Croatia/Bosnia & Hercegovina
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Ground-breaking in Rijekaby Carey |
As you may have read in our "Back in Croatia" section, Carey recently lead of team of 7 from Oak Ridge, Tennessee to Rijeka for an English workshop outreach. It was exciting and faith-stretching to put together such an event in a place where we have only had very limited contact with students and no full-time ministry presence. We wanted to devote a little extra space here to share a little more about what took place to see this into reality and what it means to us from the broader perspective of the overall ministry of Campus Crusade in Croatia.
Where It All StartedIt has long been our desire to pioneer new campuses, while continuing to build minstries of evangelism and discipleship on campuses where we currently have full-time staff. A little over a year ago, Carey was given the task to try to make some inroads into one of the Croatian universities which we had never tapped. It is located in Rijeka, about 2 hours from Zagreb on the Croatian coast. At various times throughout the spring of 2003, Carey took small teams on 1-day trips to meet with survey students to find out more about the campus community and to distribute student newsletters, which pointed them to our web page where they could find out more about us and, even more importantly, more about what it means to know Christ. These trips were always encouraging and continued to build our hopes of trying an outreach of some type, just to see what sort of response we might get. This culminated in our first attempt, which was a relationship seminar based on the materials from "The 5 Love Languages", by Gary Chapman. Since we did not have resources to advertise very well, the event was pretty poorly attended and was, in fact, pretty discouraging.
In our minds, we kept coming back to the fact that for years we have seen God use English workshops to great effect, especially in Zagreb. So we began to discuss whether or not that may be a more attractive option for students in Rijeka. These discussions also coincided with renewed conversations with Faith Bible Fellowship in Oak Ridge, TN, with whom we had tried on several different ocassions to organize a missions trip. Eventually, we decided to recruit the Tennessee folks to come, with a view to helping us with our first fairly large-scale event in Rijeka. It made us a little nervous to think about having folks come all this way, at pretty significant cost and perhaps seeing the whole thing fall flat, but we finally just had to give up that fear and say, "Lord, this is Yours. If it succeeds, we can take no credit and if it fails, we'll leave that to You as well."
Everything Comes TogetherAfter the initial plans were made with the pastor at Faith Bible Fellowship and the recruiting began, we were constantly encouraged by the news reports we got. We started out with the goal of recruiting 5-7 people and ended up with a team of 13. Looking back, we see how God had in mind to form not one, but two teams to cover both Rijeka and Zagreb in the place of another team which was forced to cancel its mission trip! It was also a special blessing for us to see these folks step out to develop financial support both within and outside of the church and to see how God provided for them and affirmed their desires to come join with us.
Upon the teams' arrival, half of them stayed behind in Zagreb and the other half were whisked away to Rijeka. Though tired and jet lagged, they constantly exuded anticipation and joy at being here, which motivated me even more as I worked alongside them to lead the charge in recruiting, advertising at various university schools and the student cafeteria. We began the first night of the workshop after only 2 days of advertising, and 20 students came. I am not one to be concerned with statistics as I affirm that each one of those 20 people represents someone for whom Christ died and who is significant to God, but on the practical side, I began to worry that perhaps the effort had not been worth it. The team had invested their time and a significant amount of finances to come and here we were with 20 people. In the days to follow, I was to see that God truly is a big God and can do marvelous things, beyond what "we could ask or imagine."
By the end of the week more than 50 students had attended the workshop and had come to know and love the Tennessee team (and vice-versa!). I had never before seen such a group of students who showed genuine warmth, love and hospitality to a visiting team. They gave gifts and shed tears as the week drew to a close -- which was really no close at all, but a beginning. Many of these students want us to organize more things in Rijeka and some have already expressed an interest in spiritual things. As I now work on a follow-up plan, I am often overwhelmed by the remembrance of what God did in our midst and what we may yet see Him do in the lives of these students. Please keep them (and us) in your prayers!
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