Loving Your Neighbors - Literally.
- Zach and Savannah
- Sep 4, 2019
- 3 min read
In August we had our last camp of the summer at camp Činta on the island of Uglan. We had a guest speaker, Barrett Coffman, and his family join us from Southside Church of Christ in Kentucky. Our theme for the camp was "Loving your neighbors - literally." He shared with us that often we as Christians try to love our neighbor, but identify our neighbors as all the people we come into contact with. While it is true that we are called to love every person, we often forget to be truly intentional and follow this command to loving our neighbors due to this generalized interpretation. So Barrett wanted us to start at home, with our true neighbors, and quit missing out on being a light in our neighborhood.
I loved this theme, and it was a great blessing to gain some practical wisdom about how to make the most of the relationships we have here. In Croatia, we have found that in general people are a lot more friendly and know their neighbors much better. Everyone lives closer together, everyone walks most places, and you spend a lot of time in parks or the neighborhood cafes. Whereas in the States you may have to work hard to ever encounter your neighbor unless you get home from work at the same time, seeing your neighbors here is part of daily life. And we don't want to miss out on those relationships.
Barrett talked about how the starting place is how you view your neighbors, and approaching those relationships with the right mindset. When you invite your neighbors into your home, is your only goal to tell them they need salvation? Only seeking a casual "hello"? Or are you entering into a friendship that seeks to carry each other's burdens, laugh and cry together, and seek wisdom from each other to help guide each other toward truth? We left camp with the aim to be more intentional about sharing God's all-encompassing, dedicated love, and to make our home a table that all are invited to.
During the day at camp we had small group discussion time, and Zach led the teens while I worked with the kids. With the younger kids, we talked about how our words carry the power to give life or death to other people, and how the most powerful way we can use our words is sharing the life-giving love of Jesus with those around us. Each day I taught the kids fun ways to share the Gospel with their family and friends, and they had a blast. I taught them string tricks I learned at camp when I was young, shared a few object lessons (they got to light tea bags on fire - safe to say that was a good day for them!), and ended camp by painting the camp steps to bring joy to our "neighbors" at camp with us. Several days the kids wanted to keep practicing after our lesson time was over, and walked around camp sharing what they learned with the teens and adults!
The teens also were moved by our camp discussions, and started making changes right away. They started with how they could be better neighbors to their fellow campers and decided to focus on including the younger kids more in the games and outings we made.
One night we and the teens went to sit beside the sea and hang out, and a conversation started about how powerful it would be if we all really tried to be a good neighbor in our own neighborhoods. They each came up with some ideas on how to better love their neighbors, and it led to one of them, our friend Melkior, giving his life to Christ!
The last night of camp, one of the 5-year-old boys wanted to say the prayer for our evening worship time, and it was the perfect way to end camp...
"Dear God, thank you for my brothers.
Thank you that I am not alone in my family.
Thank you for the time my brothers spend with me here at camp.
Amen."
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This month Zach and I hosted a back-to-school party for the teens here, and next week we return to language school ourselves! We look forward to continuing children's English clubs, monthly weekend VBS days, teen Bible studies and get-togethers, and beginning a family-discipleship ministry at our church. Please pray for us as ministries continue, new endeavors begin, and we seek to glorify God in our neighborhood!
Love reading this. So inspired by the work God is doing through you! Rahela is settling in at OC. We talked about you briefly yesterday. She is a big fan... so are we!! God Bless. Love and prayers.