Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas from Serbia!


Hello dear friends and family! Christmas greetings from Serbia! I never would have guessed that I'd ever be celebrating Christmas in Serbia when I came here. Actually, I don't think I ever really knew anything about Serbia before we decided to go to South East Europe. But God does funny things, right?

So it's been a little while since I've sent an update, right? I know. Last time I talked to all of you I was still in Herrnhut, cleaning the castle. Well, let me tell you what happened. As you can hopefully see on the map, there are 3 big red spots. The first is Herrnhut, where we started, in Herrnhut we cleaned the castle and did some outreach to people in the town and at the base. We sent a few people out at the beginning of that week (around the 11th or 12th) to go to Nurnberg to prepare for the whole team to come. On the 17th the whoel group piled into our 2 vans, and 5 people took the train, and went Southeast to Nurnberg, Germany. While there we found lodging at a YMCA, who let us stay for free all week, and we did a lot of local outreach. That included caroling and other street music, going into the red light district, and doing general ministry in the Christmas Market, which is one of the biggest in Germany.

The entire group prayed about where to go next, and unanimously got the answer from God to go to Serbia, so we piled up into our vans (now we had 3 of them) at 1:30am last night we prayed and left. After more prayer (a LOT of prayer, especially at the borders) we got to Novi Sad, Serbia. The plan is to stay until the 26th, and so we'll be spending Christmas here. Actually, Germans, Romanians, and Latvians start celebrating Christmas today, so since we have 2 Germans and 1 Romanian and 1 Latvian on our team, the festivities will begin today, starting with tortilla soup for dinner!

Before I go, a few praises and prayer requests:

Praises:
- God's provision has been amazing! We have beds to sleep on while in Serbia, and a kitchen!
- The way that God leads us everywhere

Requests:
-Finances. We've run into a few unexpected fines on our way to Serbia, and since we didn't have all the money in when we left, cash is still tight. Any donations would be a great Christmas present! ;)
-Good attitudes...traveling like this can bring up a lot of stress and anxiety very easily.
- Good health, the winter season is in full swing and we have a few people here not feeling 100%, myself included.

Thank you so much, I love you all and I will remember you in my prayers!