All returned safely!

As of 10:30pm Tuesday night (LA time), all team members scheduled to return to LA have returned safely. PTL! You can catch up on any missing items by going to http://visionchoir.blogspot.com

Final Vision Report

Sunday, August 3 - We got there about 4 yesterday and shortly after, Sarah, Maria and Misha were picked up a brother from the English camp.  It was hard to say good bye to these friends. The Chinese church in Panchevo cooked a great home cooked meal for us, many vegetable dishes, mostly grown in their backyard.  After dinner, we started the program about 7.  Joseph led the meeting and shared his testimony about how God took different hardships in his life to prepare him for more ministry.  Ellen preached an evangelistic message and 2 people accepted Christ while one rededicated himself to follow Christ after having backslidden.  Praise God.  Danielo took Stephanie to the airport so she could catch her flight to LA.  After breakfast, we took the bus to go to the Chinese church in New Belgrade.  On the way, we stopped at St. Mark Cathedral and later at St. Sebastian Cathedral, both large Orthodox churches.  There was a mass going on at St. Mark's, and a child dedication in a small section of St. Sebastian's (the rest of the church is still being remodeled).  We then completed our journey to the Chinese church where we held our own worship service with Mike preaching and sharing about how he learned to listen to God and be obedient.  We then continued our debriefing, ate lunch, and debriefed some more.  The Chinese church here is cooking dinner for us.  We also met Ellen Wu, on a short term (1 year) missions here.  She is from Canaan Church in Irvine (David Fan's church) and a friend of Lucy and Victor Chen.  We started our program at 7 with Joe leading the service again and Josh and Wahpui gave their testimonies and Ellen preached.  This meeting had been advertised as a musical outreach evangelistic meeting.  There were about 60 at the service and praise God, one soul accepted Christ when Ellen gave the invitation. After the service, the bus took us back to our hostel and left us to go back to Leskovac.  This bus and the driver has been with us almost the whole time since we left for Macedonia (except the day we went to Greece).  He is also a new brother in Christ.  We took a love offering for him, raising $86.  It was hard saying good bye to him too as we sang Tebe Poem (To Thee We Sing).  Joseph, Fiona is leaving early Monday for their vacation in Rome.  Marshall, Meiring, Michael is leaving a hour after to return to LA and Betty is leaving a couple of hours after that to return to LA.  The rest of the team except Nena is returning early Tuesday and will be back in LA at various times, depending on their connecting flights. Tuesday, August 5 - (Yesterday, Stephanie and Keiko arrived safely back to LA. This morning, Marshall, Meiring, and Michael returned safely.) In closing out our trip reports, we thank you all for your potent prayer support.  God was working so powerfully and we just followed on His coattails, picking up blessing after blessing. This has been one of the most memorable Vision tours.  God was so good to us and blessed us so much.  The team felt like a family, with everyone contributing from the youngest to the eldest.  There were almost no complaints and grumbling when meals were missed or delayed several hours, or there was not enough showers or water for showering. Each of us were stretched beyond our comfort zone, and found His grace sufficient for us in our weakness.  Fiona sang and eventually memorized all the songs adding to the soprano section, especially after Keiko and Stephanie left.  Wahpui was a wonderful role model for us in his enthusiasm to witness – to Serbs, Gypsies, Chinese, kids, adults, everyone.  During our debriefing time, we found out how God had instantaneously and miraculously healed one of our members of his headache and dizziness after prayer.  One spoke about how a couple of people irritated him during tour and how he was able to pray blessings on them instead.  A couple of the Vision members feel called to the mission field and one girl wants to come back to Serbia and work with the children. From an objective basis, we have so much to praise God and these stand out: - Wonderful responses in Macedonia with many coming to Christ and powerful meetings in Serbia among the Serbs, Gypsies, and Chinese - Great interactions during the music camp with the Serb and Gypsy youth - The enthusiasm of the Serbian youth for mission and evangelism as they led several children to Christ - Michael's wonderful preaching and stepping forward in faith to call people for decisions for Christ and to go out for missions - Good health on the part of just about everyone, only some minor sore throats and a few with some bad stomachs for a short time - Betty Anderson's anointed preaching and prayers which touched our team and more importantly, the pastors and leaders of the churches we visited God is good.  Thank you all for praying.  We each have our little stories of how we saw God work in our lives.  If you can make it, come to our Home Concert in Glendale on August 23 so we can share more about what God is doing in Serbia and Macedonia. You can catch up on any missing items by going to http://visionchoir.blogspot.com

Vision Report #13

Saturday, August 2 – When we visit a church, we usually give them a small offering from Vision to help and encourage them in their ministries.  We have so much that even a little from us helps them a lot.  However, we sometimes collect a special offering from our team to help people we meet.  Yesterday, we collected two such offerings.  One is for Philip, the young man we met at Stip who translated for us.  He and is wife of one year "live by faith" (also with his grandparents) but is a strategic link to the youth of Macedonia.  We collected almost $500 for him.  We also collected money for Asteria, the widow missionary who is in need of a knee surgery.  We are told she needs $500 for this operation and the local churches have been collecting for months for this but have not gotten much.  We collected about $365 for her which should help tremendously toward her needs.  Nena knew this lady years ago.  Almost every believer knows of this faithful lady servant of the Lord and we are happy to have been able to help. Last night, we got to the Gypsy village about a half hour late.  There were much fewer people (maybe 30) there this time, perhaps because we were late, but we had a good meeting with them and Betty brought a powerful word.  Several fell over during her prayer for them (just about everyone responded).  We ate a quick food dinner and started our debriefing time with Keiko, who is leaving us early Saturday morning to go back to LA, and Sara and Maria, who have been with us through music camp and Macedonia.  We were able to pray for each of them.  Misha, who is also with us, but did not go to Macedonia and is rooming with our bus driver, did not join in the debriefing.  We had a great buffet breakfast as part of our hotel room.  We will debrief until noon and drive to Panchevo where we have a meeting this evening with the Chinese church there. You can catch up on any missing items by going to http://visionchoir.blogspot.com

Vision Report #12

Thursday, July 31 – We tried to leave early for our outing to Greece, but it took an hour and a half to get to the border where we dropped off the Serbian youth with a local pastor. After another half hour spent at the border, we entered Greece and drove another two hours to east Olympus where we could see Mt. Olympus on one side and the Aegean Sea on the other side. We spent about an hour there with some swimming and others eating lunch and left to head back to Thessalonica a little after 2 pm. However we realized that there was no time to spend in Thessalonica so we went directly back to Macedonia. There was a line of trucks one kilometer long at the border but thankfully there was only four buses in front of us. But still it took almost an hour to cross the border where we picked up the Serbian youths at 5 o'clock. We were told that it would be about an hour drive to Strumica. But we missed the exit and had to take a circuitous route through the mountains. Although beautiful, we did not get to the church until 7:45 pm, 15 minutes before the program started. Although we were hungry, we postponed dinner. The church in Strumica meets 10 km from town in a farm village. They meet in a very nice building with a piano and their worship team lead an enthusiastic time of worship with guitars, drums, and piano. There were about 80 people there with a lot of youth in attendance. This church was started 10 years ago and has experienced rapid growth. Seeing this church gives us great hope for the future of Macedonia. We sang a short program, Dillon gave his testimony about how God healed his back from a basketball injury a year ago, and Betty gave the Word. One person responded but he was already a Christian who had back-slidden. We were able to pray with him. We then went to dinner at about 10 pm and drove back to Negotino arriving at about 1 am. We thank God for a very fruitful trip to Macedonia as we are leaving Friday to return to Serbia. Friday, August 1 - We tried to leave at 9 but didn't get out until half past 10 since Betty had many things to say to the local pastor, Goran and his wife Daniella. It took about an hour to cross the border and we finally got back to Leskovac about 2 PM. We ate luinch, had a joyful reunion with Pastor Mio, Else and the rest of the church staff, dropped off Tania, Tamora and Alex and picked up Misha and Boyan, two Roma youths. The bus company treated us to ice cream and then we headed to Nis, getting here at about 5 PM. We will be leaving shortly for the Roma Gypsy church for a 7 PM meeting. You can catch up on any missing items by going to http://visionchoir.blogspot.com