Easter blog (for kids)

This is a special edition Easter blog.You can use it to have some fun Easter activities (and if you want with your children 😁) over Easter - either in April or for the Orthodox one that happens in May. I originally did it for our Central Europe blog on ywamce.com/blog and also because we are working on an Easter event for our children here. I hope you (and/or your kids) enjoy this as much as I did putting it together!

THE EASTER STORY

When we look at the story of Easter in Matthew, there are a few scenes that stand out... Here are 6 of them for you to enjoy (and colour!): 

The first scene happens on Palm Sunday where Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. What a strange way to enter if you are a King?! But He did it deliberately. If He came into the city on a horse, it would have been a sign He was coming to overthrow the Roman Government. Coming on a donkey showed that He came in peace. 

What did the people shout out? What does it mean? 
A: They shouted out "Hosana". It literally means "Save us"! Jesus is our King and Saviour!
What did the crowd put on the ground in front of Jesus?
A: Palm branches and their coats! Isn't that wild?! 

Task: Find a branch which can help you remember that Jesus is King! 

Then, on the Thursday night we see that Jesus had a dinner with his 12 disciples. Did you know that this dinner is where we get communion or the Lord's supper from? It was first just a part of an ordinary meal. 

What do we take when we take Communion and why? 
A: The bread which symbolises Christ's body and the wine which is for His blood. Ordinary things which symbolise something extraordinary! 

Task: Every time you have a meal, remember to thank Jesus for it and for His sacrifice for us!

Also on Thursday night, Jesus went with some of his disciples to pray in the garden.

Do you know what Jesus's disciples did while he was praying? 

A: They went to sleep! Even they found it hard to pray without going to sleep... but that doesn't mean we should pray. Jesus taught us how and we need to keep it up! 

Task: Every time you go to bed, remember that Jesus loves you!

On Good Friday, so many things happened... but the main event was that Jesus was crucified on a cross. 

Do you know why He had to die? 
A: To pay for our sins once and for all!! Isn't that amazing? Jesus, the Son of God paying the price so we don't have to! That is God's amazing grace - God's Riches At Christ's Expense.

Task: Every time you feel sad and lonely, remember that Jesus felt sad and lonely on the cross too. He knows what you are going through.

But, the cross was not the end of the story! After Jesus died, He was put in a tomb, and then amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, on Easter Sunday, He rose again!! 

What do we say on Easter Sunday when we greet each other? 
A: He is RISEN! The stone was rolled away and He is no longer in the grave. 

Task: Find a stone to remember that He is RISEN: He is no longer in the grave! 

When He rose again, He showed Himself to many people! He always showed love and grace towards them. 

Who were the first to find Him alive?

A:  Matthew tells us it was Mary Magdelene and "the other Mary". It is so amazing that women would have been the first to be shown God's glorious resurrection! 

Task: Remember to thank Jesus for all that He has done for you

Easter is such a good time of year to remember all that Jesus did for us. These are just some of the highlights out of Matthew. I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into six scenes from the Easter story! 

Click HERE for all the pictures for you to colour in one document. (You can also cut them out and try and match them to the right verses and put them in the right order.) 

Here is another great reminder of the whole week in one go: From Sunday to Sunday so much happens! You can click HERE to download this to colour. 

Happy Easter everyone! He is Risen Indeed!!

(and thanks to Children's Ministry Deals for some of these pictures)

COVID-19 Vaccine

A couple of weeks ago Ljilja tried to get me to sign up for the vaccine in Serbia. They were opening up for people who were not residents. At the time I was busy with zoom meetings, and I didn't think it would EVER happen, so I just told her, "If you want to do it for me too, then go ahead...I don't have time..." And luckily, she did. She did it because we don't know when if ever we will get enough vaccines in this country for us to get to the front of the line, and if we do it will probably be one of the Chinese or Russian ones... 

On Thursday, we received an email to let us know that we should come to Novi Sad on Sunday to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine!!!! Unfortunately, when we got the email, Ljilja was 2/3rds of the way to her home in Trebinje (which is about a 6 hours drive away) and Novi Sad is 4 hours in the other direction...

So now, what to do? Do we go? Do we go separately? Does she drive to Banja Luka and we go together? 

In the back of my mind I was thinking about the woman I was talking to just the week before who had had the opportunity to get on the list for the vaccine in Bosnia Herzegovina, but wasn't sure if she should get it. Her daughter has special needs (Down's syndrome) and so that is how she would be able to get it - to protect her daughter. I was encouraging her and telling her "if you have the opportunity, use it!" And then the next day she started having symptoms and fell ill and now she and her daughter (and her mother) are all positive with double pneumonia...such a sad situation. Because of that, I was thinking: "what happens if that happens to me? - If I don't get the vaccine and then I get Covid, and pass it along to others, I would totally kick myself!!"
 
On Friday morning, I had a time with the Lord and was going back and forth with do we go, do we not go. Is it worth it? What to do? Then I felt that the Lord was saying "do you trust me or the vaccine?" He used Jeremiah 17:7 "But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him." It really helped me to completely give it all to the Lord and trust Him whether I got the vaccine and trust Him whether I didn't get it... but it didn't help with the decision making process! 

After going back and forth all day on Friday, we were actually ready to give up going when Sinisa, our pastor here, decided he wanted to come along for the ride and try and get the vaccine and he was willing to drive from Banja Luka so Ljilja wouldn't have to...

(In the end Sinisa didn't come as he heard that if you didn't have an invitation, you for sure wouldn't get a vaccine, but it was actually a big part of why we ended up going... and Ljilja was already 1/2 way back from Trebinje when he decided not to come!) 

When Sinisa decided not to come, Ljilja and I decided to go early so if there were queues or any trouble we would be able to navigate them. (The day before in Belgrade we had friends who waited 8 hours in the line!) We left at 5.30am and made it to Novi Sad by 9.45. We were out of the vaccine place and on our way back by 10! It was amazingly well organised. Well done to the Serbian government and thank-you to them for letting even those who aren't in Serbia get vaccinated! There were lots of people from Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia there! 

The shot was painless. They had to tell Ljilja it was already done as she didn't feel a thing! Hopefully we won't have any big symptoms: so far nothing... We will need to go back in 3 months to get the second shot and they will let us know when... so organised!

A fun fact is that my sister, Astrid, was part of the AstraZeneca trials and so my niece and nephew started calling it the AstridZeneca vaccine, and so I am actually so happy that that is the one that I got. 😁

We drove back in just over 4 hours, and got back through the 4 border controls without problems (we went through Croatia to get to Serbia) and were back in Banja Luka by 2.15! And I am still completely in shock that it happened...  

God is faithful even when it is H.A.R.D | Bonus Covid Edition

After saying last week’s blog post would be the last one in this series, I had a nagging sensation all week that I needed to write on one more topic – the current situation we all find ourselves in: the Covid-19 worldwide pandemic. Granted, my last post in the series of 20 stories for 20 years in 20 days on Celebrating God’s Faithfulness also ended with a story of His faithfulness in the pandemic, but I realise that there is more to say. And it also fits into this series: it is H.A.R.D, but God is still faithful!

 It has been a year now since we put this picture of a workshop we did on Facebook with the caption: "Masks are ′JUST FOR FUN′ in faith and hope that it will not become part of our everyday life." And unfortunately, they did and they are, and as we are still waiting for mass vaccination to start here, will be for a while to come…

A friend shared with me the other day something that has helped me process a bit of the stress and strangeness of this time. She said, “It is like we are constantly going through little transitions”. And that is exactly it – a month ago we started up our church services again because our cases had come done, now the cases are up again and we have paused the services. We plan to have in person meetings, hoping it will work out, and then have to move them again onto zoom. And so on and so forth. 

It is hard enough without even thinking of the toll of seeing people you know get really sick, and even die from this horrible disease, or watching the numbers of people affected not just by the disease but the economic fallout of it, lost jobs etc. Just looking at the transitions we are going through all the time because of changes in rules or case numbers, etc is hardship enough. But what makes it possible to get through ALL of this, is holding on to the fact that God is still God and He is still faithful! 

In February, I taught on transitions during our Leadership Training Encounter (LDE). I use the analogy of the Transition Tunnel, which is based on the teaching of Stephe Mayers (who led the LDE). 

When you are in transition, it is like you are going into a tunnel. You leave a settled place and become unsettled. At first you have light from behind you and can kind of see what is going on. But then there is a time when you are completely in darkness. Eventually you will start seeing light from ahead. Then you start moving out of the dark tunnel and become re-settled on the other side. 

I remember when I moved from Zenica up to Banja Luka. I thought at first that it wouldn’t be that hard, it is the same country, right? But then someone who had also moved within Bosnia gave me fantastic advice: she told me to treat the move as if it was moving to another country and to give myself the grace to do it well. I knew how hard it was moving from Cape Town to Zenica and it really helped during the Zenica-Banja Luka move to know to give myself the grace I needed in that move as well. I didn’t know about the tunnel analogy then, but that would have been very helpful too. 

And now, applying the tunnel to our Covid situation has helped me understand some of our reactions to the hardships and difficulties a bit better. There are quite a few tunnels here in Bosnia, where you think “ok, yay, it is coming to an end” and then there is a gap of 10, 20 maybe 30 metres and an even longer tunnel starts… and that is exactly what it is like with Covid. You see the light – yay, our cases are going down and the hospitals are ok again – and then WHAM: the tunnel of a harder variant or strain means a new wave and hospitals full again. 

The Lord reminded me this week of Daniel 3:16-18 where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego tell King Nebuchadnezzar that God is “able to deliver them” and “will deliver them”, and then go on to say “even if He does not…” That is true faith – knowing that God is ABLE and He WILL, but to go on trusting Him EVEN if He does not… Unfortunately, despite all our hopes that it won’t be the case, Covid 19 looks to be with us for a while. We need to learn to live with the transitions, and to trust God in the “even if He does not…” 

This is a bonus extra post in the series of blogposts about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. They follow the series of 20 short stories celebrate 20 years of God's faithfulness to me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 16th of January 2021, it was 20 years since I arrived in the country "for 2 years". I hope you will enjoy hearing some of the ways that God has shown me that He is faithful over the past 20 years!

God is faithful even when it is H.A.R.D | Iron sharpening Iron

I have been putting off this topic as it is a hard one to write. I have been thinking of how to end this series, and somehow I think it is fitting if this one will be the last one. It is a hard one to write because it doesn't just concern me, and so I have struggled with even writing anything at all. However, I have come to realise that if I don't write something on it, then I am not being entirely truthful and also not celebrating God's faithfulness completely. 

One of the hardest parts of being a cross-cultural worker is working with other cross-cultural workers. Before I came to Bosnia, I thought I was a nice easy-going person, and I could get on with anyone. I learnt in my training before coming that one of the main reasons people leave cross-cultural work is because of conflicts with other cross-cultural workers. I thought, “Wow, that is amazing, well I won't have those kinds of problems, I will be fine.” [insert hysterical laughter here 😊] 

I remember when I was interviewing for a volunteer position with Samaritan's Purse. They asked me, "So tell us about your previous experience in working in teams..."  I quipped, "Well I have been on two teams and they both broke up and everyone else kind of left." They looked a bit shocked at this and leaned in and said, "Tell us more..." (Whoooooops!!!) Luckily, I was able to come back from that and have been on the Bosnian National Team for Operation Christmas Child for over 5 years now. 

Recently, I was teaching on a Leadership Development course on zoom, and I was talking about learning from your Leadership Journey. The premise is that we all need to look back on our lives and learn from what God was showing us along the way. In the teaching, I was sharing about transitions and specifically about the big transition I went through when I moved to Bosnia. I half-jokingly said, "I think in that transition time my greatest cultural stress was not with the Bosnians, but learning to work with Americans…” Yes, cross-cultural issues also go on in teams! 

All the YWAM workers in Bosnia circa 2002

Since I thought that I was wonderful and easy to work with, when I started having issues with other people, I just blamed them. I didn’t see how much I was part of the problem as well. Looking back, I see that God was using my teammates to change me and sharpen me (and me to sharpen them too!). It is true what it says in Proverbs: 27:17 "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."

Another important thing to remember in any team context is that the devil is on the prowl, looking at ways to get you to clash. His ultimate aim is for you to crash out. I think the reason I have been able to work for so many years on a team with Siniša and Ljilja (with many others coming and going over the years!) is because we keep short accounts and don’t let the devil get a foothold. Or at least we try!

Whether it is God using the iron to sharpen iron, cultural issues or the devil trying to destroy community, team conflict over the years has changed me into who I am today. Even though it has not been easy, I wouldn’t want to change anything or anyone with whom I have worked over the years. I attempt to practice Romans 18:12: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” And I think I can safely say that I have a good relationship with all of my ex-teammates.

 

Community is essential to flourish, especially cross-culturally, and I can see how faithful God has been over the years and even now in providing that community through teammates. He has also been so faithful to use them to sharpen me and help me become more like Him in the process. 

I hope you have enjoyed this series about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. I hope you have enjoyed looking back with me and seeing that He is faithful even in the hard times, through the hard things and truly works everything for the good... Look out soon for my next series 😊 

"Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. " Deut 7:9

This is the seventh and final in a series of blogposts about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. They follow the series of 20 short stories celebrate 20 years of God's faithfulness to me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 16th of January 2021, it was 20 years since I arrived in the country "for 2 years". I hope you will enjoy hearing some of the ways that God has shown me that He is faithful over the past 20 years!