Hello friends and family! You have made your way to the Bosnia outreach team blog! It will be updated every three or four weeks!
We arrived in Sarajevo on March 30 late in the evening after a solid day of travel. In the morning of our first day we ventured through the city and up to an old fort ruin. It was amazing! Wile we were sitting in the fort God started speaking to us about some of the plans he had for our team while we are here for 6 weeks. One of them being cleaning up the fort, it has lots of trash and old bottles surrounding it and 4 out of 6 of us had the same thought at almost the same time that we should clean up the area in and around the ruin! We came to the quick conclusion that it was the Holy Spirit and got so excited! We are connecting with a few people we know in the city and hopefully start on the project soon!
We also were able to connect with some of the local skaters which was awesome! As soon as we walked up the steps to the skate park they yelled "Look it's the foreigners! You are welcome here!" We thought it was hilarious how open they were and how psyched they were to skate with us! They took us to a skate spot in town which was super fun and continued to show us around and just hang out. We also have been able to connect with some of the people the team met last year and hang out and have meals with them.
We planned on doing skatepark repairs the second week, but when we went it had actually been fixed up a lot since the team was here last year! So we are working on adding a rail that will be permanent so it cannot be stolen. But when we woke up Monday morning, there was snow. Lots of snow. We got a few centimetres on Sunday/Monday, then on Tuesday morning we woke up to almost five centimetres in the city! Which lead to us being able to snowboard on Thursday! A friend here had tons of extra gear so we went and rode with him on some hilarious retro snowboards!
Then on the weekend we were able to connect with some locals and just build a relationship with them and tell them how we actually do care about them and that we know a God who cares about them too! On Friday night we were able to go to the skatepark and prophesy and declare some things that God put on our heart for the skatepark and city as a whole! After this time we really felt an atmosphere shift. We were floating under the enemy's radar and now that we have made a stand and established the kingdom. The evil spiritual beings now know who we are and have their eye on us and we can actually feel it! Which is a little crazy but also amazing. The enemy now knows that we mean business.
As a team we have had some amazing worship times and God daily strengthens us by speaking truths or highlighting scripture that is so encouraging. As a team we have noticed that when we genuinely ask God to show us where he is, he will never miss the opportunity!
We also were able to spend six days in a city called Zenica, an hour north of Sarajevo. We are working with a group of people who run a daycare and a farm. They have two amazing projects that were so awesome to be apart of! The daycare centre is for kids with psychological and social disorders. They are such awesome kids! We also did some work at "the farm". The farm is run by teen and adult boys and it is similar to a half way house. The boys are able to learn to live in community and to work hard.
We took some time to go for a hike to a lookout over the city and pray with some of the core leaders and their families and a few of the youth as well! It was such a good experience to look over another city and cover it in God's love. We have been learning how powerful our words are when we prophesy and declare things with our mouths. We declared lots over the city and could feel God's presence the whole time!
On Saturday we planned on having a BBQ at the park, play some soccer and just bless people, BUT it rained. So we relocated to table tennis and board games at the church. We also had a bit of worship and heard a message from one of the young people at the church.
This past week in Zenica has been awesome! We were able to bless the kids/young people as well as all of the leaders of the centre and church. We had lots of laughs and totally experienced the true "joy of The Lord." It was amazing to ask the people where they had a need and simply fill it!
We would love prayer as this coming week we are helping out at a kids program in Dobrinja in Sarajevo. We would love prayer for energy to love the kids and be a blessing as well as for people to open up and actually send their kids to the program! Thank you everyone for your support!
Love, the Bosnia Crew.
