Pre-Serbia camp Vs. Satan

Off we went to Serbia for another camp…and Satan did not want us there. We originally planned on doing 2 camps but then the second one got cancelled. So we started our journey at 6 am to Belgrade, Serbia. It was a HOT drive and roughly SUPPOSED to be 7 hours. Here is where Satan started his battles….just before the boarder crossing into Serbia Mike said “Do we have the insurance card for the van?” Well, I had just paid it the week before with Danny so I knew it was there….we searched and searched, NOTHING. Well, you can’t go into Serbia without it. They check passports and insurance. Serbia is a country that likes to have control over the littlest things, it’s a power trip for them. We don’t have it, we tried to give the police the receipt but that was not good enough so we pulled over and tried to call everyone we knew in Sk to find it and tried contacting the insurance company to fax us the card, still nothing. After an hour at the border we bit the bullet and paid for a month of insurance ($150 Euros...OUCH). This process only took 15 seconds. (again, here is there power control)



On we go….we got to Belgrade and planned on picking up the church team that was flying over to help us out from Indiana. There flight was delayed and the couple that was supposed to come in before them did not make it and was flying in the next day so we walked around the city of Belgrade for a while before they got there.
Finally we got them and headed to the campsite….it was in Opovo, Serbia. A small little town…it’s the same place we had camp last year. This year God blessed us with a variety of people on the team…Serbians, Americans, Slovaks, Czechs, Norwegians, and Brittish. It was so neat to watch everyone come together for the same purpose and listening to everyone pray in their own language was beautiful!

When you enter Serbia you have to turn your passports into the police because they like to register everyone who comes in the country… (control issue #2)…while our passports were getting registered some of us decided to go for a bike ride into the “town” of Opovo. It was so small we peddled right though it and had no idea…haha on our way back we decided to stop for water, all 12 of us on bikes. The next thing I know, here come the police…ugh, not again. Satan was on the move. He asked for our passports and started shouting a lot of other things in Serbian to us and the only thing I could think of was “oh man…we are all going to the Serbian jail…” So I immediately got my phone called my Serbian friend Mark and handed the phone to the police officer. We were clear…but by the grace of God. One of the police officers happened to be a Christian and was being discipled to by a man named Andy and this officer reads his Bible to his family every night. And because we all knew Andy, he let us go. Normally in Serbia, if you don’t have your passport when they ask for it, you can go to jail if they want to take you…it’s crazy. We found out that the reason the police came was because there was so many of us in this little “town” that it overwhelmed some folks and they called the police. That shows you how small it was. ☺





During all of this commotion…Mike is off in Novi Sad with the American team showing them around the city and the van the Serbian team is in breaks down and Mike had to tow the van and it’s trailer on and off till the engine cooled down. What a day!

Satan did not win his attacks….there is obviously some reason Satan did not want us here. I believe God has big plans for the Serbian camp.