Swedish/Finnish team

The first week of August, we hosted a team of 13 from Sweden/Finland. Our former Finnish colleagues, Miika and Mirjam, are now living in Sweden, so they came with some of the youth group of their church there. One of their four daughters, Jijska, who used to live in Banja Luka with them came from Finland. We got to meet Leevi, their 9-year-old son for the first time! 

The team was fantastic, and they helped us run Children's Camps for our sponsorship children and the kids had a great time with the team! 

I was able to play guitar with a lovely team of musicians and we even got them to learn the actions to the songs in the local language... as you can see in the video, it was very fun: 

Each day we divided the kids into younger and older groups and they took turns doing fun activities inside and outside...

They even got to play a new game called "Swedish Baseball" which was very fun! 

Facepainting and other ball games were a big hit! 

And most of the boys ended up getting "tattoos" 😁

Miika has visited (and brought a team for kids camp in 2013) a few times, but this was Mirjam's first visit since she left in 2010. It was so fun to see through her eyes the changes that have happened in the 12 years that she has been gone. We don't always see how much things have changed as it has happened over many years - so it was a great reminder to us of where we were and where we are now!

Montenegro Seminar

One of the organisations that we have been working with since 2008, is the Finnish organisation, Fida. We have a Child Sponsorship project through them where children are sponsored mostly from Finland to help them with school supplies, etc for their schooling. Previously, they had more funding from the Finnish Government and so held seminars every year for their partners in the Balkans. Since 2015, they have had a different way of funding their projects, and so these seminars didn't happen. 

Now, they have done a reorganisation, and so to help with some of those changes, they decided to have a seminar where we can learn altogether about the way things will be working from now on. It affects us, as there will be changes to the way that we will be doing the reporting in the future. It was great to be able to see some of the people we used to see each year again, and learn more about the new way of doing the reporting for our Child Sponsorship projects. 

The seminar was organised by our good friend, Sina, and as we were from three places in Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo and Albania, and Montenegro seemed to be a good place where we could all meet: 

Celebrating God’s faithfulness | Story 11: Church registration

When I first came to Banja Luka, the Church was registered as a Humanitarian Aid organisation as it wasn’t possible to register small churches as religious societies. As I shared previously, this is how I got my visa to be here. Then, amazingly, the law changed, and we were able to start thinking about getting the church registered as an actual Church. 

You need to realise that in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are only four main recognised religions: Islam, Serb Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Judaism. Anything else is kind of lumped together and considered a sect or a cult. I have a book in the local language which explains about all the different cults, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hare Krishna’s and then Baptists and Pentecostals are the last two chapters in the book. 

So, this law recognising us Protestants/Evangelicals as an actual church was a huge deal. As part of our registration, to prove that we were legitimate and not some flaky cult, we had to have 300 people who supported our registration. 

At the time we started doing the registration, 2008, we had quite a big team working with our church – there was a family from Finland, a family from the Ukraine, David, a single from Czechia and then Siniša, Ljilja and myself. Between all of us and all of our church members, we managed to find the 300 people who would be willing to sign (and give their id number) in support of our application.  We were so happy when we finally got the signatures. Siniša gave everything to the lawyer, but when our application made it to Sarajevo, the Ministry rejected it. 

We were devastated. It turned out that the name we used was already used by another Church denomination, so we either needed to join that denomination or change the name. We made application to join that Church and at their Church Council they agreed, but later on told us that some people who weren’t at the meeting objected and so we needed to wait until the next Church Council which was in 6 months. 

Once again, we consulted the lawyer and she told us that we could apply with all of the same paperwork, but just change the name of the church to “Protestant Church: Christian Fellowship.” As some of the paperwork would expire in a month, if we waited we would have to start from scratch, so we decided the best course of action was to register under this name. 

The worst part of the “re-registration” was that we then had to go and get the 300 people to sign again on the papers with the right name on, and now we had a deadline - one month! In the end, we actually went out and found other people to sign as it was tricky tracking down those that signed the previous time. After taking almost 11 months the first time, this time we managed to get it done in less than a month! 

Finally, we got the paper that told us we were registered as a legal Church in the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina. God had faithfully made the way for us to be legitimate here in this country and this opened the door for the next big step in our adventure… more on that in tomorrow’s story!  

This is part 11 of a series of 20 short stories to celebrate 20 years of God's faithfulness to me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 16th of January 2021, it will be 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!

Kid's Action Day

While the Finnish team were here to help run the Youth Camp, on their last day here, we decided to do a fun day with the kids from our project too. When Rami and Katja-Maaria were living here, we used to run "Kid's Action Days" twice a year. We used to do them at the local school, but now we have the church building and so we can do it there!

We started off with a program - the team is here introducing themselves: 

Then it was time to sing some songs: Here they are doing actions. We also sang the song Rami wrote called "Vrlo Dragocjen" (Very Precious) which was our camp song one year. It has a fantastic message of everyone being precious - and that differences are actually to be celebrated, not mocked.

Then one of the team from Burma/Myanmar shared about his experiences - he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, as his parents had fled persecution in Burma. Eventually they were accepted to go to Finland. As he has grown up in Finland, he doesn't speak English so well, so he was speaking in Finnish, the guy next to him is translating into English and then Ljilja into the local language...

 Then it was time to be surprised by a bunch of sheep:

Who told the story of the shepherd leaving the 99 to go find the 1 lost sheep... which went along very well with the message of the song - every one is so precious!!

Then it was time for a whole lot of games throughout the building...
Sword fighting was a real hit:

 As was the "how many sweets can I get out of the box with chopsticks" game:

 Facepainting was also a firm favourite:

And guess how many sweets in the jar:

There were many more games all over the place, but we didn't get pics of them all. After the kids all had a chance to do all the games they wanted, it was time to finish up with Finnish blueberry pie: yummy!!

Then a pic with most of the kids and the 3 Burmese guys...

Before picking up Mom or Dad (who were having their own meeting upstairs while this was on) and going on home... 

Youth Camp 2019

Last year, our ex-colleagues from Finland, who had helped us run all of our Kid's camps from 2011-2015 asked if we wanted them to come with a team from Finland and run a Youth Camp for those children who had come to our camps previously. And of course we said "YES"!

We had a LOT of issues before camp started and at one point the place where we had camp did not have water, so we thought we might actually have to cancel, but thankfully they managed to get it fixed an hour before we arrived!!

Here is the camp photo so you can see all of us! As you can see, it was a fun group!

The Finnish team brought a LOT of great and fun games... and despite the heat, the youth all loved to join in!

 Especially when the games included water:

We invited some other organisations to join us at the camp: here is Dragan with some of "his" kids - they are all part of a traditional dancing club:

 And we got to enjoy some of their talents:

Here is a Finnish/Burmese/Bosnian band playing traditional music for them to dance to:

One day the pool next door let us go there to swim for an hour for free! We were very happy as it was very HOT!

The food was fantastic - Ankica, one of the mothers, once again did all the cooking... with a little help from Sinisa the pot-stirrer:

And also our brothers from Burma/Myanmar: 4 of the team were originally from Burma and went as refugees with their parents to Finland over 10 years ago. Here they are helping to cut up the watermelons:

 On the last night we had a lovely big bonfire: with fun and games all around it:

Including the Finnish tradition of cooking "makara" (sausages). The Burmese Finns also shared some of their food in form of a spicy salad - which was VERY spicy and a bit hot for many of the kids!

We not only fed ourselves physically, but also spiritually, with a daily word from Sinisa from the Bible:

One of the best aspects of camp for me was working once again with Rami and Katja-Maaria, and of course we didn't get ANY photos together. Here they are with some of their team downtown...

Even though they have been gone for 5 years, it was like slipping on a familiar and comfortable glove working with them again. They brought a team of 10 (plus themselves and 3 of their girls) and it really was so much fun being together again. Before they left, we also did a Kid's action Day with the kids in the project, but more on that in the next post... 

June Visitors...

As I said in my last post, I got back from my epic trip around Europe and picked up Mom at Zagreb airport on the way back. As usual it was great to have her here... the weather mostly played along: Here we are downtown:

And at the city park:

We also made it to the market where both got new dresses: which you can't really see in the below pic, but they are lovely :)

Another hit was the indoor thermal swimming pool on the day it rained... and Mom (who was coming from drought-stricken, water-restricted Cape Town) could take a lovely long shower in the thermal water. I think that she enjoyed that almost as much as seeing me!

Mom's trip was short but very sweet and it worked out magnificently as when she left, we could drive her to Zagreb, as I was already having to drive our kombi/van to pick up a lovely team from the US: Here we are having dinner the first night altogether, once we were back in Banja Luka:

Even though they were around only 4 days, before heading to Sarajevo for a month, we managed to pack in a lot of things with them: Cultural night at EKC Ihtus:

 Where we had a lot of fun!

We also took them to the children's home where they hung out with the kids... Most of them are in Italy, staying with families during the summer, but we gave those that were there a fun afternoon, playing games or doing loom bangs on the side, or football with the guys:

Or doing gymnastics together:

When they left to go to Sarajevo, we were sad to see them go :(

Then we had some wonderful Finnish visitors, Sanna and Miika and their three kids who used to be here, but you will have to take my word for it as I don't have a pic...

Then it was time for my last June visitors, this time Matt and Kalene from my home church in Cape Town, South Africa. They were the lucky winners of a voucher at my Bosnian evening for free accommodation and they always wanted to come to this part of Europe, so they decided to come to me on the way from Budapest to Croatia... and we showed them a good time: Here we are at Krupa falls:

It was a busy but fun couple of weeks with all of our June visitors!!

Wedding in Finland and a whole lot more...

As my former colleagues' daughter, Ruut, was marrying our good friends' son, David, Ljilja and I decided to make the trip to Finland for the wedding. Our good friend, Sina, was so happy to have the chance to host us as she has stayed with us a lot in Bosnia, and even come to visit me in South Africa. Now was her chance to show off her Finland!

The wedding was stunning: of course it was on a lake (Finland is the land of a thousand lakes!), and luckily there was no rain. Here you can see where the vows took place:

The two families together in one photo: Finns on the left, Bosnians on the right. Ruut is the oldest of 4 girls and David is the oldest son in a family of 10! Don't they all look lovely :)

Here is just the happy couple: Ruut and David

 After all the festivities - they left in a very unusual way :)

Here's a photo to show you what we looked like in all our finery :)

Other than going to the wedding, we did see a bit of Finland: We spent a few days in Helsinki seeing the sights - here is the Lutheran Cathedral.

And here is the Marina area. Helsinki is surrounded by water.

We also spent time with some great people: including Sina's brother, Sani, and his girlfriend Anna.

We had a lovely evening catching up with Sina's friend, Jelena who has visited us in Banja Luka.

Then it was time to travel to Sina's family's "summer cottage". On the way we stopped off in Tampere to see some old friends. Lea (next to me) worked in Banja Luka for 3 years so it was great to see her and her sister, Eeva-Liisa, and also Susanna (who are both sponsors of our children in Banja Luka).

We had a great time at the summer cottage, which is not really a cottage:

We enjoyed hanging out with Sina's mom, who at 70 still plays tennis regularly, as does Sina's 86 year old uncle! Some amazing genes there...

And enjoyed the breathtaking sunsets over the lake at 11pm at night! Yes, 11pm!  

We enjoyed some fun Finnish traditions of berry-picking in the forest, and making a blueberry pie out of the pickings!! And of course the sauna... including jumping into the cold river in between sessions (but I kept my bathing costume on for that!!). We generally had a great time as the below photo shows :)

It wasn't all work and no play - we helped clean the roof of all the pine needles and leaves from the trees...

I didn't just take pictures... someone had to pick it all up off the ground where they swept it... ;)

Then it was time to leave the peaceful surrounds and head back to Helsinki. We made a day-trip across the Baltic sea to Tallinn in Estonia, where we caught up with my friend Helina:

And did some sight-seeing in the wonderful old town. So pretty!

Then it was time to head back to Banja Luka, but there is always time for a silly photo with sauna hats (do they need hats in a sauna??)

It was such an amazing trip and I am so grateful to Sina and her family for showing us such a wonderful time. The wedding was amazing, and I am so glad that we could be there for that, and it was also so great to catch up with many people along the way!!