The Lord has led us to incredible people in Montenegro, and we’ve had divine encounter after divine encounter with believers and non-believers. One of the biggest blessings of relationship was with the pastor we worked with named Daniel.
In our training in January, a lot of emphasis was put on sustainability within missions. We gained a larger perspective on longevity and making sure those we minister to in the short term have connections with community in the long term. With our ministry in Montenegro being to simply ask the Lord what to do, we didn’t have any contact with a local church body. We were hoping and praying for a genuine and missions-minded church, with the desire to continue to reach the rest of Bar and Montenegro as a whole.
Back in Georgia, I spent some time praying for specific words from the Lord over our month in Montenegro. One of the things I thought I heard was the name “Dan”. I thought that was probably a weird name for a Montenegrin, but I wrote it down in my phone notes anyway and forgot about it.
Weeks later, we were sitting in our apartment in Montenegro and wondering how we could begin doing really intentional ministry without knowing any local believers. I decided to just do a quick search on facebook for local churches, and I found a really promising page right away. I sent a message to them to make sure they were still having gatherings, and they messaged back right away. A few days later we wanted to try to connect with them at a coffee shop or something, so I sent another message. The reply was a phone number, and the name Daniel. I didn’t even remember that I had written Dan in my phone weeks prior.
We ended up working with Daniel for our entire time in Montenegro and were so thankful for him and his church. He was exactly the person the Lord wanted us to partner with. Through him, we got connected with other missionaries and programs running in Bar, and had a place to point people back to long after we left Montenegro.
We’ve since left Montenegro, but something I haven’t had the chance to write about is the Russia/Ukraine conflict that’s been at the top of the news recently. We had the blessing of making a lot of friends in Montenegro, both Russians and Ukrainians. It was a unique perspective, and my teammate Elina wrote an incredible blog about it. PLEASE take some time to read it, and may the love of the Lord be more weighty and important to us than seeing someone win and someone lose. We are all His children. Read her post here: The Humanity Behind the Headlines.
