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