Newsletter Autumn 2013

WE ARE BACK ONLINE 

This time stronger with one new team member and new ideas! New doors that God opened up for us and many new people to reach with the gospel. 

In the team, we spend even more time with God together, sharing what is going on in our separate lives and use time in prayers. One of the new ideas is that we want to include the same books and materials in our bible studies with students, so we can build students meetings up even better and more organised. 

Text for the picture: Our team gathered together

with the General secretary for EUS Serbia. From 

left at the back row: Jelena Vilotijevic, Samuil Petrovski,

Rebekka Barbara Friis Rasmussen, Peter Stonelake. 

From left at the front row: Sasa Olah and Danijel Petkovski. 

 Here in the beginning of our blog we want to great you all with some verses from the bible that has been encouraging words lately for our team: 1. John. 3, 19-27

This passage has reminded us about some of the basic truths in our Christians lives, also in our lives of being leaders. God is indeed greater than our hearts and is sovereign (v.20). God therefore needs to be the ruler of our lives, the one we relay our lives to and the one we trust more than our selves or the people around us. God’s will for our lives is firstly to “believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ” (v.23). Jesus came to this earth to save every one of us from death, a future without the presence of God, because he loves us even more, than he loves himself. Secondly, God wishes us to “love one another” (v. 23). Every day in our work with student’s we try to love and pass just a tiny part of the love Jesus have to any individual. This is the most concrete expression of God’s love to us, we have in this world; to love one another. These two callings are what drive us every single day of our lives and our ministry.

And after this focus of the foundation of our work, focus will now be on what have actually happened in the first month of the school year.

Concert evening: 

As a beginning of the school year at university, we invited to an event where we specially had on our hearts to get in touch with the freshmens. We decided to have a concert at the university ground in corporation with the student union. Quickly, we got permission from the university to do it at their ground, also we got permission to do the concert in the time where there were still lessons: A true blessing and testimony of God’s willingness to open doors. The concert was held in front of the student coffee shop. A café we have been corporated with for many years and the same café we use for the English Conversation club. It gave the students a chance to buy a drink or a snack while enjoying the music. When we finally began, 50 people showed up. We strongly believe that God prepared every single student, who were there, for this evening. The songs were a mix of both different genres of music and lyrics. We went from the popular rock music of the area to jazz and blues for ending up also having Christian worship songs. The band consisted of 3 of our own people: Danijel, Sasa and Pete. However, we had invited two special guest stars to join: Boris Bozovic and Dragana Stijepovic. Boris was, as a student a part of the weekly bible studies and therefore, it was a special pleasure to have him as a part of the band in the middle of his busy schedule.

Boris singing with the band

                   

Dragana (student) is getting ready to go on the stage

In between the songs EUS got the opportunity for present the activities we have during the week and explaining about our focus on Jesus.

Text for picture: The band is playing while the students enjoy the good entertainment.

After the concert, we went around interviewing some of the students taking part of this event, and here are some of the reactions on both the concert and on the fact that there on the university exist a Christian Student Organisation who aims to talk about Jesus and Christianity as the deepest reason of life. 

Mexican evening:

One week later, we had another special event: A Mexican evening. The main purpose of the night was to build on the new contacts we were able to make during or even before the concert.  The students were invited to taste authentic Mexican food and hear more about the foundation of EUS. 

 As a very special help we got help from a friends in Podgorica, Astrid and her husband. She is originally from Mexico and therefore she naturally has a lot of knowledge about food and traditions. Even though, she had a problem with a broken foot, she wanted to join us, and we are so thankful for her help. The family is here because they started a company working with tourism in Montenegro, however, their main purpose of being here is to reach people with Christ through the work they are doing. Therefore, they were also some of the first ones to help getting the gospel of John printed in the local language, so even more people could hear about Jesus. Their life is a testimony of how all Christians life should be. Living life honestly in faith and share it with the people we meet on our way. 

Text for the picture: Traditionally food and decorations from Mexico. 

When the Mexican evening finally began, the whole office was full of students. Danijel, General secretary of the organization, explained more about the organization, and after enjoying the amazing food, the Serbian general secretary of EUS had a short speech about the essens of Jesus being in this world and why we want to reach students with the message of him. The evening was truly good and new friendships were starting through this specific event. 

Text for the picture: The whole office was full of people and many good conversations were shared. 

Student meeting: 

One of our normal activities are the students meeting we have every Wednesday evening. This is a place where the university students get an opportunity to hear talks about God, discuss a biblical topic or in other areas get in contact with Christianity and see more of who God is.

Our main topic for the next couple of months is “Making choices in life”. Danijel had two evenings pointed on different areas in this perspective. The first evening was about why the bible is important in our lives? Second evening was centred around Luke’s gospel chapter 14. The point of the evening was that Jesus deeply wants a relationship with all people, and therefore we much accept his invitation for that.

Be not afraid

A couple of weeks ago we had a book promotion for the book: “Be not afraid” in relation to our student meeting. We were honoured to have the joy of having the author of the book, David Ivaska and his wife Sally with us. The night before ,Danijel and his wife Martina, invited people to a fellowship dinner where we could get to know eachother more. The food was delicious and the fellowship good. A good preparation for the book promotion the evening after. 

 Text for the pictures: A lot of good conversations to the fellowship dinner. 

The book is leading many different bible studies over the topic “Be not afraid”. These studies builds upon a personal crisis David faced in an age of 50 that made him scared of the future and took him into months of depression. In that time he read through the Bible and stop every times he read the words “be not afraid”. Years later, it turned out to the Bible study material. David and Sally shared part of their life story regarding this topic and also, David shared a couple of the stories the Bible studies builds upon. However, as a further introduction for the book we will here phrase a bit from the book itself: 

“God offers us his comfort. He Promises us his power and strength. But sometimes when hard times his us – illness, death, job loss, relationship troubles – we need to be reminded that God is with us. Again and again Scriptures teaches, “Do not be afraid.” In these bible studies David Ivaska has gathered God’s words of encouragement for us. Reading through these promises from the whole Bible, we are once again reminded of God’s goodness. As we soak up the truth of the passages, we will be changed.” 

Text for the pictures: The books are ready to be given out
while good conversations are done in the background. 

Text for pictures: An encouraging evening with students
who were interested in the topic and willing to discuss it.
That can only be a joyfull thing. 

Guest from LIFE 

Text to picture: Enjoying fellowship while planning the future. 

     In the same period as the visit from the Ivaskas, we also had other guest from our partner organization “Life”. The biggest event, we do together is the summer’s sport camp also know as Camp Monty. Jimmy Campton (leader from Monty Camp) came to prepare for the winter’s reach out while a team from Romania with Iulian Avramescu, came along to build up fellowship with us and see how we can maybe expand our corporation with them in the future. 

Danish guys here: 

Surprisingly enough, we had a third group of people coming in the same period. A small group from Denmark landed. Some of them had been here before through the Danish Christian Student Organization, KFS. The main focus for them were to be an encouragement for us. However, in top of that they were able to make contact with students that has not yet been in touch with our work. In general, there is a close corporation between EUS CG and KFS build through many years of good relations. 

Danish folks 

Bible studies 

A last thing to mention looking to the first month of work is our work with bible studies. 

A year ago we started one women bible study group for university girls. We realised that it is much easier for girl to connect and open up if they have the freedom of being woman together. The focus was and is still to look into different women in the bible to see how God have used them in his glorious plan. This Autumn we had “the problem” of too many women coming to the bible studies and therefore, we needed to split the group in two. The experience we have is that God can do more, when we have a smaller group, then the girls can easier connect with eachother. So this year we started our second women bible study group. It is a great blessing to see how God has worked through these meetings.

Otherwise, a great deal of our time also go to have personal, one-to-one, bible studies with students. It gives us an extraordinary possibility to get even deeper talks about God and talk personal words from God into peoples lives.  Here, God can really chance people’s hearts. 

Future: 

Just in the nearby future we have a lot of things coming up. 

• Jelena and Sasa are going to lead and talk to the students meetings. 
• EUSSerbia celebrate their 25^th year jubilee. We are of course going to celebrate it. 
• We will have a visit from Great Britain by Heather Nikola Staff. She is coming to encourage us and give a speech to the student meeting over the topic: Christian moral in politics – how to be professional and Christian. 
• Visit Denmark. The Danish general secretary and a worker from the Danish student organization will come to visit us in the end of November. They will have a speech at the student meeting over the topic: “Making choices in life”. Also, the purpose of the trip is to enjoy fellowship and structure our corporation. 
• Our general secretary is going to Italy on FEUER (Conference for evangelists) . 

Prayer requests: 

Please, do pray for: 

• … our English conversations club. This is on of our important activities to reach new students. Pray that students will use this offer of practising conversational English and pray for new people to come. 
• … our movie nights at Fridays. That more people will come and we will be able to point on Jesus through good discussion at these nights. 
• … the students that have been a part of our activities but not attend anymore. 
• … God to open doors to new areas that we are working with e.g. high school ministry and a improve corporation with the orthodox faculty.