Vision Report #5

On Monday, when Vision was practicing, Betty was simultaneously conducting a session from 10 AM with the Serbian and Gypsy church leaders.  About 60 showed up and it turned out to be a wonderful time of deliverence ministry for many in the group.  They finally ended about 1:30 PM and scheduled another session with Betty for Tuesday morning. The music camp is turning out to be a great time between Vision and the Serbs and Gypsies.  Besides reviewing basic music theory and a lot of practicing and singing, we played a lot of games together.  Four of the Serbian girls are staying over at the church so we have a lot of time together with them.  While they are also helping us with our Serbian songs and pronunciation, we are teaching them to sing the chorus of "Jesus Loves Me" in Mandarin so we can at least sing part of one song in Chinese for the Chinese church. Tuesday, July 22 – Betty had her second session today with the local church leaders, a meeting that started at 10 AM and ended after 2 PM.  For Vision, we continued to practice with the ten local youths.  After lunch today, we went to pass out a few invitations to the Chinese service meetings scheduled for Thursday and Saturday.  Our general impression was that the merchants are less open and welcoming than they were last year so remember them in prayer that God will open their hearts. We also visited the Leskovac historical museum, only 7 minutes walk from the church.  This visit was arranged by Pastor Mio's friend, Mille who Nena said is "president" of Leskovac, but refused to say he is the mayor.  Anyway, Mille is a man who has been good to the church even though he is Orthodox.  Betty and Marshall with Mio and Nena altogether spent several hours talking to him Saturday and Sunday, but as yet, he is not open to developing a personal relationship with Jesus.  The museum visit is interesting but also tiring.  We came back the church about 3:15 PM and rested until 4 PM and practiced some more.  During practice, it began to pour and get cool.  We had planned to go to the park nearby and sing and pass out tracts, but was not able to do that with the rain.  God in His wisdom had other plans for us.  The leaders in Vision along with Betty and Nena had time to process and we realized that several in the group had been having nightmares.  Betty also pointed out that there were children coming to the gates of the church and placing curses on us.  Joe sensed that this is all leading up to our going to Macedonia next week.  Later, Marshall also realized that the problems we have been encountering with the ATM and our not being able to get money out is also a spiritual hinderence, so tomorrow, we are going to spend some serious time praying as a group and binding strongholds of the enemy as we get ready to start doing more ministry. While all this was happening, Wahpui and Ellen were cooking dinner and leading a Bible study for the Chinese church.  Over a dozen came for dinner and stayed for the Bible study. You can catch up on any missing items by going to http://visionchoir.blogspot.com