Advancing the Gospel of jesus Christ

Dear brothers and sisters,
We hope you are doing well! Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter. It is a honor to share with you what God is doing in Serbia. Time flies fast and we are keeping ourselves busy serving the Lord here in Serbia. It is not easy to devote time to ministry after a long day of work, but it is rewarding because we get to witness people being confronted to the image of Christ. So thank you for your continuous support and encouragement to continue to serve Christ in Serbia. Please leave some comments and prayer requests in the comments section, we would be glad to read them and pray for you!

Ministry Updates

We are thankful for the ministry we have in our local church. Stefan, along with two other brothers is still preaching through 1st and 2nd Samuel on the bible meetings we have on Thursdays. We can learn so much of who God is when we read 1 & 2 Samuel. All of who God is, is summed so very well in Hannah`s prayer in 1 Samuel, chapter 2. There is no one like our Holy God. He vindicates the righteous but punishes the evil doers. He looks at the heart, at our intentions. He wants to be our King as His intention was since the beginning. This is the message that we are trying to communicate to the people who are listening.

Stefan was also invited to preach in another church in a town 30 minutes away. This is a small church that consists of only a couple of people. Please pray for these people. It is a blessing for Stefan to serve the church by sharing God`s word.

Stefan is also in charge of the worship, leading the youth and the church in worshipping God. As trivial job as it looks, it is a job with a lot of responsibility. The easiest part is to teach the youth how to sing a song, the part with all the responsibility is the part of making sure that what we are doing is praising God truly. We are glad to see youth more and more involved in the worship, which is an encouragement to see. We truly hope that they are worshiping God through all of that. Please pray that we give a good example to them.

At the beginning of November, in our town, we had a conference for pastors organized by Duhovna Biblioteka (the ministry we are part of) and another ministry called Grace to You Europe, Stefan helped with the multimedia and translation of one of the speakers, it was a blessing to see the pastors and leaders of the churches together growing and being better equipped to serve the Lord.

Also at the beginning of November Mari participated in a women`s meeting that happened in our church where women from some churches of our region met and enjoyed time together. It was an encouragement to be able to pray together with our sisters in Christ and get to know each other more.

Mari is also serving with helping to create a new website for the Baptist theological School here in Serbia, which is where Stefan also graduated from. She is not a professional but she is giving her best with this skill that God gave her. It`s not finished yet but if you want to take a look here is the link: http://www.btsns.org/

Podcast and Duhovna Biblioteka

Thank you for your prayers about the podcast. We are happy to share with you that we started recording the first episodes, Stefan is in charge of all the multimedia part, recording and editing. The main people in front of the cameras are our pastor and another missionary from our church. Continue praying that we will be able to reach new people that never heard the gospel before, and that we may use this project for His glory. If you want to watch when we post the podcast you can do so here: https://www.youtube.com/@DuhovnaBiblioteka (you can also see here all the sermons that we record from our church). There is still some equipment to be bought but we are starting with what we have, and we trust that the Lord will provide the rest. If you want to find out more about it feel free to contact us.

As you know we are part of a ministry here in Serbia called Duhovna Biblioteka (in English, Spiritual Library), their focus is evangelism, printing, and distribution of books and small booklets to reach people that never heard the gospel before. The current project is the translation and printing of booklets from John MacArthur, Stefan is helping with the design of the booklets, design of the covers, and the preparation for printing. Pray that we will be able to reach new people with these booklets and that this will be a door for them to hear about Christ. If you want to see these booklets and other books they have printed you can see them here: https://duhovnabiblioteka.rs/

Master`s opportunity and Visit to Hungary

Stefan was invited to learn more about this opportunity to continue his studies by doing master’s degree in an online seminary in Hungary. It would be a great opportunity because everything is online so we could continue our ministry here in Serbia while he studies online, but for that, we will need to take a leap of faith and go into full-time ministry. Pray for us, that God can guide us and that if this is His will, that He can help to raise the support necessary to be in full-time ministry.

Mari`s parents also had the opportunity to visit for a week now in November, so we could go together to Hungary to visit Mari`s sister who is studying at the Bible Institute, but we could also visit the reformed church that is part of this seminary. It was a blessing to meet the brothers and sisters in Christ of this church and connect even more with the people from the seminary.

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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:

Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter. We are very thankful for all of you amazing people who encourage us and pray for us!

Please let us know how we can pray for you!

God bless, 
Stefan and Mariana Vika.