A Day In Breza

So every time I worship with these people… EVERY TIME… I am just in awe. For a couple of reasons. First just being able to sit back and realize that I am in Bosnia with Bosnians, and we are worshiping the same God. He is God over the whole world and different tongues sing Him praises. That’s another thing – the language. God can understand everyone here speaking Bosnian the same as he understands me in English! That is just amazing to me. It isn’t something I think about very often, but here I am reminded of that every day. How great is our God? And another thing is their passion. You can really see that Christians here have a heart for Christ. You can see that when they are worshiping they aren’t just saying the words, but they are singing praises to God. My worship experience is so different here than in the states – not only because it is a different language (although I know most of the songs since they are ones we sing in English), but the feeling is different. I don’t know how else to describe it.

I got to experience this again today.

We went out to Breza this morning for church. It was about a 45 minute bus ride out of Sarajevo. The church itself was nice, and the people were friendly. And the view all around was beautiful. Oh, and there is this bridge right in front of the church building and fun fact: the C&MA Life Conference a few years back raised money to rebuild a bridge in Bosnia, and this was the bridge!! How cool is that?

You can kinda see the bridge on the right-hand side of the picture

Allix and me behind the church

The worship this morning was just as I described above… pretty much amazing. It was good. Then the talk was really good; probably one of the best I’ve heard since I’ve been here (it also helped that Petula did a great job translating for us). After the service everyone just hung around outside, which was cool. However, these are the most difficult times for me. I want so badly to know people here and build relationships, but I’m kinda uncertain how to go about doing that. During times when people are hanging out, everyone is with their group of friends talking in Bosnian… am I just supposed to go over and start talking to them in English?? Isn’t that a little rude? But what else am I to do? I have been told by several people (and reminded again today by the pastor in Breza) that the young adults here will not initiate contact with us – we have to pursue them and keep bugging them and bugging them and maybe they’ll start to talk to us. So I’ve accepted that fact, I’m okay with it now – it’s a challenge. The question is how do I pursue them? I feel like breaking down sometimes (like today for example) and the only thing that keeps me going is my faith that God has me here for a reason… I may not know what that reason is yet – heck, I may never fully know what that reason is. But God does and isn’t that all that really matters? I just need to wait for God’s timing. This whole situation is still just so frustrating tho.

Afterwards we went out to lunch, and I had a cheese pizza

WITH KETCHUP!!! =)

I’ve noticed that people here eat ketchup with like everything. Pizza is served with a huge bottle of ketchup. Lol. So our food came out and I kinda rolled my eyes when the guy set the bottle down, but I figured I would at least try it. So Allix and I both put a few drops of ketchup on our first piece and ate them. When it came down to our second pieces, we both reached for the bottle, and this time we both put ketchup all over our piece. Haha. Bobo and Petula laughed at us. And with every piece after that whenever I started putting the ketchup on it Bobo just rolled his eyes. It was really good though. Funny story: there was one piece I felt like eating plain, and I got about halfway through it before I put it down and had to put ketchup on the rest. Haha.

The one piece by itself has a little ketchup on it...

When we got back to Sarajevo we went over to hang out at Mark & Kathy’s. They weren’t there so we just broke in (well, not really cuz Bobo has a key since he lives there a few days a week). We didn’t really do much except for relax while we were there… Well, Bobo tried to show us his Bop-It skills (tried being the keyword there).

Looking back today was a pretty eventful day.

Oh, and you can thank Bobo/Petula for all the details of this entry =) While we were at lunch today they made the comment that I remember everything and I have so much detail in my blog – I owe it all to my amazing memory.

Please continue praying for us!!! Thanks and God bless!