News > Europe

Serving God’s Flock through Cooperation

2012 Key Verse: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

I. 2011 Report

In 2011, our co-workers strived to live as disciples without blemish before the LORD.  We repent that we only showed our inequities and sins to the LORD.  However, when we tried to hold on to God’s grace and fight against our sinful nature and laziness, God constantly sent us 1:1 Bible students even in a spiritually barren environment.

II. Bible Study

We studied Luke’s gospel in 2011. We repented by reflecting upon ourselves and the world of our time against Jesus’ words and strived to follow the word of God and live a life set apart from the world.  In addition to Luke’s gospel, we had an English worship service once every month.  It was hard for me to keep this English service going and many times I wanted to quit.  But thanks to the encouragement of co-workers, I was able to deny myself and keep English services until now.  Every English worship service is very poor in quality, and we only offer this service as our five loaves and two fish.  However, through this, God enabled my co-workers and I to overcome our fear of speaking English.

We also had Bible schools every month.  M. Caleb Yoon delivered most of the messages, and M. Abraham Park delivered twice.  M. Caleb’s messages deepened recently through the discipline of continual message preparation.  M. Abraham debuted as a Serbian messenger for the first time.  Usually two Bible students attended: Sister Maja and Brother Marjan.  When no other new students came, I became skeptical about whether we should continue this Bible school.  But whether or not we had a new student, I believe God was pleased to receive our offering.  I pray that we may continue to prepare and serve the Bible school as our five loaves and two fish of faith.  I pray God may send many of his flock remaining in Serbia to this Bible school.  Some co-workers commented that the Bible school’s format may be too rigid so that it might not be appealing to students.  So in 2012, we plan to change the format to be more casual and a time of fellowship.  May God give us wisdom to serve the Bible school.

1. Bible Conference

In 2011, our chapter attended the New Year’s Directors Conference held in Vienna, the Second Gen Conference in Czech Republic, and the Balkan Conference in Bulgaria.  At the New Year’s Directors Conference, I learned that as we live in this evil and lustful world, we must repent and serve only the LORD.  M. Suzanna Koh and four second gens attended the Second Gen Conference.  Our second gens found their identity and great consolation through fellowship with second gens from other mission fields. At the summer Bible conference held in Greece, five missionaries, Changjo Yoon, and Sister Maja attended and found spiritual and physical rest.  All the attendees did their best to prepare for the conference, and as a result, the conference was more established and well-programmed than ever.  Despite financial difficulties, the co-workers in Greece served the conference with all their heart and strength through a traditional Greek dance, special songs, and many other things

M. Caleb Yoon delivered the third day’s morning message. The missionaries had a good time swimming on the beach and going on a pilgrimage to Corinth. The missionaries invited Sister Maja to the conference.  She went back and forth about coming, but she eventually attended the conference and confessed that she never knew Bible conferences were so good.

M. Suzanna Koh visited Korea after 10 years with her children Sarah and David Jr. A Jeju Bible conference was being held at that time which she attended and shared fellowship in the LORD with co-workers there.  Her stay in Korea for about a month and a half was a time of recuperation for body and spirit.  She could visit her family and delivered the gospel message to them.  She also had a health check-up and had her teeth treated.  Sarah and David Jr. attended a summer conference for second gens where they shared fellowship with Korean second gens and identified themselves as Korean.

2. Self-support and language study

As in the previous year, the Serbian economy stayed depressed in 2011.  We had to struggle to support ourselves.  Although the Ceragem Company strived to recover its revenues by an intensified economic boost system, it was never easy.  I felt I was on the brink of collapsing whenever I heard the company would shut down due to the depressed global economy.  I lost motivation to work and going to work was stressful.  Nevertheless, I prayed to work joyfully and that God may use this company preciously for world mission until he comes again.  Then God enabled us to keep the company running under the difficult economy.  God also enabled us to generate a lot of revenue in some unexpected areas.  

M. Abraham Park and his family continued to struggle with their accessory business.  They were able to support themselves as tour guides in the summer season, but during the off-season it was hard to be self-supporting.  So they rented out one of the rooms in their house and worked as a part-time janitor to make up the deficit.  

We thank God for enabling us stay awake and pray through all these financial difficulties.  Despite the global economic crisis, God continued to send us many Korean companies in 2011 that opened up a lot of opportunities for missionaries to get hired.  This was never imaginable before.  May God use these companies and help us to establish self-supporting missionary families.

3. Discipleship Ministry

During the first half of the year, Sister Maja and Brother Marjan attended the worship services.  But over the course of the summer, Brother Marjan left for Macedonia looking for work and stopped 1:1 Bible study and coming to worship.  We pray that God may help him to return to God.  Sister Maja has been in agony due to her hatred for the world.  Although she steadily had 1:1 Bible studies with us, her personal problems hindered her from receiving the word of God.  I felt powerless and helpless.  I didn’t know how to help them.  But we looked to the LORD and we accepted that it was God’s will to help whomever he sent us.  When we accepted this and tried to help them, we realized again that they were God’s precious sons and daughters regardless of their spiritual situations.  I pray that God may help Sister Maja to be born again by his grace and grant her heavenly peace in her heart.  I pray that God may help Brother Marjan restore Bible study and worship.

In addition, we established love relationships with Brother Bogdan and Sister Catalina.  We asked them to be our language teachers.  When they felt the missionaries needed them, they in turn actively helped us.  When we invited them to Korean traditional holiday celebrations or birthday parties, they gladly came, celebrated with us, and had fellowship with us.  Sister Catalina studies the Bible with M. Elizabeth Yoon.  

Brother Andrej has compassion on others.  He dreamed of saving others by sacrificing himself, but he found out that he could do nothing with a lot of his problems, including his health problems and career planning.  When he painfully realized this, he began to seek God earnestly.  He is now diligently studying the Bible and attending Sunday worship services faithfully.  

We also visit Brother Marko in his hometown and give him the word of God about once a month.  He accepted Jesus as Lord, but is still pursuing life as an ordinary worldly man.  I pray that God may help him to have a job in Beograd, accept God’s mission for him, and live a life of mission. We also need to restore 1:1 Bible study with Sister Aleksandra.

4. Co-working and second gen education

By faith, the missionary co-workers in 2011 challenged the language barrier and campus ministry.  M. Caleb Yoon sacrificed his lunch time to ceaselessly go fishing on campus.  M. Elizabeth Yoon started having 1:1 Bible studies for the first time.  M. Abraham Park presides at our Sunday worship services, and M. Deborah Park writes testimony in Serbian.  By faith with limited Serbian, women missionaries made friends with students and preached the good news to them.  Particularly, when they co-worked to help Brother Bogdan and Sister Catalina, the women missionaries could establish a deeper trust relationship with them.  When we had to practice a Serbian traditional song for the New Year’s Directors Conference, we humbly asked Brother Bogdan for help and through it, we could become much closer friends with him.  Through this, we learned that when we co-work to help our Bible students with one heart, God opens up their hearts so that we could have a good relationship with them.  

One senior missionary helped junior missionaries to grow their language skills by constantly serving them through helping them write testimonies, checking their messages for the Bible schools, and studying the Sunday worship messages together with them.  The missionaries grew their Serbian language skills little by little when they studied the Sunday messages in Serbian and wrote testimonies in Serbian.

The second gens grew in 2011 as usual.  Sarah Koh started coming to Sunday worship services with us after the summer Bible conference.  Older second gens started babysitting younger second gens so that the missionaries could attend worship and Bible studies.  Through visits to Korea, the Second Gen Conference in Czech Republic, and the Balkan Conference in Greece, they could find their identities as Koreans and as second-gen missionaries.  They also began to feel the need to learn the Korean language well when they befriended other second gen missionaries.

III. 2012 Vision and Strategy

In 2011, we were stuck in fatalism and could not actively take care of God’s flock.  We repent of this.  In 2012, based on the word of John 9, we pray that we may repent of our fatalism and fear-stricken hearts and think positively about our ministry.  We pray also that we may believe in the Almighty God and carry out the mission he entrusted to us with all our strength.  This year, based on our previous experiences, we want to serve our Bible students in a variety of ways.  Not only will we invite students to 1:1 Bible study, but we also want to build closer relationships with them through sharing fellowship.  We hope that our students may go beyond having 1:1 relationships with their leaders and establish close friendships with the family of our missionaries so that they may accept Jesus and accept mission.  For this purpose, we will think outside the box to change the format of the Bible school to make it more natural in fellowship and make it a place where we share food, the word, and testimonies.

Prayer Topics

1.    We may accept Jesus as the light of the world and work hard to do his work as long as it is day.
2.    Each missionary may have a 1:1 Bible student.
3.    Maja, Marjan, Andrej, Marko, Bogdan, Katarina, and Aleksandra may believe in Jesus and live lives of mission.
4.    Our missionaries may stay awake in prayer, be armed with the word of God, and be filled with the Holy Spirit every day.
5.    We may overcome financial difficulties with joy and thanksgiving.
6.    Our second gens may be set apart from the sinful world and may exert a good influence on the world.

One Word: Thank God for accepting the united hearts of our co-workers and raising up disciple candidates