Report on the Weekend

Written on Monday but not posted due to problems described below:

When it rains, it pours. Last week, our email server was down for the vast majority of the time. From what I saw yesterday at the internet café and on a colleague’s computer this morning, the service is apparently toasted again. Right now it does not matter, because our ISDN service in our home and office is “gotovo.” It is finished, kaput, trashed, and all those other descriptive words. 

While I can’t send email, receive email, make phone calls or connect to the internet, I still write. You will probably get a bunch of these posted at once, though I will try to spread them out.

Praise the Lord with us for the great worship service Radiceva Baptist Church had on Sunday. I went to the first service which is all in Croatian. I expected a full house of around 200. The members had to bring in all the chairs from the other rooms in the building and still there were 60 people standing in the hallway through the service. Pastorally speaking, we had 300 on Sunday (in reality that means 250). The quality and impact of the worship, praying, and preaching were even better than the attendance. Something is happening. I don’t know what but it was a great day.

Following the worship service, I came back to Velika Gorica for Bret’s basketball game against Croatia’s number one team in the 1991 -1992 age group. This team also has one of Europe’s top ranked NBA prospects. That is a ranking by NBA scouts. Believe me when I say that my junior high basketball team did not look anything like they did. My high school team did not like anything like they did.

This team had six kids 195 cm tall or more. For the metrically challenged, that means six kids 6 feet 4 inches or taller. The #1 ranked prospect was a little fella’ at just 6’ 8” (there were two others at least as tall) and weighing about 220 lbs. He could move, dribble, rebound (22 rebounds), block shots (7 blocked shots), pass (he had 11 assists in the game); he made incredible post moves and hit two threes (43 points and his coach pulled him toward the middle of the third quarter). I promise that he could take most college centers to the hole and eat their lunch. Our boys did great to only get beat 100 – 70. It was the best game we have played all year and the second lowest margin of victory for this other team.

Tomorrow night Elise and I begin the first of three seminars with Petrinja Baptist Church. We are speaking for a few minutes on Philippians 3:10 and teaching on how to read the Bible in such a way that it can change your life. Read, picture, ponder, and pray is the way Jerry and Marilyn Fine teach this in their discipleship book, "One on One with God." If you have never been exposed to this way of helping others catch a life of discipleship, you should visit their web-site and get their book.

We will then break up into men’s and women’s small groups and practice what we are teaching. Last, we will leave them with an assignment that involves practicing this every day, plus reaching out to one neighbor through an act of kindness during the week.

Pray for our Croatian to be far above our normal abilities. Pray that we can model good small group principles. Pray that we can laugh at our language mistakes and still communicate with clarity. Pray that we can encourage and help this church. Pray especially for Miroslav and Vaso, the two deacons, and for Bozidar, a member who will be helping us with some translation.