We were going to a village to tell a man there that we could not buy the wood for his roof until later that week and to see if we could take Dragica's baby to the doctor. It would be a rather pleasant trip with out to much action to fray the nerves...........
Then the news came that police had arrested Dragica and her brother for using their children for begging. I agreed to go to the police station and pick them up. A fugitive thought in the form of a whisper came to my mind that maybe today would not be quite as restful as I had previously thought. We could not find them at the police station so we checked the train station. We were relieved to find Dragica, her brother, little Zelko and the baby there. Then out of nowhere came little Biserka.
Suddenly the police were on top of us. I thought I am too old for all this and then suddenly Biserka grabbed onto me and started pleading not to let the police take her back to the hospital. The reason she was in the hospital was that in the village a man had given her some pills and she had fallen down unconscious. She is 9 years old. She had climbed out to the window of the children's hospital and run away. She was hysterical crying "Bobby don't let them taker me away". Finally the police agreed that we could take her back to the Hospital and then take her home to the village. She had an open IV hook up in her arm. And so thus continued our more relaxing day.......
The hospital would not let me take Biserka home so I had to drive 30 minutes to pick up her mother. Laura stayed behind with Biserka in the hospital. There is a picture of Biserka and Laura at the hospital http://roma-diary.blogspot.com/
When I got into the village I was taken to see her mother who was laying on the bed. The whole room was covered in hundreds of flies. She lifted her shirt to show me a nine inch stab wound that had been stapled together. She had tried to commit suicide and had committed a kind of Hari Kari but did not die.
I grabbed her husband and took him back to the hospital, got Biserka and then drove back to the village. We needed a nurse or anyone more medical than me, remember by mistake I once brushed my teeth with anti itch crème for....well enough said. Natasha came walking by just as we were leaving and so we all piled into the van.....the one we should not be taking any chances with, and drove back yet again to the village.
At the village little Biserka, bless her, lay down and went straight to sleep. Natasha talked with her mother and was quite firm with her then I prayed with her that God would heal her and save her. Hundreds of flies were around her. The wound if it turns septic will kill her.
With days like this who wants to go to Disney Land........But actually the week has been great..........
Daniel and I had a very honest time together and he has now started back on the translation and he has just sent me this morning completed all 28 chapters of Acts.
Shkarije was tense but we had a marvelous time holding a meeting in which about 50 people were present. I was greeted by a woman who said, " Do you remember me? you prayed for me..... " I did remember her, Nancy and I prayed with here when her husband was murdered. We have agreed to go back and hold regular meetings in the village. We have longed to break into this village and it has happened. But the real issues now begin as this is a place where violence could easily be used against us.
We had a great meeting in Gorichan and they have agreed we can go back each week and have meetings there. The quality of young people in this village is extraordinary.
Laura has finished one set of Bible Story flash cards which we will use for the first time today...... she will try and create one more set before she leaves.
Bosilka knocked her hut down in preparation for the new house to be built. We begin on Monday. Her husband may have to go back to prison so the timing is great to get her and the children into a proper little house.
And dear Nancy, what can we say about her. She has held everything together in the home in this crazy week, been the glue in our all lives, the sounding board in the madness, the touch of gentleness in a rather unsavory world and the one who removes all kinds of otherwise dangerous materials that I may ingest and kill myself with by mistake.
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Bob and Nancy Hitching
Trnovecka ulica 2
Varaždin
Croatia 42000
Main Mobile +385 91234 7757
Handheld IM Yahoo RomaniMission
www.bobhitching.com
Sometimes life seems to be built upon two distinct foundations. That which seems possible and that which seems impossible. We set out this week to start the process of building a new house for Vjezdan and Bosilka and their four children. Their current situation is unbearable. Their little shack is falling down and will end up killing them if it collapses on them when they are asleep. It is more complex than it seems to build a little house and move a family in. But it is possible.
It is the impossible situations that really wear me down. I am a person that wants resolution, answers, they can be tough solutions but never the less I crave completion. That is where the impossible sets in and is so hard to navigate.
Velamira is about 15 years old. She is not sure exactly how old she is. She has a three month old baby. Her husband who is her uncle is now in prison for three years. Velamira used to live in a wood shed with the baby and uncle/husband but then moved in with her Grandmother/mother in law. The Grandmother/mother in law has now thrown her out and she is homeless. We have agreed that as soon as we can we will build her a little one room house to live in, that is the easy bit. We want Velamira to know Jesus and bring up her baby in a Christian home. That is the impossibility. How one unravels these incestuous complexities sets precedent for the whole community spiritually.
On Wednesday we will visit Shkarije which is the worst village in the north of Croatia. This is the place where a man cut his daughters head off. This is where after a meeting we had there a boy shot and killed his father who was beating his mother at the time. This is where we visited the head man of the village after his wife hung herself because he had taken a teenage woman as his mistress. This is where we took food to a widow whose husband was murdered by a teenage boy because the boy's father had been kidnapped and was being tortured. The widow of three days told us she was glad her husband was dead as he beat her every day. We are going to hold a children's meeting in a home where the man has two wives in the same house. The one wife, who is about 31 years old, has eight children the other wife we do not know how many children she has. It is an impossible situation to unravel.
Conventional wisdom says at this point I am supposed to write something like but friends what is impossible for man is possible for God. (Of course I believe that or we would not be here and I would have a job digging ditches in Idaho and dear Nancy would be health and beauty consultant in Manhattan.) But.....but......dealing with the impossible is not as easy as the 19th century biographies seem to make it. The need for wisdom is humbling and overwhelming. The need for gentleness is critical. Sometimes Idaho seems to beckon....................but.......but God.
Bob and Nancy Hitching
Trnovecka ulica 2
Varaždin
Croatia 42000
Main Mobile +385 91234 7757
Handheld IM Yahoo RomaniMission
www.bobhitching.com
( Extracts from my Journal )
We have a young Bayash Gypsy girl living with us at the moment. She is a delight as a young Christian and our home is an Oasis for her. It is amazing to see the differences in world views between our US-European hybrid culture and the deeply complex relational structures of the Bayash. Infidelity, occult curses, betrayal, hatred, violence and lying are a natural part of every day life. Sodom had no Bible neither yet do the Bayash...... but soon A People who walk in darkness will see a great Light........
On Friday I meet with our Bible translator Daniel to try and redeem what can be redeemed and lay out a plan for the future. If Daniel does not carry on with the drafting we will change our strategy and start work on correcting and revising the Gospel of John and Mark...... at times like this a touch of Winston Churchill is in order........never, never, never give up.
Also Natasha will be working with us in the next three weeks to finally edit the Children's Bible....then off to the printers via the layout people.
Our new missionary team member Le Anne is moving into Varaždin this month to work along side us in the Varaždin Fellowship which continues to grow and diversify. We now function as house groups for different purposes in different places for different people.
For the next two weeks we have Laura from Virginia here with us. She will go where we go and do what we do for the next two weeks as well as develop a series of Bible stories in laminated artwork for use in the villages.
Nancy and I were able to get away for three days break this last week which was delightful. One of our days we were alone in the spectacular ruins of a 4th century Church on a Peninsular near the Italian border. We stood alone in the cool stone ruins and held each other and prayed realizing that over seventeen hundred years ago other couples seeking to serve God had probably stood and prayed in the same place. Dear Nancy wept, the angels smiled and I was humbled. Why should I have so much as one so unworthy. Such is Grace. I was even more moved when I thought of people in America and England who work hard and long in tedious boring jobs to support us in this work. Very few of you are able to hold each and pray in the spectacular ruins of a 4th century Church. Your sacrifice in staying where you are is not unnoticed by us.
( Extracts from my Journal )
Ministry Portal www.bobhitching.com
New Pictures http://roma-diary.blogspot.com/
It is so hot here at present. I realized yesterday how much I dislike summers. The heat always effects my heart problem, my uniform as a middle aged over weight Brit is all black and seems to draw heat like a magnet, people in the US and UK rarely write notes of encouragement as they are so busy in their lives, But the up side is our town becomes quiet and restful until the end of August. I am allergic to noise and so the quietness is enrichening and joyful. I am also moved to think of people like Al and Lillie Crowe labouring in Calcutta right now who would think of our summers like their winters.
The crisis of the week is that Daniel quit again but this time I have had to agree for a cooling off period as he really is in a deep turmoil of soul. I am not sure if it is the generations of witchcraft in his family or simply undiluted depravity of the human kind. I have to accept though that whereas people abusing me verbally is a part of doing business with the Bayash, there is a place where simply it serves no purpose to assimilate peoples vileness. I need to think about all this for a while, but it really effects the Bible translation project at a catastrophic level. Right now I would love to be in a country diner in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with dear Nancy drinking decaf coffee surrounded by Mennonites who have no family members who have cursed in nine generations.
On Sunday at our Varazdin Fellowship we had a philosophy student turn up. He is the child of atheists and has been an atheist his whole life. For his philosophy studies he had to write a paper on Thomas Aquinas which led him to the intellectual conclusion that there was a God. He wanted to find a Protestant group to observe and so he came to us through Anita's son Luka. Dear Nancy whose degree is in philosophy was magnificent in dealing with him. I threw in the odd Latin theological point so as not to look like an imbecile but dear Nancy was really on target. He left with a New Testament and much to think about. It seems in the midst of the agonies of dealing with the Bayash that God is prospering our little Varazdin Church greatly.
We have made the decision in consultation with others that I will take on a formal pastoral/eldership role in the Varazdin Church. Even though it is a small group the burden of spiritual nurture and the responsibility of bearing the truth through the Word into peoples lives is not something I take lightly.
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Bob and Nancy Hitching
Trnovecka ulica 2
Varaždin
Croatia 42000
Main Mobile +385 91234 7757
Handheld IM Yahoo RomaniMission
www.bobhitching.com
(Extracts from my Journal)
Roma Diary Digest http://roma-diary-digest.blogspot.com/
Ministry Links http://www.bobhitching.com
Innocence is something that is so precious. The other day I was showing three little girls in a Bayash village one of the new Bible cards we have produced in the Bayash language. All three of the little ones crowded round me as I pointed to the words from John's Gospel and had them read it after me. It is incredible to think that these little ones will grow up in a world where they will have the Bible in their own language not knowing the world of their parents that has had nothing to hold them accountable in the spiritual and moral realms. It was moving to see the level of trust they exhibited as they leaned against my knee so trusting and pure as they read.
Innocence is something that is fleeting and once lost is so hard to recover. A few hours later in another town another young woman came up to me and greeted me in Croatian. I asked her to switch to Bayash as it was easier for me. She was a little girl who had been in some of our meetings two years ago. She had now become a prostitute according to reports and was known as being a low end girl. As we talked something inside of me wanted to bring out a Bible card and have her read the words in the same innocent way as the little ones earlier. It was too late for that.
Innocence can be restored by the Gospel. The truth is that is innocence is defiled but it is a lie to say that it is lost forever. There is the Blood of the everlasting covenant that takes dirty and ruined lives and makes them pure in the sight of the one who determines what is and what is not innocent.
May God, bring the innocence of the Gospel into the lives of the Bayash people. May the Gospel enter their world though His Word. May His Word soon be available in their toungue.
"In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine!'" Abraham Kuyper
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Bob and Nancy Hitching
Trnovecka ulica 2
Varaždin
Croatia 42000
Main Mobile +385 91234 7757
Handheld IM Yahoo RomaniMission
www.bobhitching.com
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Bob and Nancy Hitching
Trnovecka ulica 2
Varaždin
Croatia 42000
Main Mobile +385 91234 7757
Handheld IM Yahoo RomaniMission
www.bobhitching.com
I was in Budapest, Hungary this week for a couple of days. The challenge of that city is so great. It really is more like London or Paris than any other city in this region I know.
I saw a drunk Gypsy harassing a nicely dressed young man who was trying to eat a sandwich. The young man tried to act cool and angry at the same time but I could sense he was feeling hurt and violated. Eventually, the Gypsy man walked away and started harassing someone else.
I groaned inwardly. Here was this Gypsy man created in the image of God, for all we know, he may have had the genius of Mozart as a child. He would have been vulnerable, loveable and precious as a little boy. Now? Sin had robbed and destroyed and violated and ultimately created a dreadful looking, and a selfish acting man that most people were afraid of.
It is at times like this that I want to cry out in the streets like the prophets of old warning of the dangers and perils of sin.
It is also at times like this that I want to cry out in America and England calling people to abandon their obsessions with comfort, peace, security and possessions and find the dirty corners of the earth to take the light of the Gospel into. I have been around a long time in the mission world and it is the hardest thing in life to try and reconcile large churches with people swaying the breeze of the spirit affirming to God how much they love Him yet who when it comes to the crunch are rooted into spiritual paralysis when it comes to simply obeying the Word of God to go into all the world.
Anyway some good news, The Acts of the Apostles is nearly finished……not theologically and historically….. rather the Bayash translation of Acts. We now are going to finish the New Testament draft on schedule unless there is a major derailment.
Also, some more good news Nancy and Sydney have now completed all the preparation process for the story telling program using flannel graph scenes photographed digitally and then printed on color laminated paper. I hope we will produce the first set this week.
Also, some more good news, we produced our first Bible poster this week of John 3, 16 in Bayash and will start moving them out this week.
"In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine!'" Abraham Kuyper