Veles, Macedonia

It all started on my first trip to Macedonia in 2008. For a couple of days I was sent to a city about an hour from Skopje, known as Veles. We went from house to house meeting and praying with people. During those few days, and on my next trip to Macedonia the following Spring God planted in my heart a deep love for the people in this city. I was asked by the leaders to come back and help with the ladies in the young church there. This call of God was confirmed in many unmistakeable ways, and was a large part of my decision to move here.

The church in Veles is a plant of one of the churches I am a part of in Skopje. They are very young, the oldest member being 25 years of age. Most, if not all of them have gotten saved in the past few years. The majority of the church is men, but there are five girls. Magde is 20 years of age, married to Ane, one of the elders. Magde and Ane have 2 children and are expecting their 3rd. Daki is 23 or 24 I believe, married to Mace, another one of the elders, and they have one little boy. Brigita is 20, married to Ivica, with a little girl, and another one on the way. Pina (pictured above with me) is 25, married to Viktor. Milka is 22, and the story of how she met Jesus is an amazing testimony to how God pursues us with His love. God has given me a deep love for each of these girls, and they are a joy in my life. My desire during the time God has given me with them is to pour into them everything that God has poured into me in the past few years so that they can be equipped to then go and pour into the many new believers that will be coming into the church in the coming years. At the moment Jenn and I travel to Veles about once a week to meet with the girls. My hope is to raise my level of involvement once we finish dealing with the visa issue, and as my language skills continue to develop.

God is moving powerfully in Veles, and the surrounding regions, where there are several church plants in the works. The level of hunger and thirst for God is an inspiration to me. Coming from a background where most people have at least known of Jesus their whole lives, and take this knowledge for granted, it is refreshing to see the way these young people come to God with a fresh zeal for Him and His word. It challenges me in so many ways to stop and think about how much of what I believe is simply religious tradition and how much is really the pure truth of God's word. It has a way of stripping away everything but Jesus, which is beautiful in the end. I have always wanted to go to the hard places, the places where trite answers, formulas and opinions of man don't work, because that is where the raw truth of the gospel is revealed, where Jesus shows up in power and does miracles. This is one of those places, and Jesus is showing up and meeting us, and it is beautiful.

In the mean time, we are facing some serious attack. Daki, who I mentioned before had surgery to remove a tumor from her brain was in the end diagnosed as having cancer. She is currently awaiting treatment. Please pray with us for healing.

One of the biggest obstacles to me ministering in Veles is language, because so few of them know English there. Trying to work through an interpreter seriously inhibits my ability to build personal relationships. This is one of my biggest motivators in language learning. Please pray with me that God will give me grace to learn quickly, a super natural ability to understand, and finances for classes .