today I am on my way with Lee Layton-Matthews, one of our pastors, to Beograd, the capital of Serbia. I have been to Serbia just once before in April last year with Ann. This led to me be asked to return and spend a week here. Today should be a simple matter of getting there and finding our accommodation. Tomorrow we will be met by Vlada who with his English wife Sonja, run a church in Nis in the south of Serbia.

Just a bit of history. Serbia is the part that is left of what was Yugoslavia. As soon as communism fell, then Yugoslavia which had been a federation, quickly split into its separate parts. Slovenia, now part of the EU, broke away, then Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia Herzegovina and lastly Kosovo, leaving Serbia. 

The country is landlocked but has the river Danube run through the capital Beograd (Belgrade) on its way to the Black Sea.  The main tourist image and attraction in Belgrade is the Orthodox Church of St Sava, pictured above. It is the largest Orthodox Church in the Balkans and holds 10,400 people. Though you stand up in Orthodox services and are not seated! It overlooks the whole city.

Serbia is the only European country which officially has two alphabets the Latin one we write in, and the Cyrillic. Niš where we will stay has a population of about 183,000 and we will be going also to Kragujevac with 150,000, the 3^rd and 4^th largest Serbian cities. The population is 90% Orthodox.  So building a non-Orthodox church is a huge challenge.  I look forward to the challenges that lie ahead.

Please pray for us both. This is the first time Lee will have been to Serbia, to a Slav country, and to an Orthodox country that has a distinct Christian heritage differnt from anything he will have encountered before.

Ken

 

Terminal

I am with Liam, our Youth pastor here in Tallinn the capital of Estonia. It is 59 degrees north, a bit further north than Inverness and Aberdeen, as far north as parts of Alaska, so the days are short. (Or if you are in the southern hemisphere, further south than anywhere in South America or New Zealand.) We have had a couple of days here for Liam to see a few sights and get the feel of the culture of Estonia, (the apostle Paul did that in Athens) so that he was all the better equipped when meeting last night with the young people from the main Pentecostal church at their meeting called Terminal.  The photo is of Virge who comes from Estonia and was part of our church, Liam and the youth pastor Ivo. 

It was brilliant. Excellent worship, then Liam spoke and there was a really good response to what he brought. Liam was straight to the point, "tell your friends about Jesus, as He can change their life", "you are God's messenger to many". We had a good time with their youth pastor Ivo and his wife and we will meet up again on Monday just before we fly home.

Now today, Saturday we are travelling 4 hours, inc a short ferry journey, to Kuressaare Virge's home town where we speak first on local radio, then have lunch with the pastor Alur and his wife Marvi at their home, then talk to church leaders, have tea and then meet the young people from the church.

Here is Liam with Tiina who translated for us and Walter who runs the radio station.  Tomorrow we speak at the Sunday morning meeting. I am blogging this whilst having breakfast of rice pudder, rice porridge, like rice pudding and coffee. Sophia, Mike and Virge's daughter is gurgling and making noises as 1 year olds do. At the same time I am reading our names in the Kuressaare newspaper. Liam is billed as the "noortepastor" , youth pastor, pronounced naughty pastor!

Please pray that we have an effective time here in Estonia.