HUB Bulletin – Summer 2016

Dear friends,13517416_1159252527458754_4910541142569211513_o

Heartfelt greetings from HUB and all of us. I hope this email reaches you well.

We wanted to look back onto the past period we’ve had here at HUB, and share a little of what God’s doing here.

We just finished our last semester of the school year and the students have gone back home.
The 20th generation of the Bible school left and we can’t wait to see how God will use them while they continue on in ministry. We’re thankful to God for giving us the opportunity to serve them here and help them acquire a lot of knowledge, experience and many blessings. It’s amazing to see how God have been working in them in this past year.

20th years of HUB – GOD is faithful !

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We had a huge event on June 18th here at HUB. Praising God for his faithfulness in these past twenty years of the School and the ministry of HUB here in Serbia.

We gathered with around 500 other people from all parts of our country and region to praise God for the abundance of faithfulness in our ministry, and especially in the lives of many through our whole region. It’s amazing to see what He has done! Watch this short and exciting video that we recorded that day – https://youtu.be/T095-gKQ4XA

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HUB Summer camps !

As always – we’re expecting a “hot” summer here. HUB will, again, be a host to many this summer. We are glad that we can offer churches and organizations a good place to organize summer camps and our hospitable staff team and volunteers.

Apart from that – again at HUB, we’re organizing a family retreat for families with children that were treated for cancer, and also another camp for families with children with disabilities. This is something that we had at HUB last year that was really amazing. The volunteers, the staff team and the guests were all blessed by what we’ve experienced at camp in those days. We see that HUB can contribute so much to those families. We are honored for opportunity to be their “hands and feet” as they are experiencing unforgettable moments here. Pray for those events.

HUB team!

ElenkaOur Elenka Kraljik, has spent almost 17 years at Hub serving others. She is leaving HUB and moving to Belgrade where she will live and continue to serve at an adult disability care center. She’s been visiting that place with the HUB students for a long time, and has many dear friends there and her wish was to be able to be there “full time” – to continue serving others and be a salt and light to people with disabilities.Pray for God’s guidance and strength while she continues her life there.Also, pray for the further development of the HUB staff team – that God may bring the right people who will be a part of this ministry.

New good titles in Serbian

As HUB we published a couple of books in Serbian – which was our wish and vision, to omot za biltencontinue to publish good Christian literature, for it to be accessible, as an answer to the great need that we have here in Serbia and in our region. We already have a new book translated that we’re publishing in Serbian, by John Piper – Seeing and savoring Jesus Christ. We also published a book by Vaughan Roberts – God’s big picture, and also Dig deeper by Nigel Beyon and Andrew Sach.

Our wish is to publish more books like that, so if you, in any way, want to help us with this, contact us, please. It’s a great blessing to have access to good Christian books.

Community center – café club – in Opovo

Our prayer, for a long time, has been to start some sort of public work in Opovo, a place where some of us on staff live, and a place that’s closest to HUB. Although HUB geographically belongs to Belgrade, the closest place is town Opovo.

HUB with the students and lecturers really has the potential in many ways to minister and be useful to many. We visit many churches, organizations, and serve people in different ways, and so we want to be able to serve more the locals here. We rented a place in the very center of Opovo, for the needs of this café club, where we will organize different workshops for youth, parents, elderly, also have lectures, music and movie nights… There’s always going to be someone there that will welcome our guests, talk to them, etc.

The church and Christians should be an active part of the society and be with the people – so that they could be the light. Please, pray for these new and large pioneering steps which we are making in faith. If you want to know more or want to be a part of this exciting beginning, let us know, your help and prayers for this are very much needed.

New, 21st year – enrollment

The enrollment of the new student generation is in progress. We are excited for the new people and the new school year. We want to thank everyone who is faithfully supporting and praying for this school that it might exist, progress during all these years, accept new students and enable them to get a good quality biblical education.

Thank you for everything! It’s great to know that many of those who love us pray for us faithfully and support us.

God is good !

Yours in Christ,

Sladjan and Jaroslava Milenković

With HUB team

Write us, keep in touch with us. There are so many things we want to share with you.

Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/hub.serbia

Email: info@hub.org.rs

Tel: 00381.(0).11.88.086

 

 

 

Twenty Years of the Bible School in Serbia…

This is a year of celebration in Serbia as the Bible School heads towards its twentieth year…

Bible School beginnings in 1996

It was autumn 1996 that the first group of students arrived to begin their studies in the village of Backi Petrovac in the north of Serbia.

With the wars that had marked the early part of that decade only just coming to an end, a number of those first students had come to know Jesus through the humanitarian work that we had been involved with since 1991. Time after time we had arrived in “Yugoslavia” with coaches and trucks loaded with supplies that had been lovingly prepared by friends across the UK. Every time that we shared these gifts in refugee camps or in sport stadiums we carefully shared the Message of a God who loves us and has come to us in the person of Jesus to rescue broken humanity through His death and resurrection…

Some of you reading this bulletin were involved right back in those earliest days as you prayed, prepared aid and even travelled with us.

Image below: arriving at a refugee centre with an Oak Hall coach. 

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A Year of Study through the whole Bible

igorThrough that first year of studies, we explored through the whole Bible with around thirty different Bible teachers who gave their time to serve with us. Each week, the students headed to the refugee camps to continue to share the message of Jesus with those there… our lives were shared together as we lived in community.

Graduates Serving across the Region

As those students graduated, many of them headed to new locations to plant churches and launch other initiatives that brought a great and positive impact to the country and shared the Message of Jesus Christ still further. It was clear that it was right to run a second year of the Bible School and so the new year was launched…

As well as visiting refugee camps, we also travelled across the region to stand with – serve alongside – those students who had studied through the first year… and so the work gathered momentum year after year.

Image below: a children's camp organised by graduates Dragan and Danijela. 

Children's Camp...

A New Centre for the Bible School in Belgrade

It was soon clear that although the welcoming, small northern village of Backi Petrovac was a perfect cradle for the beginning of the Bible School that, ideally, we should seek a base in the capital of the country. After years of prayer, research and preparation, God wonderfully provided the amazing building on the edge of Belgrade that is now our centre.

In 2003, after a summer of repairs and renovations carried out by graduates and team of the Bible School, the ninth generation of students began their studies in the “new” building Belgrade. This has proved to be an ideal base for the work as it grows year on year and now the twentieth generation of students approach their graduation.

Image below: students outside the Belgrade Bible School Building. 

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The work continue to grow in this Twentieth Year

With former students serving in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia and Serbia, it is amazing to see how God is building His Church across the region as we reach this twentieth year.

We will continue to send stories of the graduates as this year of celebration continues…

Thank you so much for your prayerful partnership!

“For such a time as this” – graduates on the front-lines of serving refugees from Syria

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With refugees from Syria moving through Macedonia and Serbia, graduates of the Bible School are involved in serving these vulnerable people. Dragan Manev is mobilising teams in Macedonia along with the Agape churches. Together they are providing shelter, food, hygiene packs and the scriptures in Arabic. Darko Adamek in Serbia is also mobilising teams in a similar way.

We are sending some financial support out to these projects. If you would like to be involved, please pray – there are also details here of how you can give to support if you would like to.

For years we have prayed for these countries that are less accessible for the Gospel and now they are coming to us…

Conference for Youth Leaders

Last weekend we organized a conference for youth leaders from Serbia. About 40 young people came, and we spent a blessed time together through teachings and fellowship. The topic was 1 John 2:6, the verse which addresses all believers to walk in the same way as Jesus did.

For me personally, it was awesome to spend time with young2 people who are called by God to serve in Serbia, and I am thankful for the privilege that I could share some things with them during the conference, that I could challenge them to examine if Christ is truly the ‘model’ for their ministry.
It was  great blessing and encouragement to hear the feedback of some people.

A young man came up to me and said that  he’d  had no expectations before he came for this conference, and he thought that it would be just another series of teachings , good, but nothing special.
When the conference was over, he told me these words:” This was a very good conference, You made me think deeply about my Christian life and the things I ‘m doing for God……

I was encouraged greatly when a couple of guys came up to me and asked me if I would be their mentor. It’s great to see that people see my life as a good example.

A New Church Building in Banja Luka opened this Weekend

This weekend, after seventeen years of serving in the city, Sinisa and Olja led the opening of the new church building in Banja Luka.

Having heard about Jesus Christ during the wars that tore up Yugoslavia, Sinisa studied at the Bible School with Olja in 1996-1997 and then moved to the capital of Republika Srpska – the northern part of Bosnia – to plant this church.

There have been many challenges as well as great joys. The church is growing and their prayer is that this building will be a tool that will be used to reach many others with the Message of Jesus in this key city.

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God works!!!

We had an English camp in Backa Topola in July. About 26 teens came from Backa Topola and Pacir and had a great time while learning English, playing games and hanging out with each other.

We had prayed for opportunities to share the Gospel and the love of God, and we were blessed to see that the kids were open, very honest and felt free to ask questions. I will never forget the words of a teenager guy who claimed himself  to be an atheist, that even if he didn’t believe in God, he still enjoyed very much to listen to the conversations about Him. A girl said she wanted to start coming to the church, because “Christians at the camp were so loving”. Seven of them said that they came to faith during this camp.

We really grew close to these kids, and continue hanging out with them at the church. So far we have had 2 “follow-up programs” , the first one was a barbecue, and we organized a disco-party for them last Friday. Please pray that God would continue working in their hearts.             THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS AND SUPPORT!

News from the Oak Hall Expedition through the Balkans…

This week, an intrepid team are traveling from Budapest in Hungary, through Serbia and Montenegro, to Croatia – a journey of around 1000kms…

On our journey we are visiting a number of graduates of the Bible School in Belgrade. With well over 300 graduates serving across the region, there are many points at which we could make our stops!

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After a night tour of majestic Budapest and a then a good sleep, we rode a train south out of Hungary and into the North of Serbia. Eight hours of slowly transforming scenery, brought us to cross the Sava River and enter Serbia’s capital, Belgrade: home of the Belgrade Bible School.

This morning, we set off for the city centre, and took a boat down the Sava and into the mighty Danube River.

Dragan and Danijela studied at the Bible School and have been working among their own Romany people ever since. The highlight of the day was our visit to a Romany community with whom they work. Close to the centre of the city and surrounded by villas, this community live in a shanty-type settlement made from throw-away items from across the city.

This group of people, unnoticed or ignored by most in the city, have experienced a secret revolution since they began to hear from Dragan and Danijela about the God who has come in the person of Jesus Christ.

We heard some of these people’s amazing stories of how God has reached into their lives to bring them into relationship with Himself.

Danijel explained how 6 years ago, on an Oak Hall visit like ours today, he had the Message of God’s Love for the first time… Dragan and Danijela have supported him since and he is now one of the leaders of the Christ-following community here.

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With time to talk, play football and share more stories together, the afternoon has been a wonderful one.

Stopping at the Orthodox Cathedral and Parliament building on the way home, we returned to the Bible School this evening for an evening meal and our third Bible study before retiring for the night…

We hope to post more news shortly…

Thank you for praying on for the work of the Bible School and this journey through the Balkans.

Massive flooding in Serbia and Bosnia

Over the last few days there has been massive flooding in Serbia and Bosnia.

Some have been killed and thousands have had to leave their homes. Graduates, students, former Bible School team, their friends and churches have also been heavily impacted by the floods.

Sinisa in northern Bosnia explained yesterday, “It is a catastrophe here. I am in a village near Banja Luka helping with the clean up.”

Sladjan, leading the Bible School said today, “This is a tragedy on the scale of the aftermath of a war – may our people seek after God at this terrible time…”

Kreso in central Serbia said today, “The ground floor of our home has been under 1.5m of water. The water is receding to leave everything caked in mud. Many of our neighbours are in great difficulty…”

Sasko and Ira explained, “We would like to… provide the families with the basic things that will help them go back to normal life again, but even more importantly, our hope is to continue visiting these families and share the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ with them.”

We are going to prepare a fund to send to those helping those caught up in the floods in Serbia and Bosnia.  As is our usual practice, all of the gifts that we receive will go in their entirety out to the Balkans to be used  by those on the front-lines.

We will divide any gifts received between the following groups to use in relief work:

  • BANJA LUKA (Northern Bosnia) – Sinisa and Olja – Banja Luka Christian Fellowship
  • SARAJEVO (Central Bosnia) – Slavko – Evangelical Churches of BiH
  • HUB (Belgrade – connected across the region) – Sladjan and Jaroslava and the Bible School team
  • BELGRADE (Serbia Capital) – Sasko and Ira – International Church, Belgrade
  • BELGRADE (with interest across the rest of the country) – Dane & Ondrej – Baptist Union of Serbia
  • NOVI SAD (Northern Serbia) – Danny and Vera – Novi Sad Christian Fellowship

Please pray on for those caught up in these floods and for all of those seeking to serve their neighbours and point to the Lord Jesus.

– Andy and Faye Mayo

www.OakHall.org.uk

Please use this link to reach details of how to give.  Please reference your gift, “flooding”.