Village life

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! Recently, Chara and I took a trip to the village of Omorani in central Macedonia. The town literally looked like it could have just popped out of a storybook, as you will see from this video (which includes wildlife). Enjoy, and remember to pray for the small villages of Macedonia, as they are important too:

A wedding celebration

We captured the tail end of this wedding celebration out the window of our apartment. Take a look and a listen!

Refugee Ministry

We had the opportunity recently to take part in the relief effort with the local church we attend here in Skopje. Here is what our day looked like:

We arrived at the makeshift village close to the Serbian border at about 11 am on a rainy, cool Tuesday morning. As we backed several cars up close to the train tracks, people of all ages, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, flocked the vehicles for bananas, bottled water, and rain ponchos. Many of the migrants had already begun the short walk north toward the border, where they would be picked up and carried further. 

After everyone received what they wanted, we proceeded to a tent where we could set up our official distribution area. Before long, another busload came through. The people seemed to have almost nothing -- many of them only had the clothes on their backs. We saw many mothers with little children, teens, and young men. Despite having traveled hundreds of miles and paying what little money they had on transportation, they still managed to smile and say "thank you" as they were given, clothes, toys, and care packages with food. 

I noticed several backpacks with Samaritan's Purse printed on them, and remembered that even on a cold and soggy day, the love of Christ was still shining on these people. 

Pray that these people can find places where they can live in peace. But even more critically, pray for opportunities for the gospel to be presented to these people in a clear way!

Matka

This is from a boat ride on the Treska River going through the Matka Canyon. It is about 40 minutes from our doorstep...

Vardar River

This beautiful, rushing river is only a a five minute walk from our apartment . . .

Worship in Macedonian

Prayer Partners,
Many of you no doubt are curious about what the worship service is like here in Skopje. Turns out it is not entirely different from how we do things back home :) Here is brief video from our church "God's Voice." You might recognize the tune!

Greetings from Skopje!

Hello Prayer Supporters,
Just a quick update that we have made it to Skopje and are getting settled in, and we officially start language learning next week.

Our initial impressions are very positive! Skopje has a large variety of cultures and ethnic groups, including Slavic as well as Greek Orthodox and Albanian Muslims. This will be both a challenge and a blessing as we seek to push back the darkness and saturate the gospel in an area with so much lostness.

Although most people here know "survival English," and even in some cases Russian, we are going to need to press in and strive to learn Macedonian to have the deep gospel conversations that we really want.

As always, we must have your prayers to be successful, and we hope that you will remember us frequently before the Father. Some things to pray for right now:

1) That we quickly learn Macedonian
2) That we will find the strategies that yield the most fruit and produce the biggest gospel impact
3) That God would lead us to those He has already prepared for salvation

Thank you, and we look forward to posting more updates soon!

D and C