thought bucket

We’ve made it.  We had a rather blessed uneventful trip into Sarajevo on Wednesday night and have almost adjusted to the time difference.  On Thursday we met up at the EUS (Evangelical Union of Students / Our InterVarsity counter part) office to be sent out two by two to the different university buildings around the city to meet Bosnian students.  That’s right, less than 24 hours after landing we jumped right in.  The amazing benefit of that is like jumping into a cold pool; we get over our fear of the unknown and begin to get used to the culture around us.  There we’re plenty of awkward conversations and many mistakes in communication, but friendships were started.  The goal of our plunge was to set a tone for engagement and our students soaked it up.  A practical goal was to take a survey of the Bosnians to see which activities they would be interested in doing which will inform how we plan the next month.

Small detail: We planned to show up and teach English classes all three weeks, all week long.  Due to a number of factors those plans have been all but tossed.  Welcome to missions.  We are thankful for our hosts and their many prayers that have led them to head in a different direction.  We believe and trust that God is doing a new thing in ministry here and we are excited to be a part of it.  So, what are we doing?  Well, tomorrow all the staff are getting together to look over the surveys that our students took and plan events / classes / seminars for the next three weeks leading up to camp.  We’re still going to be spending the majority of our time having kafa (coffee) with Muslim students and building relationships to share the gospel.  However, instead of the contact point being them coming to English classroom, it’s us going to them either directly like the surveys, or through the Bosnians we’ve met bringing their friends to our events.  We are excited that our students will be developing skills (organizing and planning events, inviting people they’ve never met, crossing cultures, being vulnerable, etc) that will definitely be useful back home on campus.

Many students told stories of how they were nervous at first to just walk up a Bosnian and start talking to them.  There was plenty of failure.  But everyone came back having had at least one great conversation and a definite contact to take to coffee later.

Pray that we will serve the ministry here well and connect many new Bosnian students to the Christian community.