Pray for the Balkans

Holy cow! Hello world! It's been a while. Good to see you all again! :)


Well - we've been rather busy lately (I mean I know I sure have).  So you may have known that whilst in Croatia we were working with the wonderful Uwe. And it was his vision to go around to each Balkan country's capitols, film it, interview the missionaries and church workers and people on the streets, and thence make a video to show the prayer needs of each country.   The intent is to show the videos next year at the Go 4 Jesus Conference next year.

The beginning of September was spent in preparation and studying for this journey.  The middle 10 days we were on the road filming.  Then the past week or so Rory and I have been editing, editing, and more editing! Uffta!!  Needless to say - we're glad it's behind us now.  But if the internet and my computer will cooperate.  I'd like to share some of the work we produced.   Enjoy and please let us know what you think of the videos (or if you'd like to see all the videos). Feel free to share the videos as well :)

Croatia!

Hello all. We just want to say thank you to all who have viewed our blog ,read our posts and prayed for us!

As you read in the previous blog we are now in the Spilt, Croatia. We are working a long side a missionary who goes by the name of Uwe who is from Germany. Uwe has a real heart for the Balkan Area. Uwe has a heart to see missionaries to go into these countries and to bring the light of Jesus with them.

So here is the plan of action for Transit Team 7 for the month of September: for the first 10 days Uwe has sent us a task of researching about 7 different countries, these include; Serbia , Slovenia , Montenegro , Bosnia , Croatia, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia. We are also given the time and freedom whilst here in Croatia to get involved with other activities.  These activities include taking part in the church youth group, helping in the church service by having Mpumi preaching, Caitie and Taylah sharing their testimonies, and the whole team is performing a drama. 

After these 10 days, Uwe will take us in his van to travel around each of the Balkan countries listed above.  We'll be spending 1-2 days at each place working  along side people and taking videos/photos to show the needs of these people in each of these countries. When we all heard that this is what we will be doing - we got very excited! 

So the last two days we have been all sitting on laptops and iPads and researching about these countries. The information we gather is for Uwe to use and put it on the website he is currently creating. This will include the videos we plan to shoot and the photos we take. That's awesome and super exciting right?! 

Since Split is right beside the beach and it is warm here, when we have free time the team will spend time on the beach chilling and swimming. What more could you ask for in the month of September? We also have been having lots of fun with Uwe and his family. 

Transit travels

Travel, drive, drive, drive, travel, travel, drive.........repeat.

We are finally in Croatia after what feels like days in a van traveling.  Adventure, mishaps, and blessings follow us every step of the way.  Yes there have definitely been things that have tripped us up since traveling back from Sweden.  But we have also met some WONDERFUL people along the way to feed us and give us shelter the past few days.

Ok coming back from Sweden:
--The bus taking us to the airport nearly left JungEun and Mpumi behind as it started leaving before they got on.   Thankfully he stopped after I told they weren't on board yet!
--Getting on the plane, Mpumi and I had to go back THREE times to adjust the weight in our bags to meet weight limits (we were only allowed 10 kg.....22 lbs).
-- Transit team 6 (Sydney and Henrik) met us at the airport to give us our van and welcome us back to the UK (I love those guys)......AND gave our van a make-over.......we loved that.   Post-it notes covered the van.....about 400 balloons inside....and the best part....glitter in the vents.   Thank-you Team 6 :)
-- Driving back (in the midst of balloons and glitter) our GPS took us around in circles 3 times getting us back to Lifehope around 3:30 am.

That was an eventful day :)


We spent the next few days at Lifehope, a wonderful place called the Manna House, and a day sightseeing around LONDON!!!!  We then left dark and early Friday morning to start our journey to Croatia.  Big mishap of the trip? I left my passport behind. That added about 2+ hours on to our trip.  Wonderful.  However, having such a great team - they all forgave me and we continued on.

From here on we experienced huge blessings from people.  Friday night Mpumi called a family he knew lived around OM Germany to ask for dinner.   No one except Mpumi could do that.   We met the Brown family, (who we had previously met at Transform in Rome) missionaries from Australia with 2 young children.  They spoiled us.  They had a gourmet meal with candle light.  They told us later that they made the cheesecake yesterday without knowing who would eat it all.  God was at work providing for us, even if our meal was 1030 at night.



The next day, we were met by another wonderful family in Germany for a true German lunch of potatoes and sausage.   Saturday night and Sunday morning we met with Hannes, who has worked with OM for about a year and able to provide us with pizza dinner and a wonderful Austrian country breakfast.

We met with 3 great families but I know more people helped coordinate our sleeping quarters and food provisions.  So a big THANK-YOU to all of you who helped, God will bless you for all you have done :)

Our time with OM Sweden

So here we are all chilling in Manna-house reflecting on our time in Sweden. We spent 13 amazing days in the beautiful country of Sweden. We arrived on the 15th after a very long journey that had started 0215 that morning.

Once we arrived, we were informed that the original schedule they had planned for us had fallen through just days before. This meant that we had to be flexible, which is no problem for our team. So the Sweden team took us in and were very hospitable from the word Go. They treated us so well the whole time we were there! So thank you OM Sweden! We were given several different Swedish lessons which varied from learning basic Sweden to Swedish history. 

We got involved with many different ministries that OM Sweden staff members help out with. These ministries included the Underground, which is a youth programme they work with and are closely associated with. We worked with the Salvation Army boys who have moved mostly from Afghanistan and came to Sweden for educational purposes. As a team we were able to work with these guys by just having fun and chatting with them. We also spent  few days at the local city and university palpitating in some friendship evangelism

We were honoured to give back to OM Sweden anyway we could - so we cleaned the base for them.

We were also able to participate in a very Swedish activity.  this meant going to a local forest to pick a variety of berries and mushrooms. Everyone really enjoyed this activity and the end results included cheesecake, pie, and jam. 

We all really enjoyed our time in Sweden and saw ourselves grow closer to Jesus and to many of the OM Sweden staff. Please keep this field and the staff in your prayers. 

A word from Mpumi - as dictated to Caitie

On friday we learned about the history of Sweden.  It is evident that the welfare stands very high in their society.  In our lives we have never seen so many volvos.  This is among the safest cars in the world - which describes their culture, one that values their safety and security.  As we focus on reaching this Swedish community (Raslat - there are suppose to be umlouts over the vowels) of approximately 5000 people with over 50 nations represented please pray that we would be a light to some of these people.  For instance, yesterday we were in an elevator for the first time with a young boy from Eutrea (an African country that is in the top 10 most persecuted countries in the whole world).  We have never met anyone from that country in our lives.  So pray that we will reach these lersecuted nations here in a religiously free country.

We are having fun learning a few simple phrases in Swedish:

Gud alskar oss (God loves us)
Vi jad fel (we all fail)
Jesus dug fur oss (Jesus died for us)
Vi kann bli Guds ven (we can become Gods friend)

Super simple yet effective.....and awesome :)

Hejda (hey-door): goodbye!

Hello everyone!

A lot has happened since our last post. I will recap what's been going on in a bit. However one important piece of information first: our team now looks slighty different.  Team 6 and 7 switched a few members and even though MJ will be greatly missed we would now like to welcome Taylah to our team!

Taylah, 18, hails from the land down under: AKA Australia (in case you were unsure). She is full of joy and energy and life, and yet brings a new level of sensitivity to our team.  We are very excited to have her.

Now where did we leave off the last time you heard from us? Well we were in Eden Valley in Northern England working with kids in a holiday club first in Kirkoswald and then Greystoke.  A wonderful man named Carl helped facilitate and organize the entire thing both weeks.  We couldn't have done anything without him.  We met some wonderful kids. But we were also able to talk with the more mature members of the churches and towns. One of my personal highlights is going to a dinner (by myself - no other transiters) with my host Mom and several of her friends and neighbors). After introducing myself and OM I was immeditely whirled into deep and meaningful questions like what is the meaning of life -why are we the only beings who think we can go into heaven, why do Christians think God is the only way, etc. It was fantastic discussion in a very open environment.

Our time at Greystoke was great! Those working with the younger kids saw it grow from 3 kids to 10 the next day. For those of us working with the older youth we aaw it go from 3 kids to 1 the next day.  It is easy to say that that might have been discouraging for those of us with the older kids.  But God works in the small things as well as the big. If he loses one out of 100 sheep - he will seek the sheep out. Even though we had small numbers - God is doing something big. And we all had a great time doing it.

The following week we reunited with the ever so lovely Team 6 and went on a camping trip in Quinta, England.  We were given a great time of training, team building exercises/compettions (obviously our team always won...hehehe).  It felt like summer camp again. Please pray that we put everything we learned into practice during our time on the road the next couple of months.

Last week we went to Lifehope near Birmingham for more training, lessons, fellowship, and relaxation (and Jurasic park marathons).  This past Thursday morning our team left at zero dark thirty (2:15 am) to fly to our new home in Sweden. Our journey together took about 14 hours. Through mishaps and misunderstandings with our transportation - our team remained patient and we were provided with understanding people to help us along.

We are in a place called Jonkoping (there are dots above both the o's which makes the pronunciation "yonchirpin").  I look forward to telling you how things progress throughout the week (in a much less lengthy way) in a few days!

Greetings from Eden Valley! Transit Team 7 is currently in the Lake District of England even though I (Rory) I am from the wonderful UK, I have never been to this part. The part we are in is very beautiful and rural, which is very different for everyone. At the moment we are working with the church Kirkoswald Methodist Chapel. See picture.

Our team is helping in two different outreaches (Mpumi, Grace and Jung Eun) are helping with the Time Travelers Holiday Bible club, which runs in the morning for ages 4-10 and Caitie, MJ and I are helping with Decathlon for ages in 11-18 in the afternoon. Both teams are seeing God move in powerful ways. In the evening the whole team is helping with running games/activates for the youth. We are all having so much fun and having plenty of laughs.

In the evening we are all going back to our host families, who are fantastic and feeding us like kings and queens. So everyone please keep us in your prayers

Our prayer requests are the following..

·         Continue to  bond as a team

·         That the seeds we are planting in the hearts of the people here in the Eden Valley will continue to grow

·         For our future placements; that God will prepare their hearts for our arrival