Vision Report #10

Tuesday, July 29 – The restaurant where we had our meeting last night is basically a nightclub.  That could explain why there was so much spiritual oppression when we were singing and when Betty was preaching and praying.  Today, we met at 11 AM again, did our group devotion and talked about what we learned yesterday and thanked God for all His blessings to us.  Betty had told an example during one of her messages about a little boy with a small snow shovel following his father shoveling snow off the driveway.  When done, the boy told his mother that he had shoveled all the snow off the driveway.  His father, who did all the work, would just smile and say "good job, son."  We are like the little boy.  We are just mopping up after the Father does all the work and He says, "good job, children." After our group time, we packed up and drove a half hour to Kocani and were met by the local pastor and his wife.  They took us to a restaurant where we ate and then passed out invitations to our program that night.  We then bused to the church where we rested and several people finally got to shower.  The church is located in a nice part of town and the pastor lives on the floor above the church.  As in all the places we have sung in Macedonia, we have to pay ourselves to rent the venue and also the sound system as these churches are really too poor to pay, so we have been giving them some money from Vision as we leave, partly to bless them and partly to help their own ministry.  We returned to the town center, ate dinner, and started our program at 8:30.  Alex, one of our Serbian youth gave his testimony and Stephanie shared how she has grown closer to God, especially during the time her mother has going through breast cancer treatments.  Mike then preached a powerful salvation message and gave a call.  At least a dozen adults stepped forward up on the stage.  A little girl also came from the other side of the stage, dragging her friend with her.  After her example, a whole bunch of children also came up and it is not clear if they knew what they were doing, but this first girl was serious about accepting Christ.  The local church pastor and several of their members tried to take down names and phone numbers, but they were just not prepared for this kind of response (as was true the night before).  We thank God for what He is doing, but also realize these small churches in Macedonia needed a lot of training in discipleship and disciple making.  After the meeting, we then got on the bus to drive to Negotino, a two hour trip that took almost 3 hours because we had to stop for restrooms so many times.  At Negotino, most of us slept at the church (Betty and Nena have their own room) while Wahpui/Ellen, Marshall/Meiring, and Mike were taken to different host's home.  Since we arrived after midnight, our first surprise is that in Negotino, the city water supply is turned off at night, so we did not have water to wash up, another faith stretching point for us to learn, but we are happy to share, even a little bit, in Christ's suffering. You can catch up on any missing items by going to http://visionchoir.blogspot.com