Because children’s ministries are such a large part of what we do, the summer is always an extremely busy and chaotic part of our yearly cycle. Typically, we host multiple short-term missionary teams and minister in multiple cities. It is often a stream of activities that both seems to never end and finishes before we can blink twice.

As the fall season arrives and the children return to school, it’s always good to survey what God has done during the summer months.

After about 1.5 years of building design, trying and replacing architects, resolving a seemingly never-ending land border dispute with our new neighbors, and paying lots of money, we are very excited to have received the building permits for our Ministry Center!

The Ministry Center will provide a home in the Roma village for us, a place to house and train missionaries to the Roma, and a location embedded in the Roma village from which to minister to the community and host a church fellowship.

The Ministry Center will consist of two buildings, the larger main building and the smaller “cottage.” We are currently raising funds (about $41,000 to go!) to build the cottage, which will allow us to live and minister in the Roma village. Learn more >here<.

This summer we were blessed to work alongside our first summer intern, Rebekah. Rebekah joined us for the summer after serving with us in Sisak on two previous short-term ministries. For much of the summer, she was joined by Violeta, who has served with us frequently in the past. Violeta, who is from Sisak, Croatia, and Rebekah both have a heart for the Roma of Capraške Poljane, located just outside of Sisak.

We were also blessed to work with Vedrana again this summer. Vedrana grew up around Roma ministries and has a deep desire for the Roma to know the love of Christ.

Please pray that the Lord will continue to raise up workers and provide finances to pay nationals who wish to work full time!

We have been doing seasonal ministries in Capraške Poljane for a number of years. During that time, we felt the Lord moving as the ministry and the openness grew. This year, because we had Rebekah and Violeta with us all summer, we kicked off a special four weeks of Mladice Bible Clubs in Capraške Poljane. Over those four clubs we focused on the life and ministry of Jesus. It was a great success, although a bit chaotic, and really helped to prepare the kids for the Mladice Carnival, which we had soon after the last club.

At the conclusion of the four Mladice Clubs, we had a 4-day Mladice Carnival. For the first three days we had biblical skits, crafts, and songs. This was followed by a day of fun and games.

We were grateful to have a team from Master’s Community Church in Kansas City to help with the Carnival. Since many of them served in Mladice Carnivals in Capraške Poljane in previous years, it was really wonderful to see them continue their relationships by loving the children! When people return multiple times to minister to a village, it makes a big impact on the kids. This year, we were also able to go to a nearby smaller village Palanjek to have a one day mini-carnival! This was our second year of ministries in Palanjek.

Please pray that the Lord would raise up more workers in Capraške Poljane and Palanjek!

Once we returned from Capraške Poljane, we had just a few days to catch our breath and prepare for our Klema Teen Camp. This was the second year we had a camp, but our first year of busing teens to a remote location. We hosted about 30 teens from the Roma villages of Slavonski Brod and Darda in the city of Orahovica. We were joined by Margaret, Lenna, and Abigayl from the USA; Đeno, Biljana and family from the EPC church in Darda; and the Price family from Slavonski Brod.

The primary goal of the Klema Teen Camp is to encourage youth to think about and make spiritual decisions as they very quickly approach adulthood. Secondarily, we desire to provide an opportunity for the Roma youth to connect, in the name of Christ, across their distributed and isolated communities.

Please pray that a church would “adopt” this very important yearly ministry and support it by sending regular teams!

After the Klema Camp, we all headed back to Slavonski Brod for our Mladice Carnival with “our” children. As always, it was a joy to bring all of our kids together and learn about Jesus.

One of the desires of RCF is to encourage and help children to do well in school. This is especially true for Lim and Željka. Because of a generous gift from the USA and the endurance of Lim, Željka, and Pam, we held our annual 5-day “mini” preschool. We are very thankful for the Slavonski Brod Baptist Church for, once again, hosting our preschool.

Roma children have special challenges when they enter the public school system. Our mini-preschool tries to prepare the children for the structure and methodologies the kids will encounter when they start school. We very much desire this program to expand, especially after our Ministry Center is realized.

Please pray that we may one day have a “full” preschool for the children!

Lastly, Sergej and I (Andy) started a computer programming club this summer. As I have worked as a computer programmer and manager of other programmers, I have always desired to encourage Roma children to consider a profession in computers. This summer we met with 4 children, introducing them to the fundamentals of computer programming.

We had a very busy and productive summer! As we adjust to the “normal” ministries, we are excited about what God is doing here in Slavonski Brod. Please pray with us that this year we see the realization of the Ministry Center and that Slavonski Brod would be a base from which God’s blessings are poured out to the Roma communities of Croatia!

I remember back in 2011 when for the first time a three-day biblical VBS was held for the children in the Roma village in Slavonski Brod. The word that can best describe that event from a long time ago is “chaos” that our beautiful Lord was shaping year by year into His order.

This year we had our 7^th VBS (now called a Mladice Carnival) in Slavonski Brod. The Carnival lasted for three days. We had a Bible program for two days and the third day was only games.

Through the years of working in the Roma villages, and in our personal Christian lives, we see and constantly relearn how important it is to love and to forgive. These were exactly the two topics we presented to the children attending our Carnival. Through Jesus’ parables, the “Unforgiving servant” (Mt 18) and the “Good Samaritan” (Lk 10), in the most realistic way possible, we tried to teach the children what Jesus taught his disciples and a multitude of other people.

Every day, after songs and a biblical skit, we divided the children into the groups. While in their group, children talked with leaders about the meaning and application of the biblical skit. Afterward, they worked on a craft and coloring book that was connected to the biblical message of the skit.

This year we had one little addition in our program. It was a skit about the fight between good and evil, between Super Andy and his partner, Super Kokoš, and Evil Andry. Through these humorous skits, children could see how good prevails against evil!

The third day of the Carnival was for games. The children especially love games, but for them, it is more important to jump and run, and most of the time their focus is on individual success. Our games are group based games led by leaders so that the children must win through cooperative efforts. Children really played hard, but in the end, just one group won. But, in the end, no matter who won all the children got candy!

It was a blessing to see the children listen and participate in the program even though it was very hot outside. It was a blessing to see some of our teens, who just two days before had attended our camp in Orahovica, came and helped. It was a blessing to see that children do not climb or jump on our cars when we leave the village every day (only the last day). It was a blessing that the Carnival program went on in the peace and harmony. It was a blessing that we could have this Carnival in Brod.

Thank you to all the helpers for the 2018 Mladice Carnival! You made it possible to have the Carnival and to bless the children of Slavonski Brod!

Early in the summer of 2017, the Roma Christian Fellowship reach a milestone. The New Testament portion of RCF’s Unified Curriculum was completed and taught to about 80 people!

The Unified Curriculum teaches the Bible across three generational tracks (child, teen/tween, and adult), primarily using an evangelistic, historical narrative approach that also stresses carefully chosen theological concepts.

Years of experience teaching the Bible in a Roma context was used to tailor the curriculum to engage the learner and to be easily understandable.

With an objective of teaching through the Bible narrative in about two years, 13 key New Testament stories were selected, with a similar number being expected for the upcoming Old Testament curriculum. Repetition and review are stressed, with review lessons scattered throughout the curriculum.

These key stories were woven together to provide a strong sense of cohesion and literary movement.  A distinctive is the avoidance of relying on “loaded” theological terms, instead opting to explain the concepts using easily digestible language. Where beneficial, theological words are introduced and defined in the story.

The Unified Curriculum is designed to be used concurrently across three generations within a single Roma community (child, teen/tween, and adult). The same set of Bible stories are used for all ages, while the concepts and depth are adjusted for each age range.

In the case of RCF’s work in Slavonski Brod, Croatia, the curriculum was used to teach the redemptive story of the New Testament through our Klema Bible Clubs to children and tween/teens while at the same time using it for our family home Bible studies. It was such a joy to experience around 80 people from three generations simultaneously learning about God’s love for this world through the Bible narrative!

Next we will begin development of the Old Testament curriculum. Our desire is to reach a level of quality and completeness that allows us to use and distribute the Unified Curriculum in bringing the Biblical message of God’s love and salvation to many Roma communities.

Please pray for the Roma Christian Fellowship and its workers as we work towards this goal!

How would you respond if in your town, in your settlement, or in your street came people from another country and they speak the language of their country and you can almost fully understand them! Probably you would be excited and thrilled because you could talk with these people in your mother tongue.

That’s exactly what happened last week. A group from Romania, three sisters and seven brothers, came to Croatia to proclaim the Gospel to Roma people door to door. The reason why many Roma from Croatia can understand the Romanian language is that their ancestors once lived in Romania.

The team from Romania spent ten days in Croatia. Our RCF team spent five full days with them. Our role was more of the host; we took care where will they sleep and what will they eat. But we also visited, together with this team, some Roma villages where we were before and we also discovered a few new ones.

We welcomed the Romanian team in the Sisak area. There we visited three different Roma villages. One of those villages was ‘Capraške poljane’ where we had the First Klema Carnival for kids earlier this summer. It was nice to see the kids! When the kids figured out that we were in the village, they joyfully ran towards us with open arms to hug us. In the whole short time that we spent with them, they were asking us where is the rest of the team that they met this summer and when we will they come again. We can’t wait to see these kids again.

On the way back to Slavonski Brod, we stopped at the Roma village in Kutina. Our RCF team talked to a few mothers and kids that were waiting for the school bus. Some of the kids were very shy and didn’t want to talk with us because they don’t know us. We are hoping that one day we will be able to do a Klema Carnival in this village and bless them.

On Saturday, the team from Romania spent all day in our village in Slavonski Brod. During the day they visited homes. And in the evening they had an outreach at the big field. A few new people came with whom we didn’t have any previous contact and they have shown interest that we visit them in the future and have a bible study with them. Because of this, our RCF team is delighted and encouraged.

On Sunday, after the morning service in the local church where the team from Romania served with song and a sermon, our RCF team went into Bosnia and Herzegovina with part of their team to a place near Bjeljina where we visited a Roma village.

Normally when you enter a Roma village, first what you would see are stray dogs, a lot of compacted houses, kids that are playing carefreely … but this village was something totally different. Huge, huge houses, far away from each other, no kids, no dogs. The brother from Romania went to this village last year and this time he tried to find the man that he met last year. We found the man’s brothers that kindly hosted us. Even though he was very hospitable, he was not open to God’s Word. We found out that this village has about 1000 Roma, but the majority of them live and work in other countries. They just come here during the summer. An interesting thing was that this man claimed that his nationality is Romanian, not Roma. He even called himself ‘Rudari’, which we believe is the same as ‘Ludari”, and that is the same group of Roma that is living at Slavonski Brod.

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The team from Romania shared with us that they are surprised that the Roma are living separately from Croats. That they have their street in the village or their separate village. In Romania, the Roma are living among the Romanians. They were also sad that Christians are not going to most of these villages and are not working with the Roma who are interested in God’s Word.

One of the sisters from Romania noticed that many Roma kids hardly understand their Romanian language, while the older population understand them more. Maybe in the future, they will not have the opportunity to come like this and evangelize in the Romanian language because no one will understand them anymore.

We are very thankful to the Lord for Romanian team that boldly and tirelessly worked among the Roma.

We are praying that the Lord in the future would raise up committed workers for his Kingdom who are going to proclaim his Gospel to the Roma.