Some Endings and Some Beginnings...

Enjoying the blessing of my balcony

I have now been back in Slovenia for exactly 9 months and it feels like the time has flown by. Things have changed so much, especially in the last few months when all restrictions have been lifted. It's a far cry from last Autumn with the weekly protests complete with tear gas, smoke bombs and police in riot gear walking through the centre of a usually incredibly safe city. These last two weeks have started to mark the end of my year of study and now I am in serious transition to my new role. My language course finished last week but this week has been so busy I've been glad for the extra time. I will obviously keep on studying the language even if it isn't as intensive as it has been. I have already contacted my old private tutor and arranged to have lessons once a week from September. I may be reasonably fluent in the language now but there are still many situations where I have no idea what's going on. Language is a life long study and my aim is to be as good as I can be as I aim to serve the people here in their own language rather than making them always speak mine.

I had another ending this week. I gave my last talk for Cornhill, my Bible course that I have been attending for the last 2 years. I will not be continuing with study next year so this really was quite a milestone. The passage I taught on was Isaiah 40, looking at how the incomparable, caring Lord comes with comfort for his people. Yes it's a bit of a mouthful but I quite liked the alliteration. As I have done with my previous 3 talks, I will now edit and translate it ready to give to the Ladies' Bible Study group next Thursday. It's been such a great experience giving these talks to real people. It becomes less about an academic exercise and more about how can I teach these people God's word faithfully in a way that will help them best. I hope to continue writing talks for this group and give them regularly even though I will no longer have the safety net of Cornhill.

Now that language has finished and I've prepared my last talk, I'm now looking ahead to the summer and then onto the Autumn. Whilst I don't officially take over the youth work in the church until September, there are many things that I need to prepare over the summer. We also have our youth camp in a month's time. As I will be travelling to the UK for 2 weeks immediately before the camp, I need to get all my prep done before I go. This includes writing a talk, preparing a Bible study and helping to organise the music. As I say, I'm quite happy to have the extra time now I no longer have language lessons each week!

In the meantime I've been enjoying the summer weather here in Ljubljana and taken the opportunity to work outside on my balcony as often as possible. I am still incredibly grateful to God for the gift of this flat and especially for the fact that it looks like I can stay here for the foreseeable future. It means that I'm able to make it my home and put down roots here. 

Please continue to pray for me here as I head into a busy summer and then transition into my new role. Pray that I would continue to depend on our great God and not try to do it all in my own strength!

Remembering the Glory of God

As many of you may know, last weekend I was given the opportunity to join a Slovene choir for a one off event. We sang a new composition of the Magnificat in the Philharmonic Concert Hall in Ljubljana. It was a lot of work but also an amazing opportunity. Of course it wasn't a Christian event or Christian choir but I still felt amazing joy in being able to join in Mary's song. 

This week I have also been able to lift my voice in song and praise in a different context. I'm currently sat in a small place in the North East of Slovenia called Jeruzalem. As I look across the rolling hills in the bright sunshine I am reminded of the glory of God in his creation. I am here for a few days for a conference. A group of pastors from Northern Ireland have come over to spend a time of fellowship and learning with people who are working in this region. Most, but not all, are from Slovenia. We all come from different contexts and all have different experiences but it is a real time of rest and refreshment for me. It's a lovely opportunity to hear and to share how God is working in our small areas of the world. 

Both of these events have been very different but each, in their own way have reminded me once more of the glory of God and what he has done for us! 

Seeing Hidden Gems...

 

Today I went on a trip with my language school to a place that I've wanted to visit for years. This is a hospital hidden high in the mountains. It was run by partisans (communist freedom fighters) during the Second World War and was never found by the Germans. Here they looked after wounded soldiers of all nationalities and despite being a place for the seriously wounded, only 78 of 578 patients died. It really is an amazing place to visit and I'm really glad that I got the chance to visit. 

The last month, since I last wrote, has been getting busier. In the past month I have given another talk at Cornhill which I then translated for the ladies bible study group last week. It really was an encouraging meeting thinking about the responsibilities of leadership in our church. 

I have also been asked to join a Slovene choir for a one off performance in the philharmonic concert hall next week. We are singing a new composition of the Magnificat which is an incredibly hard piece of music. I'm very excited by it but also nervous because it's quite a big deal. The last couple of weeks has been filled with practice, practice and more practice! 

Thank God for all the new opportunities I'm having and for the way that I see him working here. 

How Quickly Things Change...

It finally happened! I finally succumbed to covid! I had hoped that I would be able to avoid it after 2 years but on Sunday morning those two little lines appeared on my test. Like many other people all my plans suddenly had to change. Unlike in the UK, I have had to self isolate and will stay in quarantine until I test negative. Fortunately Cornhill has finished for the Easter holidays and I was due to be visiting a friend in a different city over the weekend so the only thing I've missed has been my language lessons for the week. Of course I was disappointed but to be honest I've felt so ill with it I've enjoyed having an excuse to stay home in bed for a week.

In Slovenia, Good Friday is like any other work day. Despite this I have managed to make some hot cross buns and was encouraged by being able to tune into the service this morning from my church in Swindon. Every Sunday evening I log into the service and feel very blessed to be able to hear God's word in my own language each week.

Having spent the week in isolation, not too much has happened but I am grateful to have a bit of outdoors space. Two weeks ago we were coming to the end of a glorious March where we had had sunshine and warmth for many days. Coupled with the fact that the door to my balcony was finally fixed (it had broken in October), I decided that the time was right to finally get some furniture for my balcony. I was very excited to finally be able to use the space. As I don't have a car here I managed to sign up for the local car share scheme and prepared to drive to IKEA. I knew in my head that the cars were electric and automatic but I had never driven one before. It felt a bit like a comedy of errors. My feet didn't know what they were doing, my arm didn't know what it was doing. I should add that it was the first time I had driven since I came back to Slovenia. Oh, and did I mention? It was snowing! Somehow I made it safely there but then I had the fun of trying to fit several boxes into a reasonably small car. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's felt the panic of thinking a large box won't fit in the car! I eventually got it all in but because of the boxes I couldn't see out of the rear window. So there I was on my return journey in the snow in an unfamiliar car on the wrong side of the road and unable to see clearly. I was definitely praying through that journey! Since then I've been able to enjoy the sunshine and do some of my work outside. I look forward to be able to use it more through the summer period.

My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing that He cannot do...

Mountains in Slovenia (taken 5 years ago)

Today I have been thinking about what I'm preparing for Sunday School this week. This will be my first time leading here but since all the children in the group are American I will be able to lead the session in English. One of the songs we will be singing is My God is so big. I've had the the song in my head all day but it's only as I'm sitting here writing this that the words of it have struck me afresh. Only this morning I was reading of atrocities in Ukraine but our great God is bigger than that, there's nothing he cannot do. The mountains are his. If the weather is clear I can see mountains from my street. Even from miles away they look huge but God created them. The stars are his handiwork too. Just like in Genesis 1 where there is the throwaway line that God created the stars too, I am reminded that the whole universe belongs to God. It is all under his control. We may live in troubling times but that means that we should be turning to our big, strong God who can do all things.

The past few weeks have both felt busy but also quiet. At the beginning of March I gave a talk on Ecclesiastes 3 which was quite daunting. I was then asked to translate it and give it to the Ladies' Bible Study group. You may remember that I was asked to do this for my last talk in Exodus, so this was my second talk in Slovene. Again I had help from Google translate but again it was well worth the effort. It was so encouraging to see the ladies thinking about these things and discussing what the passage meant. My next talk is due at the end of April and it is on 1 Samuel 2. I don't yet know if I will be asked to translate this one as well.

We're now in the run up to Easter so things will start to slow down a bit although I will be leading youth group next week (hopefully in Slovene!) I'm also planning to take a short trip to visit a friend in Ptuj, a town in the north of the country, over Easter. This week will be a little bit different as well. ECM are having their biennial which once again will be held online. I look forward to catching up with different people and hearing how God is using them in different parts of Europe.

Facebook has also reminded me this week that it is exactly 5 years since I first visited the church here in Ljubljana to see if this was where God was calling me to work. A lot has happened in those 5 years but I am so grateful for the way the church here has welcomed me and looked after me in all the highs and lows of life. I know I am in the place that God wants me to be, doing the work He wants me to do and I am just so blessed to serve here alongside His people in Ljubljana.

Jumping back in...

The world seems to have changed once more since I last wrote. This morning I was writing my language homework and was given the question: what would I do if I could change the world. To be honest, in the face of everything that's happening, it just seemed a bit too flippant a question to ask. Instead I decided to point out that there are many problems in the world. The world is broken, I can't change it, I can't do anything but Jesus can. He came to this broken, hurting world offering us a hope and a future when all things will be made new.

Of course this doesn't mean that we sit back and watch as the world falls apart around us. We should be helping if we can. On Monday afternoon I had a bit of spare time and so volunteered for a couple of hours at a centre that was collecting supplies to send to Ukraine. It was amazing to see people from the whole community coming together to help where we could. There were so many people with English, Slovenian and Ukrainian all intermingling. I took this photo as I was leaving and this was only a fraction of what had been given. I know some of it was definitely being sent into Ukraine itself but I suspect some was being sent for refugees at the border.

I know some people are being careful about how they support the need and want to make sure that their money goes to the right place. If anyone is interested, my organisation, ECM, has set up its own fundraising campaign to help their workers who are based in Western Ukraine and are helping people travelling through. Here is the link for their crisis fund: https://www.ecmi.org/en/project-detailpage/9d8fca04-2b9a-4ad0-9ff9-27bda4cbf01e

At the beginning of this post I alluded to my language homework. I started back at language school this week. I was expecting this time to be incredibly busy with 4 lessons a week. As it has turned out, I will only be having lessons twice a week. There are only 2 other people in my group and so they are running a reduced course for us instead. In some ways I was quite disappointed by this but since I've had so many other things to do this week I think it may well turn out to be for the best. There are a couple of things happening in the next few days for which I would value prayer. Tomorrow my neighbour (who goes to my church) and I are organising an afternoon tea party for some of the teenage girls from the church. One of the girls will be organising some discussion questions and I'm hoping that it will be a time when we can talk about the Bible together and some of the difficulties they are facing. (I'm also praying that my baking doesn't poison anyone!)

On top of that I am also in the middle of preparing my next talk for Cornhill which I am due to give on Wednesday. I thought my last talk on Exodus was hard, well this one is on Ecclesiastes! Please pray that God would give me the words to say and that I would teach his word faithfully. I have also been asked to give this talk to the ladies' Bible study group in Slovene in 2 weeks time. This means that it is no longer just an academic exercise but a talk that I will be giving to real people.

So I'm sitting here with the sun streaming through my window thinking about everything I have to do but to be honest I'm just incredibly grateful that I have all these opportunities to share the gospel in so many different settings. Please keep praying for God to be working here in Slovenia and that he would make a difference in the lives of the people here.

Rest, refreshment, encouragement and sledding...

View from the top of a mountain

Despite the fact that I'm still on a break from language school, my weeks seem to have filled up quickly. I have really appreciated the chance to spend good time catching up with lots of people. When busy with language school my relationships with people really did get pushed to one side so it's been really refreshing to have the time to spend with lots of different people. It's also been an opportunity to learn more about the culture and country of Slovenia. This last week I visited the ethnographic museum, which, although I don't think I would choose to go to again, was interesting to see what questions are being asked about society and how Slovenes view themselves and other cultures. 

Slovenes are also big fans of winter sports. I'm consoling my
self with the fact that although Team GB currently have no medals at the Winter Olympics, Slovenia has 5, including 2 golds from ski jumping. I got a chance to go to a ski resort a couple of weeks ago to try night sledding. To be honest, the best part for me was seeing the view and the sunset across this beautiful country. The sledding itself wasn't bad, I just think I'm much happier looking at views and drinking coffee!

View from the Ethnographic Museum

The most encouraging thing that has happened in the last couple of weeks though was at the Ladies' Bible Study. I was encouraged last minute to offer to give my latest Cornhill talk on Exodus 22:1-17. I literally had a morning to translate it (Google translate is my friend!) and prepare some discussion questions. It seemed to go really well and we had some interesting discussions after the talk. People were still talking to me about it for the next few days so I guess that's a good sign. Anyway, this isn't really about me, my ability to give talks or my ability to translate. All the glory should be going to our great God. I really struggled writing the talk in the first place and I know that it's only because of Him that I was able to produce it. For me it was a great reminder of why I wanted to come to Slovenia in the first place but it also showed me that all Scripture is useful for teaching. You may have no idea what this passage is all about (hint: it's about restitution), it seems that very few people preach on it and it's a part that most people skip or only glance over. My challenge to you, and to myself, is to take the time to look at the Law more carefully because there is so much richness there and we will be the losers if we ignore it.

These next two weeks will be the last of my break but they will also be quieter as it's half term and I will have a break from Cornhill. I really need to get to my pile of books I wanted to finish - I have finished 1 so only another 3 to go! I also want to focus more on my vocab before I start at language again. Please pray for me as I manage my time that I will be faithful and doing what I need to do but also as I start to prepare to go back to an incredibly busy timetable!