On day 8 we met up with our Chergash translators, Djena and Biljana, who drove over from Croatia, at a Roma church in northern Serbia, where we introduced Pierre to the pastor there. The pastor has an amazing ministry in 10 villages and a huge heart for the poor and needy. With this pastor, we enjoyed coffee and lunch and time together in fellowship before unloading and leaving with him 50 Bible story books with pictures that are diglots (i.e., with Chergash in one column and Serbian in the other column), 50 Bible story books with pictures in the Chergash (without Serbian), and 200 copies of the book that has Luke, the 50 Bible stories without pictures and the glossary.
While were were there, he arranged that the local TV news channel will do an interview with the translators next month to learn more about our Bible translations and about how Roma live in Croatia. He also arranged to present all our translations of Luke and the 50 stories in all four Roma languages at an upcoming book expo in Serbia, so we gave him copies in those languages as well.
From there we went to a church service outside in another village, and were very warmly received. We presented Luke and the Bible stories, played the audio for them to listen to, and Goran also preached a message. I love the pictures we got, and you can see them below.
Of course, with all our many kilometers of traveling, it has not been all without problems. Right when we pulled into the village to do the distribution, Pierre ran over a large nail and got a flat tire. It was Saturday evening in a small village, but thankfully, there was a tire service very close by. Even though the old man who ran it had recently had hip surgery and wasn’t normally working, because of our situation, he got it all fixed so that by the time church was over, we were able to go on our way.
We love the photos too. Thank you. Especially like the little smiles on the small children.