Drama Club and shoebox packages

 Once again this year I worked with a group of our children/teenagers weekly, to learn how to do our play for this year's package distribution. Two of our wonderful volunteers, Boris and Jovana, helped me along with Martin (who even got a non-speaking part as a guard!)

It is amazing to see how the children develop confidence and self-esteem by being part of this group. This is the third year working with this group - and some have gone from non-speaking roles to main roles and nailing it! 

Then it was time to do the drama: 

We did some distributions in Celinac - a neighbouring town in the school hallway (above) and then also at the church (below). 

Here is a video of one of the performances at the church. The play is about a Jester who is not funny anymore, so he is sent away to find more jokes and comes back telling Christmas jokes... but the people in that Kingdom don't know anything about Christmas, so he then tells them all about Christmas! 

The kids did a wonderful job, and Jovana was such a help (doing the backstage and prompting the kids on the rare occasion they forgot their text). 

And after each play, it was time to give out the shoeboxes! 

Christmas parties

In December, we always throw a lovely Christmas party for our wonderful volunteers. We have over 30 locals who help us with our workshops with children, teens and students. We usually get them some sort of gift as a thank-you, and this year we decided on matching Christmas sweaters! And as you can see, they really loved them!!! 

Having done an Easter party for about 12 Indian students in April we thought it would be fun to do a Christmas Eve dinner for them at the church. In between we have gotten to know so many more students (some believers, most not) and in the end 55 of them signed up to come!!! (All of them are medical students in a special program in English run by the University of Banja Luka.)

Not to be detered by the huge numbers, Ljilja organised two cooking teams to make Chicken Biryani and some rice cookers to do the rice. And despite the fact that we had a huge dump of snow the two days beforehand, it all worked out wonderfully in the end!!

In November, our church was visited by a group of Chinese believers from Belgrade who had a very sad story to tell. One of the church members from Belgrada was in a coma in the Banja Luka hospital after a horrific car accident while she and her daughter were on the way to Banja Luka to apply for a Serbian visa. 

Below are the whole group who had come to help the daughter (in red).

Eventually some of the group left and so the daughter and one lady moved to the church - this meant we had Ukrainians, Chinese and a Mexican staying in the church - with no common language... Google translate is amazing!

Not knowing English, let alone Serbian, Ljilja and I took turns helping the daughter get paperwork sorted, with the doctors at the hospital, the police report from the Prosecutor's, their Serbian visas, etc. They didn't have health insurance which covered them in Bosnia, which made the situation extremely difficult. But we found out that she could get coverage through the car insurance, but she needed to pay everything in the meantime and then get it back eventually.  

Eventually, the mother came out of her coma, was moved to a ward from Intensive Care, and then last week, they allowed her to leave the hospital even though the bill was over 15 000 Euros (R300 000)!! We put her and her daughter in a comfy taxi and she went directly to Belgrade where she is being cared for by the Church there.

The daughter left a wonderful card for us - painstakingly written out in English letters... it completely made me cry that she felt this horrific accident was worthwhile so she could feel God's love through us... 

And now my new Vision Statement in life is the heading she used:

"Glorify God and Bless People"

It completely sums up how I want to live my life. May God get the glory as I bless others through the gifts that He has given me... 

Martin from Mexico

 From the beginning of October, we had the privilege of Martin from Mexico, who is usually with YWAM in Ireland, join us here for 3 months. As we want to keep the connection between YWAM Ireland and YWAM Bosnia strong, we thought it would be a great idea if he came and spent some time working with us (when there wasn't much going on in Ireland).

He has been hanging out with the volunteers, and teaching two Spanish classes as well as doing all the other things we are doing as a team in this season (Bible Study, Drama Club, Children's Home, Teen club, etc). It has been fun having him around and he really connected with our students.

Above is a pic of Martin with one of his Spanish classes, and below with his YWAM Ireland leader, Alex, who came to visit while he was with us.  

Children's Home and volunteers

During the school term, we go in weekly to the Children's Home and run the "Klub Čitalaca" (literally "Club of Readers"). This year, we have a fantastic group of committed volunteers, and it has been so fun going in every week with enough people that the little children get one-on-one attention and the older kids can work in small groups together. 

Each week we would do one story - ranging from Aladdin to Beauty and the Beast. We would watch a short film of the story (10 mins) and then read the story with our volunteers (with books from the Children's Library). We would then do a craft based on the story. I also created a little booklet with a page per story - with the moral of the story and a picture to colour each week.

Then, there is a craft to do connected to the story: check out the lamp we made for Aladdin and the Beast mask for Beauty and the Beast!

After each workshop at the Home, we come back hang out with our volunteers. It has been such a great way to get to know them better, and also debrief our time at the Home. Below is a pic of us in "Cafe Ihtus" as we call this space - a fun place to hang out together!

We are so blessed to have such wonderful local volunteers who want to help us with our projects with kids! We wouldn't be able to do it without them!! 

I have to keep track of hours as each volunteer has a book where they are entered, and also for one of our project partners, their hours count as "in-kind contributions."  So, for those of you who like statistics - this year we had 38 active volunteers who contributed over 965 hours to the work that we do with children and teens.  

Leadership meetings in Holland and Serbia

As part of the leadership team of YWAM in Europe, in October, I travelled to the Netherlands to meet with our "Field Circle Team". We had long days of meetings, but did manage to get out to enjoy a tour of Zwolle and to learn more about Thomas à Kempis from former YWAM Europe Director, Jeff Fountain.

We spent time discussing many issues across Europe and also looking at the preparations for our European Leadership Gathering in February 2025. I am helping with the logistics and the program - we hope over 300 people will gather in Albania for this event.

Even though I stepped out of the main leadership team in YWAM Central Europe at the end of last year, I am still part of the wider "Area Circle Team" and in November drove to Serbia to attend meetings there. We cover an area of 16 countries, with about 200 YWAMers in total. It was great to meet and spend time together, and I especially loved that I could drive there! (it took 6 hours)

nConnect 2024

Every year in the autumn we are part of an nConnect somewhere in the Balkans. This is for the volunteer teams who help make sure that the  Operation Christmas Child "shoebox" packages are given out in the correct way. This year it was our opportunity to host the Croatia and Montenegro teams here in Bosnia Herzegovina. Last year it was held in Serbia with 7 countries, and I was at the conference, but got sick after one day, so I missed out on much of it 😞 

So, I was so happy to have the opportunity to be a part of this conference and get to know the teams from the other countries, and to hang out with the Bosnian team. Here we all are: 

Here is our Bosnian team around the "map" of Bosnia: 

And all standing on one of the bridges in the Ethno Village where we were staying: (Our team adopted Mila who came from Croatia with her mom as she was super cute!) 

And here are some more pics from around the place where we stayed...

It really is very quaint - and you feel like you have gone back in time: 

And it also has some fun quirky details - like these loving lamp posts! 

Besides being able to connect with others, and learn some of the new ways of reporting and helping in worship, I was also priviledged to share the devotion on the first day (we were in a bigger room as the smaller was being used on the first morning by another group). Everyone seemed to enjoy it and it was a good way to kick off the conference! 

The best part about it being in Bosnia is that we only had to drive 2 1/2 hours - the last two were in Montenegro (11 hours drive) and Serbia (9 hours drive), so this was very nice 😁 Now we are ready to start the next season of giving out shoebox packages!! 

Triplet to Ireland and the UK

I was invited to go to Enniskillen in Ireland in August, to be the speaker on the YWAM Ireland gathering. I was really blown away by the invitation, but as I had already been playing around in my head with maybe making a trip to the UK to see people and also get my UK passport sorted out, it seemed like a lovely way to combine the two.

I spent 3 lovely days with the wonderful people who make up YWAM in Ireland. In reflecting for the talks I realised that my relationship with YWAM in Ireland and all the good things that have come out of it (including 5 "Faith and Conflict" conferences), started because of two conferences that I went to. One was in 2007 and on the way back from the conference I "happened" to take a train with then YWAM Ireland leader, Jonny Clark. We also happened to get lost and took the train in the wrong direction... but that is another whole story! And the other was in 2014 in Lyon when I sat next to Alex Atwell, who is now leading YWAM Enniskillen, on a flight from there to Manchester. Random? Coincidence? I think not!  

It really was a privilege to share more of my story and what the Lord has taught me along the way and I really enjoyed sharing on how to persevere and press on into what the Lord is calling you into. We are the hands and feet of Jesus here on earth which this saying from St Teresa of Avila reminds us of! 

And some other reflections the Lord has been showing me about how to bring a little bit of His joy and life and celebration even when things are not going the way we wish they did...

And a case in point - why let a little bit of rain stop us from having a fun outing to Lough Erne together... crazy people! Group pic using the car as a tripod:

Here I am warming up by the fire with my fellow South African, Musa, who was crazy enough to jump in the lough...

Along with other crazy people - Alex and Martin. In the background you can see the ruins of Devenish Island Monastery... very eerie in the fog! 

And this time a selfie-stick pic with the monastery in the background as well...

I also managed to finish up my passport by going to Belfast before the conference and fast tracking it. My old one is not up until 2026, but it is almost full! And why is it almost full?? Because silly border guards in Bosnia and Croatia mostly don't care where they put their stamps. I only have 3 in my new passport and look at how much space they already take up!! (And if I fly from Zagreb, which is my closest airport I get between 4-6 stamps each time depending on if I am going to Schengen or not!)

I used my new passport to travel to the East Midlands Airport and to hang out with my godson, Christopher and his wonderful family. 

And I say wonderful, because on the day I was supposed to get on a bus and travel on to my next place, I felt horrible and recognised the feeling from the time I had covid... and they have some old tests hanging around and I took one, and guess what!! Yip. I was positive...

Thankfully, they were ok with me staying on, and we tried to isolate me as much as possible, but Trevor and Carol had already got it from me, but luckily the kids didn't get it! So yes, not my most successful trip ever... thanks to them for being so fantastic!! 

On the day that Christopher got his A-level results, they had scones to celebrate and they sat outside in the garden and I was upstairs talking to them through the window and enjoying my portion!

Then it was time to try and figure out my further travel. I had planned on going to a few people, but with not feeling so great after covid, I just narrowed it down to my sister and her family and changed my flight to come back a bit sooner. My nephew James had returned from a gap-year trip around Asia and it was wonderful to hear all his stories in person! 

And also enjoy time with my sister and brother-in-law, and their wonderful garden!!

Then it was time to be back in Banja Luka, getting ready for the new school year! 

Holiday of a lifetime!

For the past 12 years, Ljilja, Sina (our friend from Finland) and I have been going on holiday together. We even managed to find ways to go on holiday during 2020 and covid rules changing every day. We have had a lot of fun adventures, but also just able to relax and enjoy movies and games and looooong discussions about our lives. We also usually celebrate all 3 of our birthdays on Ljilja's birthday in July as I am in June, and Sina in August... 

This year, with both Sina and I were turning 50, we wanted to go somewhere extra special. Sina has also travelled to over 90 countries, and originally she wanted to go somewhere new, but that is quite hard for her! She wanted to go to do an island holiday - and her first suggestion was Fiji! We looked at ticket prices and it was a hard NO from us. After that she thought about Seychelles, but again it looked expensive. She had already been to the Maldives for work, but as that actually looked like the best option price-wise, she was happy with the island holiday there as she had not done the "vacation" side of things there - just visiting projects for work. 

So, in the end we managed to get her "down" to go to the Maldives. We found some reasonable airline tickets ourselves via Doha (with a stopover on the way back) and Ljilja did a phenomenal job of contacting local travel agencies to see if we could get a deal on accommodation. We had decided on a resort near the capital called Kurumba. 

We would just get breakfast included and then go out for dinner, making it cheaper (and healthier!) than a full board/all inclusive option. We got a good deal through an agency in Bosnia, and were about to pay the deposit when Ljilja received another offer for the same exact booking from an agency in Serbia which was even cheaper!! Love it! (we found it it was cheaper in July as it is the "rainy season", but other than a 1 or 2 times of rain during the day, it really didn't bother us at all as it mostly fell at night). 

We stayed in two adjoining rooms upstairs in a condo with four rooms. We didn't have anyone downstairs for most of the time which was nice. It included a fun "outdoor/indoor" bathroom - so you could shower outside... or in the rain - which was a fun experience! 

Being on the top floor meant we had a lovely view from the windows/balcony:

And most of the creepy crawlies kept out of our rooms (which was helpful to those with a fear of creepy crawlies of which there were a few!) We did get to see lots of bats in the evenings and our friendly heron, which we nicknamed Harry the Heron, was always around: 

We had loungers (with our room numbers on!) on the beach which were sort of secluded as they were surrounded by trees, so we felt like we had our own private island getaway. Such a blessing! This is the view from the balcony towards "our" beach and our loungers are in between the trees! 

And this is the view along the beach! 

We mostly spent time at the beach, but did do a couple of snorkelling trips, which were amazing!! It was also lovely just to snorkle around our beach too! And we could also take out the kayaks for some good exercise: 

One of the reasons we chose this resort was that they had different themed restaurants, and one of them was THAI! Which happens to be the favourite food of all of us. We have usually managed to find a Thai restaurant in the places we go to on holiday - there is no real Thai food in Bosnia and it is expensive in Finland! We did go there 4 times during our stay and got to the know the staff, including the chef (from Thailand) and so when it was time to go, they even gave us a special send-off and insisted on taking pictures with us - so sweet! 

The whole time we were there we were all saying everyday, "Thank-you Lord that we get to experience this beautiful place!" There was one moment when I was in the sea at sunset and just looking at the bats flying around and seeing the sunset from the water and I was just praising the Lord for being able to experience this beauty. I am so glad that Sina wanted to go somewhere like that for her 50th, because it really was the crowning experience of my 50th jubilee celebrations!