The Serbia Story
If you read back through my blog you'll get the impression that i was a relunctant missionary, and i think that's not a bad assesment. So how did i end up going to Serbia, what made me change my views on God's calling of me so dramatically... read on
it was Christmas '07. The house was warmed by laughter resounding from the family, and though not 100% fighting fit as a group, we were, for the rare moment, together. I was there in body, but my spirit seemed to have departed, to be locked into a spiral of resentment. i wore my pain like a banner on my chest, a shield to stop the world getting in. i spent much of my time in bed, infact i was quite unmoveable some days. Illness had brought a depression to my sadness, it was little more than flu and yet it seemed like the final bullet to my system. 2007 hadn't been an easy year for many reasons and from my point of view 2008 held no hope. God seemed very real during those days, almost like a caught hair pulls, he would not let go and i could not ignore him. God waited and time dragged me from the pit, plumeted into a new year, and grit pushed me to create my own hope, to stand firm and try and see God's hand scribbing lines in the dirt i felt such empathy with.
So onward drew 2008. Onward came the coping mechinisms, out the box. For weeks the mirror in the bedbroom had rules written down the side. Only apply for jobs that follow the rules, and apply i did. I started by facing the fact that i needed some money to get me by, and the prospect of jobcenter interviews were far too humbling for my battered pride. I signed on with a temping agency doing childcare work. It wasn't the ideal but i came to recognise that i really didn't mind. It brought a little money, God brought the rest, and stopped me from wasting too much time being a grown up child at home. Oh that i could say that for the interviews, every one dragged me back though the horrors of 2007, every one made me feel valued and then rejected. It was heartbreaking, soul destroying and spirit numbing in it's effectiveness. Easter came and went and still i seemed to be on this pathway between no-mans land and the waiting room. Though, by this time, i had settled into church activities, felt part of a community, had become friends with many of the people i met through the agency and still had not applied for a job for which i was not requested to interview. It didn't matter, i knew something had to change. I prayed many times that God would not drag me through any more unnessesary interviews, and when finally a letter came to say i had not suceeded in getting that far i was hit with such a tide of relief. Suddenly the pathway seemed less narror, the options greater, the possibilities endless. What would i do, where would i go, how could i serve, how could i grow.
My list of possibilities, scribbled down, wasn't that long. stuck in the middle of the odd shaped piece of paper was the word mission. i suppose i could grow my skills, learn more, have something to talk about in interviews. But, i was the missionary to the middle classes, i'd said so, called to work in the unique world of Anglicanism. Or was I? The idea niggled at me. It grew into me like a desease, retuned my ears to hear mission in each conversation, caused dead-ends in my internet wanderings, and haunted me in biblical stories. I quit the job hunt, i think my heart had departed that ship some time before and i just stopped. i wasn't going to rush into things. I had been sent home and i started to see this as the blessing it was. I would wait till the summer, to the heat and smells of greenbelt, and there i would hunt among the stalls and stories for the light to follow. And what i light i found. Most people i had talked to had handed me paperwork and platitudes but then i saw a beacon i recognised, and the letters spelt 'anglican'. It was a word so unusual to advertise in the unjudgementality of greenbelt and yet the word was a stronghold, a thing i trusted, a badge of reliability. I wandered over to the spralling stand and tried my best to look blond and lost. Somebody came over just to tell me that everyone was actually being interviewed at the moment. I perservered, i missed much of the interview as friends passed, but, went back and talked to Habib. Now i didn't know Habib, and frankly i'm glad of that, for if i had known the path i was undertaking i probably would have stopped there. Heindsight is such a fine and foolish thing. I had talked to enough people now to know what to say
"Hi, i',m looking into going on mission, i've no idea where i want to go but i can't go anywhere too hot, i was a children's and youth worker and i've got a bit of funding already sorted....."
I'd usually tail off. Habib's face was a lightbulb. it was like showing candy to a three year old. you could actually see the cogs working, the fires stoking, and the machine in his head start wizzing. i had found my light. i had found just what i was looking for.
The pilgramage
It began in a tent, in a racetracks show strip. While people listened I discovered that I was not in the place to be. It continued with discussion that hope filled faces shared and grew and led to this. This is the next step. The tobacco scented room and silence as we wait to travel and move and discover more.
It continued through many sessions, rushed and unprepared we're we for homework and world-views we could not defend, manipulation into a place we felt threatened yet challenged to go further into. Friendship bonded, flowed and formed, till hearts were bared to strange eyes. And somewhere in that experience we felt the seed take root.
Back to reality and back to life found not a whithering of the seedling. Subdued silence as the wait began for details and interviews and more to begin.
The interview day finally dawned and London streets loomed above out heads, this was serious. A table scattered with people, covered in prayers from around the country, and full of laughter and discovery. Conversations flowed, games were played and in some way questions left unasked as details we accepted as untold. And leaving with a excited heart we waited. The day passed, another dawned and still no word. Another came and paper and envelope called me to a new word. Serbia.
The briefing
There is something eerie about sitting on a train. The air peppered with mumblings and one sided phone conversations, the sound of the wheels low groan as they slide over the metal rails. It's snowing outside. The snow has lain for two days already, nature gripping hard it's fist before it opens wide its palm to spring daffodils. Amid the taping of keys and crumpling papers I wait for my stop to arrive. Today is my briefing. My mission instructions, though I doubt it will be so precise as the secret agent stuff it alludes to. So as the gray landscape of gravel and ice change to battered brick and concrete of the city, I nearer still the next step of this journey, my opportunity to leave. To stand and walk away knowing that I will return changed.
I spent the day sliding in the gray slush of pavements not yet cleared. The briefing was friendly and helpful though more of the former than the latter. I walked away to wander a few sites of the city before clambering back onto the moving metal crates that would take me home. The blackness of the night had fallen and the countdown spring moved nearer the finalie. I was left with yet more reading, more forms to fill, more stages before departure.
The last few months had brought me thus far, and the next... Well I would find out soon enough.
The snow lay on the ground for the rest of the week, replenishing whatever melted and forming impassable sludge drifts. The days left turned to single digits and the realization of to do lists settled heavy on my shoulders. Suddenly the series of lasts would come upon me, the goodbyes would dawn, and my apprehension and excitement seemed limitless.
The Departure
And so it began. The chill of the early morning as journey's to airports and exuberant terminals gave way to shrinking images of planes lined up like a child's toy garage. Up I rose into the sunlit wind. Watching cars and soon only trucks oblivious to the lives and hands controlling them. As if some ordained voice spoke on my behalf a babe cried at the strangeness of it all, it's whimper broke my muse as my ears popped and I ceased to once again marvel at aviation. Soon the barrier of cloud rolled across my view, wiping out england and it's quaint and quirky. Never ending seas of white fluff led me to a book as continental cities rolled below. I had departed.
Cloud cover broke to reveal a gray world. Bleached fields lay benieth me with houses like ball-bearings rolled together, or mold dots, on the patchwork spread. The bright colour of the plane seemed almost an afrountage to this place. It took me quite some moments to attribute this monochrome world to ice and snow. How different would the view be on my return flight? It looked so flat and untamed with it's dark black swathes of pencil effect fill ,which I attributed to forest, and it's vastness reminding me of my frailty in this world of Gods canvas. Clouds thinned as as the counter of miles remaining slipped down through the last two digit numbers and my stomach sank with anticipation.
A summery of the first 6 months
And so with trepidation and an adventurous spirit the volunteer arrived in the second largest city of Novi Sad, to be greeted by it's three hundred thousand strong population with little social divide and a ethnic mix so diverse that it's almost indecipherable. After the first meeting of Eho and this youngster perhaps expectations ran a little high, but the excitement soon wore, listening to a language so complex and failing to find ways of filling the hours, living alone with so little knowledge of even the basics of existence, the beginning of this story hold tales that probably won't be retold. Angels guided her footsteps, found people crawling out of the woodwork, projects to get involved in, and slowly a timetable formed, peppered with group after group where she would try and join in while the few who could translate partly explained drips of the conversations that flowed around her. From days working with the physically and mentally disabled, Roma children turning up to have help with their studies, computer lessons with the laughter of English operating systems, sewing classes at the eho centre, and a photography project with German volunteers. Other days she would spend speaking her native tongue, trying to expand the vocabulary both as official and unofficial teacher. Often called upon by groups that spoke English. Often she was the novelty, a boast and claim to allow the volunteer or organisation to show off about their links to the wider world, a representative of the sacred EU that so much of the country has their eyes set upon, a world encyclopedia having travelled more extensively than most.
She spent her days talking about this religion that didn't involve buildings or symbols, that breathed and danced and inspired. She spent her days listening to stories of how people had come to be where they are, tales of what had shaped the country, and hopes of escape. She learnt to think of the flat land as a place of the forgotten, a place people left when they could and yet somehow they sold the beauty of the diamond for the abundance of sand. This land was a magical place, it didn't really accept anyone, but didn't really reject them either. It had been traded like a pawn for so long it simply sat and waited, gained a reputation it seldom deserved and started to look lazy when it was really more like laid back.
The challenge that eho set before her was to find a passion and project of her own, a daunting task for one who barely knows the way home. So days turned to weeks, weeks to months, friendships formed and timetables were fulfilled, parties attended and events saw the unfamiliar sculpture and skin tone of the English girl. She found her place and started to feel like she could temporarily belong in this piece of earth. The temperature rose and the extra layers of coat and jumper were shed. The placement had come to it's middle point and time came for her to depart temporarily to reflect on her time spent and time to come, to renew her three month visa-less standing in the country, to breath a different air for some days. But the air she breathed didn't have the dust of the Novi sad streets, it lacked the chatter of the youth that sat in the squares as the days waned and were born afresh. She dreamt of returning, dreamt of those young, for Novi Sad had thirty thousand students, dreamt of crashing though their glass façades of apathy and getting them to ask questions afresh. She dreamt of video's being watched and conversations being born, of showing grace and kindness to these young and neglected, often unemployed and hopeless, movie bread theologians and desert wanders of the soul. Of taking something they would really want to see, of feeding the liquid diet with food and giving reasons for the isolated groups to connect.
And here at this late stage is where the story really starts to begin, for here, now she had discovered enough to start to navigate the corridors and complexities, did the project really begin. Like all heroes, she needed a side kick, a dedicated individual who probably did more work in the long run, but picked up the vision from day one and enabled the project to go from mind wanderings to realisation. Her sidekick was an exalcoholic, media student, whose definition of god came no more specific than a giant ball of love, and whose knowledge of anything Christian other than orthodox religious practice was all but nought. From the day our girl returned to Novi sad and sat admiring the view from the fortress and sharing her vision our sidekick was hooked. She was perfect, stubborn, and I'll let her speak for herself. ….. Letter …..
So the project came to be, the paperwork was agreed by eho with no questions, the city council similarly passed through the request with no exceptions other than no date changes. Every office they went to was astounded at how they seemed to have the perfect paperwork, the simplicity at something which normally proved so complex. Every barrier that could have been placed before the project melted like sugar in the rain. The volunteers applied for the positions and the young Christians from a neighbouring town caught the vision and came to join in. The day of the first volunteer interviews our girl received an e-mail saying the funding she had already raised would cover the project, almost exactly. The unexpected costs and savings meant it was kept to, though quiet how would baffle the
most experienced of accountant. The evenings were planned.
At seven the team of volunteers would show up, wearing their bright green t-shirts which read simply 'ask and know' upon the back and would instantly be surrounded by a group of inquisitive children. For five nights they had a labyrinth of questions, a examination of love, a sculpture of community, a freedom of painted canvasses, and added footprints and hand-prints and risked taking part! Every evening they showed a video, a Christian inspired message but only by digging into it would the young see the god it portrayed. The families and teenagers, the students and the beggar, the Goth and the slut, the angle guided and the demonic inspired moved together. Obviously the addition of the computer game they had not seen before helped but there was more here than just playing with toys. Young Christians who had never entered that square for stories of drunken shambles learned the wisdom of the worldly, non-Christian volunteers saw the miracles of divine providence as time and again prayers were answered almost before they could be uttered, with all the options of conversations God and grace came to the front. Atheists were astounded by the faith of the support workers and their willingness to serve them, religious weary were given a reason to re-examine, and food distribution gave opportunity for every person in the square to be approached. Young Roma children (gipsies to the politically incorrect) found themselves being accepted into activities on an equal footing, 'and even I can play' one was heard to utter after reassurance that the activity was truly free. A young musician caught the atmosphere and provided blues and jazz when the music system failed, and questioning individuals returned night after night to sit in the quieter parts of the evening and discuss the merits of their various world views.
Our girl sat and smiled as she observed her volunteers moving between the child and the teen, deep in discussion with parent and toddler, helping each other and those they met without judgement or fuss. These five nights would not be enough she thought, these five nights were the flag on the tip of the ice-burg, and only time would tell if it's presence would alert any ship of it's danger of sinking into apathy. But the stories she could tell from those five nights would fuel her for months, for years. All too soon it was over, all too soon the tiredness of each night swept the volunteers and things were packed away. But on the nights between she would sometimes meet people and they would say, 'your that girl who did that project in Porta aren't you?'