Volunteers from Ruston, LA

This past Monday we said good-bye to another team from First Baptist Church in Ruston, Louisiana. This is the fourth team from this church in three years and we are so excited about all they were able to do while they were here.

The team of nine came during our town's summer festival, which lasted from Thursday through Sunday night. Our town of 75,000 was overrun as people from all over Macedonia and even beyond came to join the fun. Sunday night at the main-event concert, they estimate we had almost 200,000 people packing the streets!





FBC, Ruston, printed coozies with our club logo, filled them with water bottles and passed them out in the early evenings during the festival.















I don't think anyone here had ever seen or even heard of coozies, so we had to explain what they were. The name of our club is "Izgrev" which means "sunrise." Everyone seemed to really like the coozies because our logo has the Macedonian flag behind a silhouette of the distinctive mountain peaks that border our town of Prilep.

In June the Texas volunteers did some repairs and renovations and a sign with our logo was posted on site. These coozies were another great way to get our logo out there so that people will begin to learn who we are.

Along with the free water, several from the team performed short dramas in the town square and passed out fliers inviting people to come to a seminar that night at our club, which is very close to town square. Even Joshua and Daniel were able to get parts in the skits!!! (Rebekah was out of town.)


On Thursday and Friday nights Kay Bradford sang for us and Pastor Chris Craig shared his testimony and taught on having a personal relationship with Jesus.























On Saturday night we hosted a Ladies' Night. Melodye Patterson shared and at the end three of the ladies sang "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" in Macedonian!!! (Check out the video on my facebook.) None of them speak Macedonian but we wrote it out phonetically for them and they did a great job! It was so sweet watching the ladies' faces as they realized they could understand the song even without translation!
After each night's events, we all went out to the square with Macedonian friends and ate together and "enjoyed" the live music (it was a bit LOUD!).
Thank you so much to FBC, Ruston, for faithfully supporting missions in Macedonia! You each can name certain people who touched your hearts. You came to Prilep and made new friends. Hanging out is so important here and the time you spent with us was not in vain -- you were able to open doors and soften many hearts. May God continue to bless and nurture the seeds you have planted!

Here are a few more pics of you and your new friends: