Mission trip in Serbia

As I wrote before, 7 people from our church, including me, went to Leskovac in Serbia on a mission trip to work with Roma community.

It was awesome! :)
We got up at 3am on a Monday morning and left Hondo's house at 3.40am.

Our team at 3.30am, right before we left Hondo's house.

We had a long drive ahead of us. We went with 2 cars; Hondo, Gasper, Polona and I were in Hondo's car and Mateja, Alex and Meagan were in Mateja's car. As I said, it was a long drive BUT we had a lot of fun. We got to know each other a bit since we didn't know each other at all, we shared our short testimonies with each other + some cool and weird stories of crossing the borders :)
We arrived to Leskovac at around 1pm and unpacked and then we had our first team meeting. We were staying at the church which was nice because everything was going on around church.
At the meeting we met all the teams that were a part of an English Camp (Serbian team, Roma team and Romunian team - a girl from Australia, a woman from America and an older couple from UK; they've been working in Romunia for a while now ). Steve was the leader of the English Camp (Steve is American but is married to Tanja, a Serbian woman and they live in Serbia) and he explained how everything should go and just basic stuff for English Camps, we talked about the theme (Underground) + we learned the camp dance! :)

Then we had some training; how to tell someone your testimony in 2 minutes, how to answer some particular questions in 30 seconds.. it was a lot of fun + we had to switch partners every time which means we got to know different people or at least we broke the ice.
We were eating our snacks all day long so we were pretty hungry and in the evening Steve and Serbian team took us in a restaurant downtown to eat something. The prices were so LOW - my small pizza cost 1,5€. And it was a good pizza.
One thing bothered me in that restaurant - people were allowed to smoke inside. Slovenian law says you're not allowed to do that so it was quite hard to stand it but it was only an hour, we survived :)

Day 2. English camp starts. Roma youth came and.. well, it was a bit awkward at the beginning, like at every English camp.
Mateja and I went upstairs to the main room (where all the meetings were and stuff) and we just went to meet the kids and try to communicate. We even took some pictures already.
It was a lot of fun and you could feel that we were all a bit reserved but the first step was made and the atmosphere was better. Steve said hi to everyone and we did our camp dance. Fun, fun, fun :) We looked at a video cip (Alanis Morissette - Ironic) and someone talked about that theme for a while; how can some things be ironic. Then we went into discussion groups to talk about it and the discussion groups were actually our english classes so the same people were in it. There were 5 english classes at the camp; in one were Kathleen and Amanda (American lady and Australian girl), in the second one was the British couple and we had 3; Hondo+Meagan in one, Gasper, Polona and Alex in the second one and Mateja and I in the third one. So, 5 english classes.
In ours, Mateja was the teacher, I was only helping her. I was actually the one who drew all the pictures next to the words. Funny funny stuff :)
Every group had a translator, ours was Snezana, lady from the Serbian team. Nice lady.


Anyway, we had 2 hours of english and then lunch. We ate a LOT of pleskavica :) we ate mostly meat, of course and I think it was YUMMY!
After lunch we had an hour break and then we played some games in the main room (all of us) and then we went to the Roma community which they call Mahala. They said they have 3 Mahala's in Leskovac and there's around 10.000 Roma people. Wow!
So, we went to their Mahala and it was hard to see those poor people and their village. But they welcomed us just lovely. We did our camp dance and Hondo was speaking that evening. Then we went to our discussion groups and talked about the story that Hondo was telling us. You could see that some children were still 100% reserved while others were opening themselves and they started sharing things from their lives.
We ate our dinner (burek, YUMMY) and then went back to church. We had a meeting with all the teams and just talked about first impressions and second impressions.. Our team talked about it before and we said it felt like it was the last day of the 3rd year of English camp in Slovenia because Roma youth is SO open. It was really amazing how quickly they accepted us into their culture and their world which made us accept them. They welcomed us and our job was to just be ok with it. It was so easy it's hard to believe.
And it's SO great that we mostly understood everything they said in their language because Serbian language is similar to Slovenian language. It was hard at the beginning because they speak Roma-Serbian language but they tried to only speak Serbian. It was a challenge for all of us.

Everyday was quite the same even though the schedule was different but every day were discussion groups + english classes and then lunch and activities with an evening program.
One afternoon our team prepared Cowboy night and it was really great! We had cowboy hats, we learned how to dance a cowboy dance and we played a lot of games (Dead cow, Iiiha - do you know how to play this game? A GREAT game! :))..

Our English class (with Mateja) was great.



We got to know 10 kids better and it was really hard to leave Serbia, especially because of them. They are just so awesome. Not just them but all of them. They're nice and warm people and boys are such gentlemans, wow! They didn't moan if dinner was running late or we had to wait for something.. instead, they started playing games (clapping with hands..) and it was so much fun! :)
Some of them didn't know how to write or read because they don't go to school. Dejan was one of them and he was in our english class. I felt overprotective and every time someone laughed at him, I felt that need to comfort him. Laughing only happened on the first day because then we set up some rules.

Our last day of english class was different. We spoke about family and we learned basic words (mother, father, ...) and then we talked about words that should be in every family (love, friendship, comfort, encouragement, laughter, discipline..) and how most families don't have that. But one family does and that's God's family. Then we shared our own stories/testimonies and told them about the relationship that we have with God and how they can have it too (most of them know God and they say they're believers. But they don't have that personal relationship with Him).
For a goodbye Mateja and I prepared cards for our whole group and we looked up for verses from the Bible for each and every one of them. We wrote in English but Snezana translated them + the Kindergarten that I work in prepared candlesticks and we gave them that, too. They appreciated it a lot and right before we went home, boys from our class waited for us outside and hugged us and thanked us again.
It was really hard to say goodbye.















One thing surprised me - most of them have internet and facebook (and mobiles and cameras..). They seem to be very poor but still have all of that. Well, I have no idea how that works but I'm glad some of them have that because now we can stay in touch! :) When I came home, at least 5 people added me on facebook and even more yesterday. It's crazy :) they wrote me on facebook chat and it's funny because they wrote in Serbian and I'm not quite good in Serbian language. I'm trying, though, and it's kind of ok.

On our way back to Slovenia our part of the team had a lot of fun


but later we talked and agreed we're sorry we have to go back. It was the best feeling ever to see those kids get closer to the Lord and sing worship songs.. + we got a message from Steve later that day that 6 kids raised their hands when they asked who wants to accept the Lord into their heart. WOOHOO, praise the Lord! :) We were so happy and excited and sorry we weren't there to see that. We asked Steve about the names of the kids that raised their hands and I know 2 of them and one of them was in my english class! :) Isn't that amazing? :)


I wish I could go back there next year. It was the best English Camp ever!