Dear Sisters and Brothers,

I usually write letters on Mondays.  The last few months, things were so busy that I often had to decide which ministries I would write about. Today, so many things are happening already, that I will only write about the last two days, Sunday and today.

Yesterday, for Easter, we had a lot of small church services. It was hard to organize things. There were a lot of people who wanted to stay longer than usual. We had a blessed time, and it was a big joy.  

One of our youth groups (younger teenagers) prepared a program for Easter, and they had to show their program to a very small group of people (because of restrictions). Thanks to God, it looked like they understood the situation well, and they were not disappointed. Unfortunately, one member of this group has symptoms of Corona and is in isolation. One of the leaders visited him.  

Last night our house for refugees and migrants was full, and we had some problems. Our leaders for migrant ministry just finished meetings with people from the house. They had special meetings with people who are staying in the house and who are Christians. We had a lot of people who are staying only for a few days, and the pressure on this ministry is growing.  

Our ministry to people with special needs is going well. This morning our leader of this ministry had a meeting with parents and family members discussing rules of the new restrictions.  

We had a meeting of the Tuzla team and a WhatsApp meeting with friends from Croatia. It is not clear if we will be able to organize a summer project for kids this year, or if we will have to postpone it for one more year. We are praying for wisdom about it.   

I just realized that even if I continue to write about things from today and yesterday, it will be too long a letter. We are getting ready for the possibility of a complete lockdown, because Corona numbers in our district are getting worse every day. Bosnia is the country in Europe with the smallest number of people who have received vaccines, and things do not look promising. Still, we are continuing to look on every situation as a challenge to find ways to have active ministry as much as possible.   

We had a WhatsApp meeting with Sarajevo this morning and we would like to ask you to keep our church in Sarajevo in your prayers.  

God bless you!  

Lot of love and greetings, 

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers, 

The situation with coronavirus in Tuzla is getting worse every day. Our church changed the way we have church services, and everything is going well. Last week, new people attended our church services, and we are thankful to God blessings continue.

An unusually large number of people from our church have family problems. Please pray for strength for all of our sisters and brothers in Christ and for peace in their homes.  

All serving projects and ministries are going well. Today, 18 individuals with special needs participated in our Monday project. We are especially happy that our younger teenage group had the largest number of participants ever last week. It is amazing that even with corona restrictions, church and all our ministries are growing.  

The most challenging ministry for us involves visiting other towns, particularly Sarajevo. Travelling is hard, so we put a lot of focus on contacts through telephone and the Internet.   

We just got news that our house for migrants and refugees is at full capacity. We recently housed a group of teenagers from Pakistan (and one from India). It is great that one of the people staying in our migrant house is a Christian from Pakistan. So, it is a great chance for him to share the Gospel with these young people.   

Thank you for keeping ministry in Bosnia in your prayers!   

God bless you!  

Lot of love and greetings from  

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers, 

We are once again under restrictions and the numbers of people infected with corona are growing very fast. Restrictions are creating a lot of technical problems, but we are continuing ministry without slowing down. The biggest problem is the coordination of all our projects and ministries. Thanks to God, we can see good fruits and new people coming to church. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers.  

This weekend we had a baptism service. It is a great blessing that we have baptism services more often than ever before. Unfortunately, the pressure and the problems that non-Christian family members create for our sisters and brothers in Christ are getting worse. Please pray for all of them that God will give them strength and peace in their hearts.

This morning snow surprised us after a few wonderful spring days. Thanks to God, we had a reserve of sleeping bags and clothes that we could immediately distribute to migrants in Tuzla. Also, we provided a place for teenagers who were in the park without shelter to sleep. They are from Afghanistan and are in our migrant house right now. The majority of migrants who are staying in the migrant house the longest are Christian, and it is always a great chance for them to share the Gospel with the youths who stay in migrant house.

Last Thursday one of our serving teams (for ministry in the school for kids with special needs) got permission to have regular services again. The only restriction is that we have to work with the kids in the school park and can only send small teams (up to 3 persons).  

I would like to ask you, one more time, to pray for wisdom and strength for us. Moving back to church services with restrictions means that we have a lot of small church services, and it usually goes for hours and hours. It is complicated to organize, and we pray for blessing for all the people who are coming to church services and for all our leaders.  

God bless you!  

Lot of love and greetings,

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers,

The transition from church services ‘with restrictions to regular church services is a great blessing for the Tuzla church. It looks like our place is getting too small even with two church services. At least one of the services on Thursdays and one on Sundays is full to capacity with no more space available. We are not currently considering a triple church services, but there's a big chance we will need it in the future. We are thankful to God for this blessing. 

Please pray for all the people who are leading and coordinating various ministries. One problem we are facing right now is the very unstable situation with Corona numbers. We are making two kinds of plans for every project so we are always ready to go back to church services with restrictions. Last week, the number of infected people in Tuzla was growing. Thanks to God, no one from the Tuzla church is infected.   

The situation in Sarajevo is much harder. One of our church members, the person who is active in ministry, is infected and today is his fifth day since the first symptoms. The situation in Sarajevo is making ministry technically complicated. Still, we are not thinking about things we cannot do and are continuing to function by asking ourselves, "What is the best we can do in this situation?"  

The situation in our migrant house is also complicated. The number of migrants passing through Tuzla is growing, and we have more and more teenagers and families with kids. At this moment, we also have several persons staying in Tuzla for a longer time than is typical. Two migrants are regularly coming to our church services. Please continue to pray for our ministry to migrants.

This weekend we had our traditional dinner where the male half of our church prepares a big dinner for our sisters and guests. It was a great blessing again. We are thankful to God we did not have to follow restrictions. Also, we are happy a large number of girls from the youth group not from our church came to dinner, and we had a chance to build a relationship with them.  

We are starting ministry at the school for kids with special needs again. We got permission to go to the school with smaller groups of volunteers and to have a program for the kids in the park next to the school.  

For many families in Tuzla, Corona created a very difficult economic situation. One way to look at it is to see the real difficulty, but another way is to see how it creates open doors to visit people and witness to them.  

Thank you for your prayers! 

Please continue to pray for ministry in Bosnia and for our mission projects in other countries.

God bless you!  

Lot of love and greetings, 

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers,

It was a very long day in Tuzla. I am thankful to God that everything is going well. Double church services may not be enough. At least one of the church services every Sunday and Thursday is too crowded. We are happy because of that, but we are still not ready for triple church services.  

Please pray for the coming weekend, because we are planning to have our traditional dinner when brothers from our church are prepare food and a program for our sisters. We are continuing to be very busy. Please pray for all leaders and all churches and church planting projects that we have in Bosnia.  

Today we had a theology lecture that was about the history of our church and plans for the future. A big group of people from our church had a long walk in the afternoon. We started from the first place where we had church services and we visited all 8 places in which our church gathered at different times. It looks like we changed so many places that we can say that we were "travelling church". At the same time, we had a lecture about church planting and pastoral care, and it was a good chance to pray for different projects that started in the different locations. Having in mind that our church doubled in size in the last two places, it was a good chance for people to hear about beginnings and the time when our church was just starting in Tuzla.  

As I already shared in previous newsletters, one of the migrants who is in our refugee house is a Christian from Pakistan who was serving as a pastor in his church. He left Pakistan because his life was in danger. In the future, we are planning different to make connections online with the church in Pakistan. This weekend we went online for a sermon for the Pakistani church. It was a blessing to see people in Pakistan listening to a preacher in Bosnia and being together in prayer. The only little technical problem is that church in Pakistan starts their church service when it is still night here in Bosnia. We are blessed that we are encouraging and helping two churches in Pakistan now.  

Please pray for ministry to migrants and ministry to the growing number of people without jobs who struggle to feed their families. Also, please pray especially for our ministry in Sarajevo where the situation with Corona is not good at all. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for the opportunity to take youths from Sarajevo and Zenica to Tuzla. 

Thank you for your prayers.  

God bless you!  

Lots of love and greetings,  

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers,

Few Covid restrictions is a big blessing for the Tuzla community. The church missed regular church services with a worship team, sermons that are not limited by time and all other parts of the church service. We decided that every Thursday and Sunday we will have two church services. During the first church service, the number of people allows us to have physical distance from each other. However, for the second church service, the number of people is so big that the chapel is practically full without keeping any real distance. Thanks to God, the number of people infected with Corona is still very low in our district, and we are planning to continue without making any changes for at least one more week. Every time we have church services, we also have a "kids church service" during the break.  

The situation in Sarajevo is more complicated because the number of people infected with corona is larger than in Tuzla. It is complicated to organize church services that accomodate proper distance. Please especially pray for our church in Sarajevo and for ministry there.  

For the next two months, we have a lot of plans for small projects and hope that everything will go well with God’s blessing. At the beginning of March (March 6), We will have dinner for sisters from our church. The brothers of the church are already busy preparing for that event. This year, for the first time, we will not be able to have the complete event in the chapel. It looks like there will not be enough space. The week after that, we will have a baptism service. In March, we will take the youth from Sarajevo to visit Zenica and Tuzla. In April,  we will have a missionary week. We pray that after that time it will be possible to organize the first longer trips and visits of friends from other countries to Tuzla.  

Last weekend we had problems with the police connected with our refugee ministry. Two persons from our refugee house were arrested and sent to Sarajevo. Thanks to God, we managed to explain to authorities that people in our refugee house are staying with full permission of the foreign police and they came back to Tuzla the same evening. One of those two persons is an Arab who became a Christian one month ago. The situation in our refugee house is getting more difficult. Up till now, we have always managed to find a place for all teenagers and families. Still, it is obvious that the number of migrants will grow and that we will be under more pressure soon. Please pray for this ministry.   

God bless you!  

Lot of love and greetings from  

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers,

Last week we went back to “regular church services.” It is a great blessing, and we are all so happy about it! “Regular” means that we will have two church services on Thursdays and Sundays. Between those two church services, we have a special church service for kids. During the first church service on Thursday and on Sunday, we had a full room with distance between people. For the second church services, the room was completely full. So, we already have a struggle about what to do about it.  

During the last two weeks, the number of people infected with corona in our district is going down. We made a decision that we will still not start with the third church service. There are many technical things with which we have to deal, but everything is going well and we are thankful to God for it. While there have been restrictions, we have had a number of people start to come to church services regularly. For them, it is something new to see a worship team, longer sermons, and more people at the service. It looks like they are all enjoying it and that this transition was a blessing for them too.   Everything is going well, but those technical things make time in church extra busy.  

Thanks to God, we found a way to include people from our refugee house in our church services. We have one Pakistani and one Moroccan regularly coming to church services. One person from church made a system for translation that works through a program installed on mobile phones. One person, who is out of the chapel, is translating simultaneously from Bosnian to English. It works very well and it is a big blessing. 

In our refugee house, during the last several days, we had a lot of teenagers from Afghanistan and from Arab countries. We are concerned that our capacity will not be enough to accommodate all families and teenagers who are passing through our town. Please keep this in your prayers.  

Please pray for teachers and staff from the school for kids with special needs. It looks like they have open hearts and that we have a chance to make big steps in sharing the Gospel with them. They are passing through big challenges and often they are very nervous. They call us every few days to help them and often ask how it is possible that we are so peaceful . That was a great chance for us to speak about our faith and what Jesus is doing in our lives.  

We have a lot of meetings with our worship team, youth, and kid's group leaders. Please keep all of them in your prayers.   

God bless you!  

Lot of love and greetings from  

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers,

Our church decided that we can conduct church services without all the restrictions. From this week forward, we will have two church services every Thursday and Sunday. Originally, we planned to have two church services in Bosnian and one in English, but one brother from our church made a very simple system for simultaneous translation, using old cell phones. So, our friends from the “migrant house” will be able to be at the same church service with simultaneous translation! We previously decided that, even when restrictions are lifted, we would continue with “double” church services. Unfortunately, it looks like operating with fewer restrictions will also be technically complicated. So, we are having a lot of meetings to discuss different technical things. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.  

The trip to Sarajevo last week was probably one of the best visits to Sarajevo we have had. We had church services, meetings and visits literally all day without a break. Even lunch and dinner times were used for meeting and times of sharing the Gospel with migrants. Our visit to Zenica was good, but we are still building relationships there. The good news is that we will have guests from Zenica in our youth group in Tuzla. Please keep in your prayers the leaders of different ministries in Tuzla and coordinators of our serving projects. They are under a lot of pressure right now. The pressure and difficulties are coming from many sides. We pray that God will bless the leaders and give them strength and peace in their hearts.  

We are continuing with home-visits to families of our kids with special needs. Every visit is a big emotional challenge. The situations in their homes are often difficult and painful…  

I think that the best way to describe the time in Tuzla is to say that from noon on Thursday, until now, the longest time that I could be in my home during the day, was 50 minutes. It is busy, but still, somehow, I feel that we are not in a hurry. 

Thank you for keeping us in your prayers!  

God bless you!  

Lots of love and greetings,

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers,

Last weekend we had a short, one-day trip with the two youth groups. One group are younger teenagers who are more or less regularly attending church services. The second group is for teenagers and young people who are not yet coming to the church services. This group is an excellent evangelization project in two different ways. The first way is a direct evangelization of youths who are coming to the group. The second way is evangelization of those who are volunteering with technical things for this group. The great news is that we already can see blessings and we see that some of the volunteers are already coming to church services. Unfortunately, last week, families of the kids from that group started to object and to create problems. Please pray for protection for youths from this group and for wisdom and strength for leadership and volunteers.  

Our prayer group gathering on Wednesdays is getting bigger and bigger in Tuzla and other parts of Bosnia. Also, there are more and more people from other countries who are joining in prayer for ministry in Bosnia, revival, ministries and missionaries from the whole world and for other needs. We are having a growing number of people who are letting us know that from 18:30 CET, they will pray with us from their homes or churches. We are thankful to God for this and it is an amazing blessing for all of us.  

We still have church services that are going through most of the day. Now, one of the church services is for the kids’ group. An amazing thing is that we already have two mothers who are not from our church who are bringing their kids to this group. Both of them started to come to church services. So, kids are having a program in their room and then they come to the chapel and they have a special church service for them. After that, they continue their program in their room. While they have their own program in the kids' room, parents attend regular church services.  

Our friends from the school for kids with special needs called us asking for help for families of kids in hard social-economic situations. Our church acted immediately and we are doing everything we can to help.  

Every day when we have church services, one church service is in English for migrants living in our house for refugees. One of them is a Pakistani pastor, and we hope that in the future he will start ministry to Pakistani migrants passing through our town. Please pray for this.  

This coming weekend, we will visit Sarajevo and Zenica. Corona restrictions are difficult for our church in Sarajevo, and we are planning to have the biggest number of church services so far. Also, we are planning to visit a refugee camp in Sarajevo and to have one meeting. The next day, we will go back to Tuzla through Zenica and gather with our group there. We are planning to speak with kids and youths from Zenica about their visit to youth groups in Tuzla.  

One of the people who was helping us a lot to open doors in the Tuzla orphanage died a few days ago. It will make our contact with kids in the orphanage even more complicated.    

We finished one more “generation” of theology students and, after today, we will have “open” theology lectures for several months.  

We have to decide about the date for another baptism service. We are thankful to God for this! We've never had baptism services so frequently before! It is a wonderful gift, and we are thankful to God on it!  

Oh, there is more news, but the letter is already long… Please continue to keep us in your prayers and we are thankful to God to be united in prayers!  

God bless you!  

Lots of love and greetings,  

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers, 

The Covid situation in Bosnia is hard to explain. People are very relaxed and life is going back to “normal” day by day. Bosnia still did not get any vaccines, but the numbers of infected people are getting smaller. It means that our church will very soon start regular church services. During the last several months, we had new people coming to our church services practically every week, so we have a big number of people who have never been in regular church services. We decided that we will have two Bosnian language church services every Sunday and two Bosnian church services every Thursday.  This way, we will keep enough extra places for people who will start coming to church services in the future.

Our trip to Sarajevo was a big blessing. God is opening new doors for us and we are thankful to Him for it. When Corona restrictions started, we made some changes in our ministry in Sarajevo. Now we have to make important technical decisions about the place in Sarajevo that we will rent for our church services. We would like to rent a new place and we will start with a search for a better location. Please pray for God’s wisdom about it.  

Our kids group had the first short trip last Friday. It was an excellent time for our kids and parents. On Saturday, we are planning to have the same short trip to Gracanica with both youth groups.  

On Saturday evening I had a chance to be a volunteer at a youth group. Actually, I was not a volunteer at the youth group meeting, but few of us were giving support to our team that is doing a great job and they have more and more youths coming to this group. Some youths are very hard to control and it is amazing that the program is going so well! Still, there are few youths who stayed outside of the church building trying to make some problems. It was good to have a few people taking care of that challenge. Please keep this group in your prayers! They have meetings every Saturday evening.  

Our prayer group that is gathering every Wednesday evening is growing. It is interesting, because our plan was that this group would gather to pray for the Tuzla church, our ministries in different parts in Bosnia, and our friends around the world. At the beginning, we were thinking of it as an informal group and we were not planning for the group to grow. Well, it is a blessing that there are more and more people from Tuzla who are joining this group. Also, there is a growing number of our friends from other countries who are taking their prayer time at the same time when our group is gathering (Wednesday 18:30 CET).  

We have church services for migrants again and our house for migrants is once again full. Our coordinator for migrants’ ministry is continuing to focus on teenagers, Christians and families with kids. During the last week in one Bosnian refugee camp, there was an incident where a big group of migrants attacked several Christians from Iran. Please pray for the safety of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  

 Also, please pray for our brother in Christ from Pakistan who will stay in Tuzla. He would like to serve in evangelization programs to migrants. We pray that God will show him what the plan is for him. Family of our brother, who was a pastor in Pakistan, is still in Pakistan. Please pray for their safety.  

Today we have the last theology lecture for the group attending our regular lectures. Starting next Monday, we will continue with the Bible study, until we start with a new group of leaders who will attend regular theological lectures.  

God bless you!  

Lots of love and greetings,  

Lela  

Dear sisters and brothers, 

We are thankful to God that things are going very well in Tuzla and we feel amazingly blessed. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers! Last week, on Monday, one of our youth leaders started to have a fever and practically all other symptoms of Corona. He lives in the church building, so we had to reorganize things technically and make a place for isolation. For the first several days, we were sure he had Corona. He was tested on Friday and the results were “negative”. Two tests were done, just to be sure. So, we can use all parts of the church building again.  

Practically every week, someone new comes to our church service. It is a great blessing! We are especially happy that people who started to come to church in the previous few weeks are regularly present in church services. Last weekend, we had a baptism service, which was a technical challenge due to Corona restrictions. Thanks to God, we are already making plans for the next baptism service.  

Our migrant house is full again. Thanks to God, yesterday, all migrants from the house were present at the church service for migrants. One of the migrants in the house is a Christian from Pakistan and it is a blessing for us. In Pakistan, he was serving as a pastor, and he is in regular contact with his church. He expressed a desire to stay with us in Tuzla, and we are thankful to God that we can serve him. We still have people who are coming to our migrant house for a day or two (during the last week mostly teenagers), but now we also have people who are planning to stay for a longer period.  

Our youth groups and groups for kids are planning short trips in the next several weeks. Our church has traditionally organized a lot of mission trips, so many of us miss projects out of Sarajevo, Zenica and the Tuzla area. It is interesting that we now have a lot of people who started coming to church during Corona, especially young people and kids, so we are happy to show them that our church is always ready to organize trips and projects out of town.  

Our kids group (ages 3 to 10) had their first participation experience during a church service. Seven of them were singing with their group leaders.  

The group for young people who were not from our church originally (until a few weeks ago no one from them was from our church, but now Tarik, 19 yrs old, is coming to church services regularly) is very active. A large number of new young people came to Saturday's program and it is a big challenge. Please keep this group in your prayers.  

We are not sure if it will be possible to visit Zenica after our time in Sarajevo this week. There are a lot of activities in Tuzla and there is a big chance that we will not be able to visit both places. Please pray for wisdom and blessings.  

All activities in church and our serving projects are going well.  

God bless you!  

Lots of love and greetings, 

Lela