Vision Report #9

Monday, July 28 – A correction, the youth Pastor, Philip, is not yet going to seminary but plans to in the fall on a scholarship from some European organization, but he is concerned about what will happen o the two churches he is volunteering o serve the youth.  When asked how he survives, he said only by faith and God's grace.  He Pastor here (Peter) and his wife both work full time and serve the church with no pay. We met at 11 AM to have devotions and debrief.  The church all 22 youths (including Michael) are staying has three toilets and one shower powered by a small electric heater which needs warm the water between showers and the hose sprang a leak.  Needless to say, only a few got to shower.  During debriefing time, both Nena and Betty reminded us that God always tries us at our weakness in order to strengthen us.  For most of us, the comfort of a daily shower is a luxury most people in the world cannot have and we are just experiencing only a small discomfort.  After lunch, we passed out more invitations for the evening program and then took the bus to a small village of 500-600 about 15 km from Stip where a small mission church had been meeting.  This church, although established for 10 years, only has an attendance of 5 adults.  Pastor Peter said it is because the villagers are too concerned with peer pressure for them to become Christians, thinking themselves Christians already as Orthodox believers.  We crowded into the small room and started singing to the 5.  All of a sudden, children started to come in, about 18 of them, along with one or two adults.  Cynthia shared her testimony and Betty brought a message.  Before Betty preached and after Vision sang, about 6 of the children left.  After her message Betty then prayed for each of the remaining children.  Meanwhile, since the room was so small, most of the Vision kids were outside and had intercepted the children who went out and the Serbian girls were talking to them and telling them the story of David and Goliath.  While Betty was praying, these six kids were bought back in as they were all led to Christ by the Serbian girls with us.  Sarah was so excited she was ready to return to Leskovac to share Christ at home.  God is doing a new thing in this small village; new wine skins for the new wine! We returned to town and ate dinner about 8:15 PM.  We then walked to where we were to have our outreach concert in front of a dinner restaurant where they usually had a band playing.  Y 10 PM (the appointed time for the concert), the place was quite filled, maybe 400 people.  Two of the Macedonian young people, Helena and Pastor Philip and our own Long gave their salvation testimony.  Betty then gave a short message and an invitation.  Initially, 3 men stepped forward.  They were joined by some children and about 10 more adults.  As Betty started to pray, a whole bunch of teenagers came, but some of them seemed to be doing it in jest.  Betty would say one phase of the sinner's prayer, Philip would translate and then the group would repeat after Philip.  Some of the teens were mimicking Betty in English.  But they could not continue after a while (probably the Holy Spirit was getting to them) so the stepped back.  Only God knows how many truly became believers tonight, but we praise Him for He is moving a doing a new thing here in Stip.  After we sang, many of the girls were harassed by the local teen boys and Eric was pushed around in the men's room, but praise God, we all left safely as a group.  God is moving as so is the opposition as expected.  Betty had been warning us for several days to "put on the whole armor of God".  Keep praying! You can catch up on any missing items by going to http://visionchoir.blogspot.com