The Project Begins

Our home for the project

Hello from Varazdin, Croatia. Rod and I are now on our third day here and already God is doing amazing work. After Mladen, the local minister, picked us up at the airport, we had lunch with him in Zagreb so that we could get acquainted. Afterwards, Mladen brought us to the church in Varazdin which will be our home for the duration of our project. After acquainting ourselves with the church building we went into town in order to change money and to pick up a few groceries.

Wednesday morning we started our day with a devotional designed to remind us that we are here to spread God's word and not our own as well as to reinforce that we should be concentrating on our readers as opposed to doing what's comfortable to us. Afterwards, we had some free time which we used to explore some more of Varazdin. We again met Mladen for lunch where we discussed the details and expectations of the project.

Rod presenting at the Information Meeting

Wednesday evening the project itself really started in earnest. At 6pm we had our information meeting with our readers. We had 26 people attend the meeting so Rod and I both had 13 readers signup with each of us. After the meeting, we got to meet the local congregation for the first time during a great video bible study of how we know that God is the Creator. The local church members were very warm and welcoming to us and they were glad we were here. After the study one of the members of the congregation asked me if I would read with her grandson and Rod received a message from a past reader wanting to study again so we are now at 14 readers each.

We started today off with a devotional dedicated to giving thanks to God for all that he has done for us. We discussed the many things that we were grateful for including the safe travels, the good turnout at the information meeting, and the very warm welcome we received from the local church members. After the devotional we started our reading sessions, both with a very full calendar. Mine so far have gone very well with some good conversations. I am looking forward to continuing to meet with readers today and tomorrow before we take our first free day on Saturday. On Sunday we will worship with the local church and then join them for lunch out of town at a gathering to celebrate the end of their Alpha classes.

We would like to ask that you continue to pray for us and for the work that we are doing here in Varazdin. Pray that we continue to share ourselves and God's word with our readers.