Summer in serbia

Hello brothers and sisters,
we hope you are doing well! Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter. It is a great honor to share with you about what is God doing in Serbia. Please leave some notes in the comments section, we would be glad to read them and reply!

Ministry Updates

We are blessed to be able to be part of a church in Serbia and be useful for God’s glory! The people in the church are very welcoming and that warms our hearts. Stefan had the privilege to preach in our church about the unity of the body of Christ, and at another church where he preached about lessons we can learn from the Old Testament. Also, he had an opportunity to help paint and fix some things in the fellowship area of our home church. It’s been very good to get to know our brothers and sisters here.
We will be serving through preaching, discipleship, and worship ministry in the Church.

Every new beginning is hard. The church didn’t have a pastor for more than 20 years. There are a lot of problems, like in every church, and we are young. Please keep us in prayers! We have surrounded ourselves with great people of God to help and encourage us, so we are very excited for what God is going to do in this church in the following year.

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Two Weeks of Summer camps

It was a blessing to be able to help with summer camps. Mariana was the soccer coach during the summer but also helped with games, multimedia, and whatever was needed. The kids were very open to discussions. They listened to the Bible stories and they always loved the songs that we sang.
All of them went to the front after Darko shared the gospel, we really hope they were serious in their decision. After all, it is God who changes hearts, not us. In the second week, we had some kids that we crying while they prayed out loud and that was really encouraging to see. After that we divided into groups and were able to talk with them, encourage them and ask questions, with that we could see who really understood the message of the gospel.
On the Thursday of camp, at night, we have a moment with the parents, where the kids can present the songs they learned and where we can share testimony and the gospel with them. There were really a lot of parents at those meetings, as you can see in the last picture. Everybody paid attention to what Darko, the camp leader, was talking about. After camp is over we have bible clubs to continue the study of the bible with them and help them in their walk with the Lord.

These weeks were also very good for Mari to practice her Serbian! She really enjoyed being there and Serving the Lord!

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Prayer requests

We are grateful for your prayers and for partnering with us in our ministry. Here are our prayer requests:

• Adapting to Serbia – pray for our time adapting to Serbia and that God can keep using us for His glory wherever we are.
• Kids from the Camp – pray for the kids that were on camp, that their decision to accept Christ is real, and pray for their family that also heard the gospel.
• Language learning – pray for Mari as she is learning Serbian.
• Bureaucracy and Visa – pray for Mari’s residency permit, that they will approve with no problems, and all the documentation we need to figure out.
• Support Raising – pray that God will continue to provide for us. We continue in the process of raising support so that we can work full-time in the ministry. Pray as well if God is putting on your heart to be partners with us in this ministry. Stefan has to work on the side to be able to support our financial needs, but we want to be able to focus full-time on the ministry. At the moment, since Stefan has to work on the side, all our support goes directly to the needs of the church and ministry since we have enough money for all the bills for now, but we are still praying that in the future we will have enough support to go full-time ministry as we continue to give all our needs before the Lord!
• Auto-immune Disease – as you know Stefan has a chronicle disease called Ulcerative Colitis, there is no cure but it can be controlled. Pray that the medication will keep it dormant for the rest of his life and that he won’t have big problems with that in the future.

Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter. 
Please let us know how we can be praying for you!

God bless, 

Stefan and Mariana Vika.