Ministry Report and New Requests

Last Sunday, our church in Zagreb had an outreach service with the two other Baptist churches in Zagreb. It was a great time of worship and preaching. We are so thankful for our church family and the healthy emphasis they have on making disciples. We are thankful for the outreach efforts that went into this service and for the many who heard an excellent presentation of the gospel.

 
Monday, we met with Nela Williams who is our colleague and a team member. Nela has 30 years of experience and is a true blessing to us. We had a wonderful time together and were able to encourage one another in the Lord. Nela works ALL THE TIME and is very effective in teaching and reaching out. Her husband died in a car accident in Croatia over twenty years ago. She had three small children at the time. She has stayed with our organization through it all and has done fantastic work in a part of the world that has changed greatly. We are thankful for a wonderful team. They are a gift from God.

Last night, we were with the Baptist Church in Petrinja. They have let us lead three seminars on how to grow in our walk with God. They must be gluttons for punishment as they have invited us back for the next three Tuesday evenings. We are so thankful for this church and their spirit of fellowship, love and openness. Pray for our next three seminars as we continue the focus on spiritual growth but also begin turning our minds and hearts toward reaching out to others.

Finally, we are thankful to have a trip to America this Christmas. We arrive in Oklahoma on December 21, fly to Texas on the 29^th, and leave to return to Croatia on January 6^th.  Ryan, Bret, and I have not been back to the States for two and a half years. Elise had a short trip back for a family wedding last year. Ask that all of our travel plans and luggage would work just like it is intended to. Ask that we could have a great time with family and friends. We are thankful this day for our family and for you. We are thankful for the opportunity to see many of you and hope that it will be an encouraging time together.

Requests and Links for the Weekend

Please remember the following in the days to come:

1. Seminars at the Baptist Church in Petrinja. We meet for the third time next Tuesday. Ask for disciples to grow, leaders to step out, and vision to develop.
2. Remember our home groups. Ask for their health and growth. Every Thursday, Elise leads a women’s group and Trey leads a men’s group.
3. Remember the five outreach groups that our team is leading right now. There are 21 people studying “The Essence of Christianity.” Ask for God to bring this truth into the hearts of all the participants.
4. Remember the three Baptist Churches in Zagreb and the Baptist churches in the cities of Karlovac, Petrinja, Moscenica, and Sisak. These are all great churches and partners in the gospel. We want to do everything we can to encourage and enable them. The reality is they are giving far more to us right now than we to them. We want to help them more.
5. Remember the Berry family, Tim and Danna plus three precious little girls. They are a part of our team who are just finishing a very successful first term. They leave for their first furlough (Stateside Assignment is the new word) a week from today and have lots of packing to finish and goodbyes to say. They plan to be in Arkansas and Texas for the next 7 months before returning.
6. Remember the Bell family, Richard and Beverly plus two teenage girls and a son who attends Furman University. They are currently on stateside assignment and return on December 28^th.

Two good, recent articles you may enjoy are by Bill Curtis on cooperation and another excellent blog (this man is an excellent writer and always worth reading in my humble opinion) on November 13 by Jerry Grace.

Language and Culture

My first thoughts about learning a new language and culture were delusional! I thought I would just learn new words to replace the English ones in my brain and say those instead of the “normal” ones. Ignorance truly is bliss. But not very helpful.

What I did not know, but learned very quickly, is that language and culture are much more involved than how to pronounce the words. Reality is not only perceived differently but is expressed in new ways. Cultural values, which dictate life, are unspoken but very real. Words are shaped around these “new” ways (they were new to me, not the Croats) of viewing the world and often have no equivalent in my mother tongue.

It is important to pray that we can come to not only recognize these crucial differences but can come to understand, respect and even feel them. If we cannot come to this point, we cannot effectively minister here. It is not a question of right and wrong, but one of being open, flexible, and adaptable. It is not a rejection of our own culture, but a respect of another.

A million positive examples of cultural difference could be given. Let me give you one today and then I will follow up on this topic later in the week.

Grandmothers, ‘bakas’ in Croatian, are brilliant bicycle riders. Elise and I often marvel at their ability to balance several bags full of groceries, hold an umbrella and navigate a crosswalk that includes hopping off the bike, walking across the busy road, and then starting off again. We really want to get a picture or video of it for you but have not found a way to do it without being too obvious.

The culture here has most people going to town every morning for their bread, meat, milk, fruits and vegetables. The food is fresher that way. Other benefits include getting up and off to an early start, daily exercise during the walk or bike ride to town, and getting to have a cup of coffee and a half hour conversation with your friends.

My cultural default button says that is a waste of time. What about productivity, hard work, and profit? The cultural default button here say this is an excellent investment of time. What about health, exercise, good food, and friends? Which is right? Neither and both.

All the values expressed, productivity, hard work, profit, health, exercise, good food, and friends, are important in both cultures. The priority is not. I still don’t go to town early every morning. Maybe I should. But I have too much to do.

Thanksgiving in Croatia

Happy Thanksgiving! We slept in on a school day in Croatia! The boys and Elise enjoyed it. I got up only 15 minutes after the alarm would have normally gone off. Ryan’s school, the American International School of Zagreb, has the next two days off, of course. Bret’s online school, Northstar, gives us the flexibility to take both days off; however, Bret told me this morning that he might work tomorrow so he can get his math finished for the week. We won’t hold him back.

How do we celebrate Thanksgiving other than a little extra sleep, a little less work and no school? Well, we have our quiet times and a leisurely early morning. I will go pay an enormous number of bills in about an hour and then we will leave for central Zagreb around 11 o’clock this morning. Once at the main train station, we will pick up our colleague, Nela Williams, and travel together to Karlovac, a city of 50,000 about 45 minutes away.

We will have two teams for Thanksgiving in the home of Tim and Danna Berry. Sixteen of us will pitch in to make it happen. NFL football, via our VCR and a video tape sent by Elise’s brother, will be in the background and we will have a great time together. I am thankful for our team and the one on the coast.  Part of our team celebration is also a going away for Gene and Lo Hodgkins.  They have served faithfully for three years in Agriculture development and head home in the middle of December.  We will miss them and are so thankful for all they have done.

We will travel back to Zagreb around 6 o’clock this evening. Bret has practice at 7:15 PM and Ryan is planning to meet a friend at a Cibona game. Cibona is our top professional basketball team and they are playing one of the best teams in Europe. Please don’t feel like the quality is a big step down from the NBA. Every player for the other team has beaten the American World Championship or Olympic team in the past four years. Our team has three top former NCAA players who were the last cuts from their NBA teams.  The world can play. Tickets are $5 for the cheap seats.

I am working on several entries that I think you will find worth your time. The next one will follow up on the thoughts a couple of days ago about language and culture. It should help you pray for your missionaries wherever they are in the world. Other topics I have begun include those evil bloggers, some thoughts about values, straw men in our life, the right DNA, emergent church discussion, and those regular updates about life here and how you can best support us.

Some links that might interest you on this fine Thanksgiving Day are:

“Ned Flanders and Me” is a great post on finding strength in diversity and can be found at http://theresurgence.com/mc_blog_2006-11-21_ned_flanders_and_me.

Jason’s blog is always a devotional challenge and encouragement. His November 21 article on the death of his grandfather made me remember the death of my own grandfather and to remind me of the joy and strength found in a godly heritage. You can read this post by clicking on http://jbacher.blogspot.com/.

Emergent Church links and discussion can be found at  http://kennicon.squarespace.com/.  This is a very balanced introduction to emergent church ideas.

Foreign Language Requirement

“Ain’t ‘cha fluent yet?” While that begs questions concerning fluency in the English language, it is one I often get about my ability in the Croatian language when I speak at churches in America.

 
No! A million times, no, no chance, not ever! Why? The primary reason is that my mom is to blame. If I had been born Croat, I would be fluent.

We do our best. Elise is much better than I am. Ryan and Bret grin at both of us when we speak. They really are fluent in Croatian. So good, in fact, that when people meet me and the boys without Elise, they assume I am married to a Croatian. There is no other explanation for how good their language is.

I do have the most confidence. I think of it as confidence based on ignorance. Normally, this is not a good combination. It is a great blessing when one is a foreigner learning a new language. I simply assume I can communicate and plunge ahead based on that assumption.

The other characteristic that enables survival and communication is the willingness to be an idiot. I do bring great shame on myself at times. I say stupid things, have amazing misunderstandings, or simply get the deer-in-the-headlights look of blankness at the most inappropriate times. The boys hide or pretend not to know me but, normally, it does not bother me in the slightest. Occasionally, I think, “I need to study a little bit.”

I would ask you to remember our language ability. We need your prayers to be continual learners of the language and culture.  We want to be great communicators of truth.  We can't do it except that God enables us.