I am in England at the moment to go to the wedding of my friend, Dan Howes! I am only in the country for 2 weeks, most of which has already passed, and it seems to have gone very quickly. I left last week from Skopje and travelled to Belgrade, Serbia where I stayed a night. Then on to Budapest, Hungary from where I flew to England. I will be repeating the journey in reverse from Tuesday to Thursday. I do like travelling (of course!), but covering long distances on consecutive days (or nights) can be very tiring - it was a seven-hour journey to Belgrade on an overnight coach, and another seven hours to Budapest on an overnight minibus.
One of the things that I like about travelling is meeting new people and finding out about the culture and history of the places that I visit. For example, I was sitting on a bench in Belgrade and started chatting to the person next to me and found out he was a student of international politics in Belgrade and he was able to tell me more details of the place. It is an interesting city and there was still evidence of the NATO bombing that took place a few years ago.
Just to give a quick geography of the area - Skopje is the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, a small landlocked country bordering Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Kosovo. Recent famous child of Macedonia was Mother Theresa.
Skopje has about twenty thousand students at the university, I think about eight thousand from Skopje itself and another twelve thousand from other parts of the Republic of Macedonia. There is a small number of foreign students as well. The church I am with in Skopje started when, within a short space of time, about 50 students became Christians.
The vision I have is to see a growing Christian group in all of the Faculties and Halls of Residence. To do this I want to see as many different channels opened up as possible. There are a number of students in the church, and they are obvious people to reach out to all their friends. Also there are other people who are interested in being involved, so we already have an enthusiastic bunch of people. In addition to this I have also been going to the Hall of Residence that is closest to my apartment (about 20 minutes' walk) and meeting people there. Being a foreigner gives me an immediate opportunity to talk to many people because they want to know what I am doing there!
On the first three occasions that I went to the Halls of Residence to meet people I saw the same man, Goce (pronounced Gotseh). This is notable since there are about 1600 students in the Hall, and even more so because Goce doesn't even live there; he was just going there at the same time I was! He speaks very good English (not everyone does, so I am learning Macedonian) and on the third occasion we exchanged mobile phone numbers so we could meet up when his exams were over. So, after his exams we got together. I already had the sense that there was more than coincidence behind our meetings, so it wasn't entirely surprising when he said to me: "I hear you have something to do with the church. Well, I have been thinking about God lately"! We then talked at length about what life is about, how God loves us and why Jesus died for us. His interest reminded me of my own questions when I was a student. I hope to see him again soon when I'm back in Macedonia.
