Prayer Training and English Conversations

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

I felt exhausted when I awoke this morning. We bought a box of Starbucks Via packets that allow us to make a decent cup of instant coffee. So, I had one of those first thing and followed that up with a 5-hour energy drink to get me into gear. Anita slept much better last night. So, she was up at working online in the Biblioteka (library) first thing in the morning.

It felt like there was a spiritual heaviness in the air. After talking with others, it seemed to be common. Becky didn’t sleep but 90 minutes last night. As soon as I got up, I started praying. I brought a copy of scripture downstairs in the break room and read some Psalms over coffee. Becky started one of her classes across the hall and so I left the break room door open and listened to one of her new teachings that compared how Adam and Eve veiled themselves after the fall with the unveiling Paul describes in Romans 3. It was good. I felt a spiritual heaviness left after an hour or so.

Anita and I both skipped the breakfast provided by the school as it tends to mainly be bread and fruit spread in the school kitchen. When Becky finished her first class, she wanted to go out for lunch. So, she, Anita and I walked down the hill and ate lunch at Porto Pizza. The meal and drinks were good. Anita and I both ordered a kafa sa slagom which is a really strong (muddy) coffee with a little bit of whipped cream. We had some good conversations about strategies, some of Becky’s new teachings and such.

Stopping at bombed out building for pose on walk back to school from lunch

We stopped by a grocery store on the way back. Anita picked up some milk, eggs, honey, sugar and other ingredients to finish her Texas sheet cake to bring with us to the English class. They asked us to prepare a snack from Texas and bring along some photos and stories to tell. I laid down while Anita and the school cook worked on the cake. I never could get to sleep but felt like I needed it.

Anita had a bit of a mishap with the ingredients and accidentally dumped all of the cocoa into the batter mix, leaving none for the icing. So, the kitchen cook and her went to a nearby store and bought a dark chocolate bar and they crushed it up into the icing. The kitchen cook doesn’t speak English, so she and Anita had to do a lot of work and charades to communicate through the process. I sent along my iPhone with a metric conversion app, so Anita could convert all of the English ounces and cups into metric measurements.

Anita waiting with TX sheet cake in hand for ride to evening activities

Anita returned in time for us to get everything ready and head downstairs and wait for Jelena to come pick us up for the evening activities. One of the other people, Jennifer, dropped by, and we chatted until Jelena arrived and took us to the West Mostar church. The first thing on our schedule for the evening was leading a prayer meeting. We gathered the chairs into a circle and opened with some worship music.

Anita praying for woman at conclusion of our 2-hour prayer training sessions

There were 10 women present in the meeting and they had all been to the prayer and worship training session with us the night before. So, I started by asking them for feedback from that session. What was their experience? Was it helpful? Did they have any outstanding questions and such? The feedback was very positive. It launched some good dialogue between everyone.

The conversation led us into Revelation 4:8 because we spent the last half hour of the training last night mimicking the worship happening around the Throne from Revelation 4-5. We divided the congregation in half, had them face one another and then in declarations of worship to say the “Holy, Holy, Holy” passage in an antiphonal (responsive) fashion back and forth to each other. They said it was a new experience for them, as it was for us, but it had a profound impact on everyone.

So, this conversation led right into what I wanted to share with the group. I turned to the passage in Revelation 4:8 and shared how I had spent years focusing on this passage in my prayer and worship time. I shared many of the insights I had gained into this passage over those years. It all had to do with establishing awe in worship. When you begin to understand insights into what is going on around God’s throne 24×7 throughout eternity, it creates a fascination toward the beauty of God. I discussed how this is an essential element in developing a lifestyle of prayer and worship.

List of prayer priorities

I then went into the Ephesians 2:4-6 passage and talked about the mystery of how although we are inhabitants of Earth, we are also seated with Christ in heavenly places. When we pray, we aren’t aiming our prayer toward the ceiling in hopes that they penetrate the ceiling. Rather, we are coming boldly before the throne of grace from a position of honor sitting at the right hand of the Father with Jesus making our petitions. It changes the way you pray when you realize God has made Himself available and even wants to hear you and answer you.

Then, we talked about having unity in prayer. When two or more come together in His name, we know He is present and hears us. So, we combined all of these concepts together to pray in unity about some common concerns for their city of Mostar, in boldness, awe, and fascination at who God is. So, I asked the women what they would want Him to do if they could ask God for anything together. They began naming off things like revival among the believers, peace in the city, ending of addictions, etc. I asked the pastor’s wife to write these prayer concerns on the white board.

John in conversations with English students in Mostar

Then, I helped them work through a strategy on how they could pick one of these topics each month and pray together for that thing privately in their homes each day and then come together every Tuesday for prayer and worship corporately believing God that He wanted to make these things happen in Mostar. Anita added a lot of value and insights into what this could look like. The women were clearly excited about the ideas. We talked about how the Lord gave the Israelites strategies in each of their battles and that the Lord wanted to give them more insights into how to answer these prayers.

Last night in my teaching, I had mentioned us enjoying being in Bosnia and loving the people there. As soon as it came out of my mouth, I realized that we were in Mostar, which is actually in the Herzegovina (as the nation is technically called Bosnia and Herzegovina and is divided between these two joined countries). So, I knew it was offensive to the people of Mostar to just say Bosnia and not add the Herzegovina to the name. I thought about trying to correct myself in mid-sentence and decided it might only make matter worse and so I didn’t. I apologized for my mistake on the ride home and the pastor said it was nothing and that believers were quick to overlook such mistakes from outsiders but nonbelievers might not be so forgiving. So, tonight in all of my teaching times, I made sure to say Bosnia Herzegovina every time mentioned the country. So, hopefully I made amends.

English conversations in Mostar

After we finished the strategic teaching and planning, we asked the women to pick one of the topics on the white board to pray and worship over for the remaining half hour of our time together. They chose revival among believers. Anita picked out a passage from Colossians 1:9-12 that spoke to this issue and Jennifer, who brought her guitar, selected a song that touched on this topic. Then, we spent half an hour praying together and worshipping as we asked God to revive His church in Mostar. The woman all prayed in Bosnian and Jelena translated what each woman was praying. By the time we finished this 2-hour training, praying and worshipping session, it felt like the intercessors in the church had made a great leap forward. It was great to see.

As soon as we finished this session, we had to go downstairs right away to start the English conversation classes. We were greeted by several new faces. We got introduced to everyone. Anita brought in her Texas sheet cake and several other people had brought refreshments. They were all chocolate. I set up my laptop in the corner of the room and started a slideshow of photos that highlighted various scenes and wildlife found in Texas that Anita’s dad, Garry, had put together for us.

More English conversations in Mostar

Then, everyone got settled down and Anita and I were introduced to the group and asked to discuss our lives in Texas. So, we spend perhaps 15 minutes covering many topics and answering an assortment of questions posed by the 20 or so attendants. We had a good time of it and laughed a lot. Then, they served refreshments and divided up all of the good English speakers at tables with the rest of the group.

We enjoyed coffee, tea, refreshments and lots of conversations. The topics and questions spanned our personal lives, geography, sports, wildlife, cooking and countless other topics. After perhaps half an hour, we switched tables. Some of the ladies were asking for the recipe for the cake and discussing the techniques for making it. One of the people the coordinators were excited for me to talk to was the son of the Bosnian man who owned the building from whom the church leased its space. He didn’t speak good English and so he was a bit reserved in his conversation at first. When he found out that I worked in technology, Internet and Web development, he asked me for my email address, Facebook account and website. So, I shared that information with him. I gave him the web address of my www.ocean.org site that is filled with evangelism and discipleship resources. So, we will see if anything comes of that.

One of Anita's new English student friends

I had some interesting conversation with people. Some of them spoke better English than others. We had difficulty trying to understand some people and so others were pulled into conversations as needed throughout the night. We were both pretty exhausted by the time this 2-hour session completed. We made it home a little after 9pm bringing our teammates the last couple of pieces of TX sheet cake. We are getting caught up on email and I’m typing this blog update. Connectivity has been up and down all night so we will see whether I am able to get it posted or not.

We are planning on going up to the top of one of the mountains at 10am tomorrow that surrounds the city of Mostar and worshipping with drums, guitar and other instruments. We are hoping this has a positive impact on the spiritual atmosphere of the city. Well, it’s almost midnight and we have an early morning tomorrow. We hope to get some good sleep tonight.

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