A summer of God’s love and faithfulness

By being in the beginning of a new month, we look back on July with great joy in our hearts. It has been full of teams, camps and follow up and the intensity of our programme can not be neglected, but God has been working in so many marvellous ways. Therefore, the intensity has only veen in the best way, for God has over and over again shown his goodness through reaching people's hearts and minds by his Spirit. God indeed wishes to be in relationship with every single person and in all this we experience that he guides us in which steps to take next.

God's goodness has indeed be a theme the last month. He is good and faithful to us every single day where he gives out of his love no matter which circumstances of good and bad we have in our everyday lives. We want to give thanks to him through Psalm 136, 1-3 + 26 in the Bible.

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
His love endures forever.
...
Give thanks to the God of heaven.
His love endures forever." 

In the last newsblog we had different prayer requests. God had shown his goodness to us by answering those prayers. We asked you to pray for both English Camp and Camp Monty and God has heard them and answered them.

We hope that the next couple of drops from our month can point on exactly this!

English Camp

In the beginning of July, we hosted a team (7 students and 2 staff workers) from the English student organisation, UCCF. Their primarily calling was to help us in hosting an English camp, where the main focus was to share the gospel with the participants. The speeches touched on topics like: satisfaction, worth, forgiveness, suffering and hope. When we had heard a talk, we would go into small discussion groups so we could continue to reflect upon the given topic of the day. In the mornings we used time on English lessons for the participants which the English students has prepared ahead of time. In the afternoons different sports activities were done and in the evening we had different entertaining things on the program such as keltic dance, talent evening and a bonfire evening, where we were sharing our best experiences on the camp, ate delicious bonfire food and sang!

In the breaks at the camp we were having fun with
games, followship and coffee.

English lessons are done.

We had our camp in the most beautiful surroundings.
The whole camp is gathered to say goodbye.

It is a good exercise to try to learn Keltic dance.

Dancing Keltic dance creates a lot of laughter!
The music goes so fast so it is impossible for a
new dancer to follow all the steps! 

There were so many good talents at the talent evening, but
the one that melted most heart was, when Natalija together with
her father went to the stage to perform a song. 

Every day we had morning meeting where we began
with worship for after that to continue to listen
to a song. 

In numbers, it was not the biggest camp we have had through the years, however, God was working big in people's lives. Every day it was like nearly every single one of the participants were taking steps in their relationship with Jesus. God is a living God, who wishes to reach people with his love for them!

Before the camp was starting, the team from England used time in preparing for the camp, get to know our town, our culture and got to know students through different events. The biggest of these was a barbecue evening in our pastor's garden.We ate really good food, sat around the bonfire, played games, played music and played a bit of sport.

The coolest team of English and Montenegrin people.

Good talks at the table while eating!

After the camp we naturally used some time on following up on the students who had been on the camp. We e.g. went on a trip to the costcity, Kotor, where we saw the old town for afterwards to use some hours at the beach. That gave us a good opportunity to get to know each other more, talk more about Jesus and just have some good quality time together. 

Here we are on our way to Kotor, enjoying the good
view over the bay.

The English team did such a good job! Thanks for coming guys!

Camp Monty

Last week was an intense week full of good experiences. We corporate for more than the 10th time with an American organisation known as LIFE in hosting Camp Monty for many of the children and young people in our city. They come with quit a big team from primarily U.S. (from different states) and the camp both focuses on sport, English language teaching and most of all God.

The team live in the form where no students live over the summer, while the children and young people live home. During the days they will all meet at various location in the city.

In the morning we had different sports activities like football, basketball and tennis. During the trainings on from the team of Camp Monty would share their testimony with the participants. In the afternoons we had English for the children and conversational English for the high schoolers. In all the teaching, team members pointed on Jesus and the oldest students went in top of that into quit deep conversations about what faith is, who Jesus is and what the point is in believing in him. The evening program variated in different ways. The first evening of the camp we had a big concert in the middle of town. Second evening we had an outreach to the nearby roma-community. The last two evenings we had a meeting at a local theatre. We worshipped, heard a talk about Jesus and afterwars we went out for ice-cream or coffee with as many children and young people, who wanted to go with us.

Meeting before the camp starts! 

The children and teachers will not give up even though
it rains! It is all about being creative.

Some of the people attending tennis.

Children learning English. 

The band who played at the concert the first
evening of the camp.

Around 150 kids we  joining foodball every single day! 

 Last week were many spiritual seeds planted from Jesus in children and young peoples hearts all across Niksic. Seeds that were pointing on the love Jesus has to every single person. Because this specific camp has been done so many years in a ros, we seriously can start to see the fruit of it in our daily work. Some of the children, who participated in the camp 10 years ago, are now attending the EUS-meetings during the year! We look forward to , in hopefully 10 years from now, to see even more children turn their lives into the hands of God.

August

Primarily this month will be a month of vacation for us. We are going to do various different things individually in our team. However, after a couple of intense months, we all need vacation. We look forward to be refreshed.

However, before we get that far, these last couple of days  have been full of following up on the camps from this month. We are trying to meet one-to-one with people, continuing English lessons, hanging out with volunteers, playing football etc.

Meeting with the translaters and helpers of
Camp Monty. 

Prayer requests

• Please pray for the next week of vacation. For refreshments for all members of our team, renewed energy and strentgh for the new semester coming up. 
• Please pray for the follow up from the two camps we had this summer. Pray for the children and young people who took steps with Christ. Pray that they will be able and willing to take even more steps with him.
• Please pray for the semester coming up. That we will have ideas, inspiration and focus on in which ways God wants us to go.