Team Croatia Missions Trip - Day 3

On Wednesday, we began the morning with breakfast and then a morning session with Jeff Cox. Brett and I have known him since our good ole' days at High Street in Springfield, Missouri, and he's currently on the staff at Kansas City Baptist Temple. For our American group, he taught in the morning and led a series on beings mimics of Christ. Excellent series. . . I always learn so much from Jeff's lessons, and Team Croatia was definitely blessed.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning, the ladies organized a Vacation Bible School for the kids at the church. From 10-12, we had Bible stories, made a craft, sang songs, and played a game. We had around 25 kids show up on the first day, many of which come from the gypsy villages. The Roma people, or gypsies, are sort of a separate group from the Croatians, and many of them live together in villages, which are typically poverty-stricken, delapidated communities. I didn't get the chance to drive over to any of the villages, but the ones who did see them said that they were heartbreaking. Jared saw a young girl, probably around 3 years old, sitting outside naked. Her father sat at the door of their house, refusing to let her inside, but forced her to stay in the open in hopes of garnering sympathy and/or money. The missionaries told us it was not uncommon for the children to be outside with very little clothing during the winter months. It was eye opening to realize how bleak living conditions were for certain people. Yet, we were also surprised at how loving and open many of these children were.



Melissa practices her designs for the face painting. It was a huge hit, the kids loved having their faces painted.

While the girls did the Bible school, the guys hit the streets of Cakovec and did some witnessing.

Pastor Rich interpreted for us that day. It took some getting used to, not being able to quickly communicate. For one activity, we split up into two groups and taught them Acts 16:31 in English. Afterwards, we had them teach it to us in Croatian. They had no reservations at all about laughing at our attempts to speak their language, especially the most difficult part, which was trying roll the "r"s. Some of the kids knew a little English, so they helped us talk to the other kids. We quickly got over being self-conscious and jumped right in, in attempts to reach out to another culture. It was good for us to get out of our comfort zone.

This was Viktorija, who had such a cute little face! One of the keys I learned to the language was that their j's sound like our y's.

I forget this girl's name, but she was very kind and was there every morning.

The first day of Vacation Bible School.

The Croation language must have a sense of humor . . .the abbreviation for the United States of America is SAD.

Of all the relationships I developed on the trip, this picture represents one of the most moving. Meet Elvira, the girl in the middle. Don't think of the Oak Ridge boys' pronounciation, but once you correctly roll the "r", it sounds more like Elvita. Brett just ended up affectionately calling her Velveeta all week, we had to explain to her that he was calling her a cheese. Anyway, when we broke up into two groups to teach each other the Bible verse in our respective languages, she was in my group. She probably spoke the most English out of the group, so I used her a lot to be my translator. Elvira was very patient with me as I attempted to speak my first Croatian phrase, Vjeruj u Gospodina Isus Krista ce biti spasen (or something like that . . . Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.) It was one of those times where you just instantly connect with someone and have a friendship. Of course, it helped when she looked at me and said, You . . are . . very . . pretty. Hhhm, crazy, but I really, really like this girl for some reason!! Besides that, though, she was very helpful as she helped both the Americans and the Croatian kids to communicate to each other during the week.

The day was also Hannah's birthday. She is the daughter of the missionary family, the Leslies. Hannah was a super sweetheart, she jumped right in and started teaching us Croatian words, and filling us in on the culture. Her parents said there aren't many people she can speak English with, and that really made us think of how lonely and isolated missionaries and their children can get. Hannah is a very bright young lady, and she was so encouraging to us Americans as we were trying to adjust to a foreign culture. Her mother, Tori, baked her a cake and we sang happy birthday to her after the evening church service.

Afterwards, we went back to the Baptist Union and gave her some gifts. Our group stopped at a store on the way to find presents to give her, which gave us one of the trip's funny memories. About 7 of us barge into the store, and start scouring the shelves for possible gifts. We are all chatting back and forth across the aisles, trying to do the Kuna to Dollars currency exchange, loudly saying, Will this work? What about this? How much does this cost? Who cares? We felt like we definitely confirmed the Loud American stereotype. Oh well, we just wanted to do something nice for her and let Hannah know we appreciated her.

Team Croatia Missions Trip -Days 1 & 2

From July 6-16th, a group from our church, Toledo Baptist Temple, embarked on a trip to Croatia to take part in fulfulling a commission given to us to "Go". It was such a rewarding time, and the sights and experiences were so monumental and breathtaking that it seems a little overwhelming to attempt to describe it in one entry. And, though I tend to be quiet in real life, I lean towards wordy once my fingers are on a keyboard . . .so there's your warning. My plan is to recap the trip day-by-day to give a glimpse to those that prayed for us and were involved with the team even as they remained stateside. I took nearly 400 pictures during the week, but will try to pick the highlights.

The first picture I took was at the airport in Amsterdam. Our team of 15 people had made the overnight flight from Detroit to Amsterdam without a hitch, and not until we were checking in for our flight from there to Croatia did we realize that there was a huge glitch. Except for one person, all of our tickets from Amsterdam to Zagreb, Croatia had been cancelled. A massive blame game ensued - KLM pinned it on our travel agent, who knew NWA was to blame, who thought Croatia Air was guilty . . .or something like that, I still don't understand it. It was a very confusing, high-pressure situation that ended up with customer service people vacating their desks, several phone calls to the States at 3 am their time, and about 5 people yelling at Brett and our group who insisted we cut in line when we were simply moving around to another counter like the customer service ladies asked us to do. It was actually getting sort of so hilariously serious that I had to snap a picture.

The part that didn't make sense about our tickets supposedly being cancelled in June, was that all our luggage was still tagged to arrive in Zagreb. Had our second flight been cancelled, wouldn't our luggage have been set to arrive in Amsterdam only? Anyway, it was a GREAT start to the trip, but with some quick thinking and flexibility, we were able to work out a solution. Half of the group were still able to get on the original flight, and we were assured that everyone's luggage would arrive with them. The other half got on a flight to Budapest, Hungary and Brett's brother, an international tour director, was able to help make arrangements for a driver to meet us at the airport and drive us 3.5 hours to Croatia.

Here we are in the van riding from Budapest to Croatia. We don't remember much about the ride, most of us slept the whole time.

Everyone was finally reunited at the Baptist Union, where we stayed for the duration of the trip. It was actually a great facility for missions groups to lodge at, with double-bed rooms and private bathrooms, a decent kitchen, and large meeting room. It was located in Poleve, which was only 10 minutes away from the church we were working with in Cakovec, pronounced "chock-o-vitz", or, for our group, "chexmix". Everyone arrived to the Union by Tuesday evening, July 7th. The missionaries, the Leslie family, met us there and a couple women in their church cooked us a traditional Croatian meal of stuffed green peppers, potatoes, and sweet cornbread. It was very delicious and we were finally able to relax after the stress of getting to our destination. In the area we were in, there were lots of cornfields, and it looked a lot like Ohio.

The sun setting on the corn fields was a beautiful sight. Also in the picture is the van we rented, which Jason said felt like driving a toaster. Look for an upcoming entry on Day 6 for drama surrounding the Toastermobile.

Here is the church in Cakovec, the Neovisna Baptisticka Crkva Stablo Zivota (Independent Baptist Church, Tree of Life). Johnny Leslie, the missionary, and a Croatian national, Pastor Rich, work together to pastor this church and also one in Verazdin, about 20 minutes away. Our group planned to split our time between the two works. Tomorrow begins the actual mission work . . .