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 what God is doing in Serbia. Please leave some notes in the comments section, we would be glad to read them and reply!
Ministry Updates
Stefan started preaching a series in the morning service on the book of Galatians to build a strong base of the gospel and on unity in the church. In the evening service, Stefan started preaching about the elder’s roles, more specifically looking at the old testament leaders of God’s nation since we can learn so much from the Old Testament. All this is to build a strong foundation for the leadership of the church and for the church to have a better understanding of the roles of the leadership. We also continue to serve with the worship team, multimedia, and whatever the church needs.
Mari participated in a woman’s craft at our church where they were doing pumpkins out of scratch. It was a great time of fellowship, Bible study, and crafts together. One of Mari’s ministries is with women so this was a great opportunity to get closer to them and practice Serbian. She also participated in a woman’s fellowship moment in another church with the women from the churches here in the north, they had lunch together, study of the scriptures and crafts, so it was a great time of fellowship.
We also started participating in the choral of our church, our church gets together with other churches to join forces and have one bigger choral. We have two events coming up where we will present the songs, one is the 100th anniversary of the union of the Baptist church, and the other one is a Christmas presentation.
Stefan wants to start also a monthly meeting with all the men that preach in the church, to have a place to study the bible together and encourage each other, this month will be the first meeting so you can be praying for that.
Village Day
We had a great evangelism opportunity. Every year at the end of September they have village day where you can rent a stand to sell your goods, but in our case, we have a stand full of tracks and bibles and a lot of people passing by where we can talk and share the gospel with. Stefan had the opportunity to share the gospel with a policeman, with the people selling in the stands around us – one was a Muslim guy that was interested in talking and even accepted a bible in the end -, and also with young and older people, most of them were interested in listening and said they would really think about what they talked, there was one younger guy that seems to know a lot about the bible but didn’t want to accept a bible or any tracks.
Seminary Classes
Beginning of October we had seminary classes. Stefan started his senior year at the seminary. It was so good to be among the students after almost two years of not being able to participate. Mari was also able to participate even though she is not a student. We are very thankful for all of that! The classes were great! In the morning we studied Biblical stewardship and in the afternoon we studied Trinitarianism. It was so interesting and heart-changing. This is what we actually love about the classes. It is not all about knowledge but also about a change of heart. Thank you for your prayers!
Wedding Anniversary
On 10/10/2022 we celebrated 2 years together, it’s a blessing to share life together, be in ministry together and see how God leads our marriage for His glory. We have lived in two different countries now, with sunny and rainy days together, through sickness and health but God has taken care of us and we pray we can keep glorifying God with our family and marriage.
Prayer requests
We are grateful for your prayers and for partnering with us in our ministry. Here are our prayer requests:
Praises: Mari’s visa was accepted and everything went well.
- Ministry opportunities – pray for the prayer meeting that we started, that more people from church will see the importance to go to prayer meetings, and for the men’s meeting that they will be able to encourage each other and grow together.
- People that heard the gospel – pray for the people that heard the gospel, that they will want to learn more about God and to visit the church.
- Adapting to Serbia – pray for Mari as she continues to adapt to Serbia and that God can keep using us for His glory wherever we are.
- Language learning – pray for Mari as she is learning Serbian.
- Bureaucracies – we still need to change Mari’s driver’s license to Serbian, pray that everything will go smoothly.
- 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.