The Best Is Yet To Come

So my summer... I spent most of the time fighting God without realizing it. I see all these people around me who do not know Jesus, who do not know the loving God, who do not know there's more to life. And I want to reach out to them. So I tried doing a few things over the summer, but none with God's blessing, they were the products of fleshly efforts. I was depressed and devastated. What's wrong?! People are lost, Serbia needs Jesus, I'm in full time ministry, I have a gift of evangelism, my bones are weak from holding in the Word of God. So finally I stopped fighting and let God speak, and He said ''rest at my feet, I want to do work in you before you start doing work for me''. I fought God ever since I got here, 10 months now. Trying and trying and failing and failing. I missed out on so many blessings, always keeping my eyes on new opportunities and new ministries, which resulted not being faithful in things I was already doing. Such a shame. But God is gracious. And now life is easier cause I'm no longer fighting the wind. So that's my summer. I spent my days filled with anger, feeling useless, depressed, ashamed to be called God's servant, joy was sucked out of me, all this because God wasn't doing what I was telling Him to do. Now I'm back on track, spending time in the Word, reading books, listening to bible studies, being faithful in little things God entrusted me with, and waiting on Him for more. The best is yet to come;

Ministry:

Bible Commentary – same old, same old. Thankfully God keeps exciting me about it every morning. We're done with Romans, and are on our way through 1. Corinthians;

Leading worship – we haven't had the full band together for the whole summer. It was never possible, but everyone in the team is expressing desire for us to be back together, so we'll see how things go about this fall. I just translated ''marvelous light'', and the church seems to be liking it;

Friday nights – are canceled. Out of the blue, God made it clear it's time to take a break. Everything was going perfectly, I enjoyed studying, people enjoyed coming, everything about it was amazing. But God knows what He's doing;

Sunday night bible studies – we're having Sunday night bible studies for teenagers, a guy who was teaching moved, so I took over from him. I'm teaching through Genesis, pure awesomeness. Can't wait to get to the awkward parts, it's gonna be fun teaching teens about circumcision or story about Onan and Tamar;

English Course in October – our church building will be used for a free two week English course by a christian organization. Wendy's gonna be teaching one of the groups, and I'll be making coffees. Pray for open door to share as we have around 180 people coming!;

Life:

Me and Wendy went to south Serbia in August for a week for a little vacation to visit our friends. Mountains, fresh air, forest trails, south serbian bbq, God was goooood. Wendy's a country girl and I'm a city boy, so we both had to have grace for each others needs and views of vacation. I didn't understand how Wendy can find it fun sitting on insect infested mountain grass for longer than 10mins, and Wendy didn't understand my daily, essential need for coffee shops. Fun, fun. We started volunteering in a club for mentally challenged adults every Tuesday night. Man, I love people there. I got fish for my aquarium. Wendy named them Beuford, Priscilla, Lawrence, Wilfred, Thing 1 and Thing 2. Somebody stole the chain off my bike. I found out lady in apartment 5 is a killjoy. I realized I may not be a man cause I don't have a tool kit;

Summer 2011.

It's summer time in Serbia, it's vacation time, people are leaving to more exotic countries with their speedos in their backpacks to get the taste of the sea in their mouth, smell the salt in the air, have the gentle sea breeze play with their hair, and smile at tourists who wear shorts and black socks with sandals. I think I'll miss out on all that this year (I might wear speedos sometimes), but I don't really have a desire to leave Subotica. It's quiet here over the summer, not a lot happening, which is really nice cause it helps me think of things that were, things that are and things that will come. It's a good time to soak up the Son, and sun too.

Ministry;

Bible Commentary – It's going a lot faster. We're done with the book of Acts. The next one is Romans and hopefully by the time I write my next update we'll be in Corinthians;

Worship – It's pretty good. Last couple of months we haven't had the full band together because everyone was busy with a thing we call life. Job, school, traveling, moving, soundboard dying... a lot of random things happened so I ended up doing worship just with my guitar and singers;

Friday night Bible studies – It's going great. We're finishing up the Sermon on the Mount, it's pretty awesome. I'm still as excited about it as I was when we first started it. It's just so great to see young people coming together to study the Bible every week;

Home town? - My hometown has been on my heart a lot lately. I've been praying for going there once a week to do outreaches. I'm waiting to hear back from the Lord about it, it's exciting;

Life;

Foundations conference – me and Wendy got chance to go to Foundations conference in Hungary in June! It was great. Lord spoke to me mostly about how it's all about loving Him, and that I should keep it simple, and be disciplined. I got to see so many friends I haven't seen in a while, make a few more, all in all it was such a great conference;

It's Wendy's birthday next week and we'll be going to the town of Novi Sad for a day;

The plant that I bought months ago died and was resurrected by Wendy;

I'm almost done reading ''why revival tarries'' by Leonard Ravenhill. It's life changing;

Novak Djokovic is no1 tennis player since last Monday, whole Serbia celebrated;

I wanna get a puppy so bad;

No winter last forever; no spring skips its turn;

I feel like I'm getting to know what ''life'' is in a ''grown-ups'' world. Money seems to be spice found in every pie life throws at you. ''What can I afford to eat?'', ''How am I paying the rent?'', ''How am I paying the bills?'', ''This is cheaper, lets get that'', ''We can walk there, don't take the bus''. Ahhhh. Where did those days go when I thought lunch meat grows in the fridge? And that the only thing I need to know about electricity is not to play with the plug? And getting new lego series was my one and only concern? Oh well. Just another reason to look forward to heaven.

Ministry;

Worship – been great! Adding some new songs to our ''worship menu'' and enjoying seeing how they affect people's lives;

Commentary – been challenging! I've been lacking sleep at nights very often, so it's been extremely hard focusing on typing anything on my computer due the feeling of exhaustion and even poop. Yes I said it. I feel like poop;

Youth Home Fellowship – been blessed! We're meeting every Friday night and I'm teaching through Matthew. We have so many different people come every week. I'm always excited to see what God's gonna do next time. Ah, just writing about it makes me smile;

Easter – we're having a special Easter Bible study on Sunday at church. We made cute little invitations so we're hoping many will come to hear about the foolishness of the cross, or the very power of God? Hmmm;

Life;

I'm looking for a bigger apartment. We can't fit all the people coming on Friday nights in my little apartment, and I always feel bad asking other people if we could meet at theirs, so I'm looking for a bigger place. Please pray that Lord provides financially for this;

I had a few friends come visit me for a weekend from Bible College. It was such a sweet time;

I'm becoming an uncle this year for the first time. Oh the joy unspeakable;

I got a plant couple of weeks ago and it still lives;

I just realized I'm gonna be 23 this year. That's old;

Prayer requests;

Please pray for strength in warfares;

Please pray for God's provision;

Please pray for Friday nights;

Where does my help come from?

You know how people prayed for people back in the day? Like how Moses prayed for Israel? How Hannah prayed for Samuel? How Nehemiah prayed for Jerusalem? How Jesus prayed for the disciples? Well I was thinking a lot about prayer lately seeing how real spritual warfare is. Both me and Wendy have seen it, heard it, felt it and experienced it like never before for last few days. How do you win that ''warfare''? No secrets here, it's prayer, everyone knows it. It really is. Do you believe it though? Do you really believe prayer changes things? Moses believed it for sure, Hannah did too, Nehemiah hopefully did considering we call him a ''man of prayer'', and Jesus prays for me as I write this, that blows His cover, He must believe it too. I feel like I'm starting to believe it just now, actually I no longer believe it, I know it. Going through intense warfares, like never before in our lives, makes both me and Wendy pray, we ask Jesus to come and deliver, and He does. He comes, and He doesn't fight the warfare, He just wins. He's cool like that.

I got quite a few verses from people for Serbia, and almost every single one of them contains ''darkness'' in it. Like ''darkness covers the earth'' and ''deep darkness covers the people'' and ''people who walked in darkness''. Me and Wendy started feeling that darkness here, and it's scary. It's so scary. It shakes everything we say we believe in. Makes us count the cost over and over again.

And it's never easy, it seems harder everytime. So we'd like to ask you guys to please pray for us. We're just two little people trying to shine in the dark. And dark's not okay with it. We need your prayer support. Wanna help us out?

Hello 2011.

Hello from Subotica, Serbia!

Life's been great lately! Almost 3 months into this ''life style'' and it still doesn't feel real. I'm living my dream, that's why it doesn't feel real. Live in Serbia - check. Serve the Lord full time – check. Have Lord meet my needs daily – check. Date the most beautiful girl in the world – check. Live close to a bakery shop – check. Seems like God likes me a lot.

Ministry...

My schedule is starting to be packed with activities. Tuesday to Friday I work on typing a Bible commentary using my pastor's teachings that we have recorded (I'm just typing what he says word by word, than we have it corrected and checked, and hopefully printed soon as we're getting done with the Book of Acts!). I love this project. Serbia needs a good Bible commentary since we have only a couple in our language. We'll be giving them out for free once we print them out! Pray that it blesses thousands! Why not millions? I also do worship on Sundays, we're band in making. I play guitar and sing, there's two more vocalists, a cellist, bass guitarist and a drummer. It's been challenging trying to orchestrate it without experience that I don't have. But we're okay, I guess we could perform on Superbowl sooner or later. I also work in the church coffee shop on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, help out with cleaning the church once a week, and soon we should start having Friday night Bible studies for youth which I'd be teaching. So nothing too crazy or too busy. Both me and Wendy know Lord wants to use this time to prepare us for whatever He'll have us do. So we're just resting in Him and letting Him change us. We have so many plans and thoughts of what we could do, but we're waiting to hear back from the Lord. We don't want to step out by might or by power, but by His Spirit.

Life...

Oh it's just great. I've been exploring the city with Wendy, getting used to life outside of Bible College, trying to learn things I've never heard of such as ''being responsible'' and ''eating 3 times a day''. Crazy, I know. I'm waiting for warmer weather to start playing soccer outside. I'm done with winter.

Pray for...

Please pray that me and Wendy would get to make a lot of friends in this city;

Please pray for God's protection, guidance and wisdom;

Please pray for God's provision for me and Wendy;