Serbia Update #2

We got back to Belgrade this morning around 11pm. We found out that God never stops working, even when we're on the bus. Our Belgrade contact, Samuil, gave us a call while we were on the Bus telling us that he would not be able to pick us up at the bus station. This may have caused some serious problems for us since we don't really know how to get from the bus station to our building. However, the bus driver noticed that we were speaking english when we got on the bus. He asked us where we were from and one of us answered, "Canada." Well, apparently he has a cousin that drives a cab in Toronto and he knows French really well. So when we found out that we didn't have anyone picking us up, we asked him how close we were going to the Genex building (where our flat is) and he said we were going right by it. Then he asked us if we'd like to get dropped off there and we accepted the offer immediately.

For the last few days we've been in Novi Sad and Subotica meeting with EUS groups there. We went to a number of church services while we were there and managed to encourage the believers there despite our lack of Serbian language. We really noticed the more laid back lifestyle of those cities. They are also much more evangelical than Belgrade because they were further from the Byzantine Empire (in Subotica, the predominant language is actually Hungarian).

A surprise from today is that around noon we all of a sudden got a call from Nick that we could join their little league teams for practice this afternoon. Well, it wasn't really a practice. They just did running drills and a little infielding. There's only one ball field in Belgrade and there are four teams sharing it, so their practice was actually on the lawn of the basketball stadium. Go figure. Lots of bad bounces. We're trying again tomorrow, but supposedly it's going to rain.

The team is still getting along amazingly well. It was good for us to be able to live under one roof in Novi Sad. The culture there is also much more like North America, so we were able to get a break from the hectic 'no one really knows what's going on' culture of Belgrade. As we get closer to the end of the GP (in ten days we leave for London) please pray that we can keep our focus and finish well. The relationships have definitely been forged in Belgrade, now we need to move forward into helping them grow in their relationships with Jesus.

As for "Kingdom of Heaven," chew on this for a bit: Religion. I've seen religion turn people into fanatics who will use the will of God for whatever they want. -- It's not an exact quote, but that really spoke to me and I hope it will speak to many Serbs as well.

We'll hopefully I'll be able to get here once more before we head to Nis on Saturday.

Until then, God bless and go Moose/Jays/Bombers.