Highlights from the Trip!

For our last night in Croatia, we had dinner at an outdoor restaurant with a beautiful view overlooking Zagreb. In this short video each of the team members gives their favorite highlight and memory from the trip.

Last Days in Croatia: Rejika and Zagreb

We spent our last few days in Rejika, off the Adriatic Sea, and Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. On Tuesday when we went back to Rejika, where we relaxed on a beautiful beach off the Adriatic Sea and met up with a few of the campers who lived near the area. We also had a final dinner with Stevo and Sarah, the missionaries here who lead these camps and much of the missionary work done in Croatia.

On Thursday we drove to Zagreb (see pictures) to see the city and then met up with an even larger group for pizza and gelato. What was so exciting was how many of the kids we whe ere able to see after camp, many wearing their camp t-shirts, and laughing about the songs and dance moves as they sang them. A few brought friends who are interested in coming next year. It was so exciting to see how happy they were to see us and reunite even though the camp has just finished a day ago, and on top of that, how excited many were to come back next year. These kids just grab at your heart and we will be using facebook to keep in touch with as many as we can. Tonight (Friday) is our last night here in Croatia and we will head back to the States tomorrow. We are going out for a nice dinner in downtown Zagreb which should be fun and sad at the same time. This was quite an experience!

Last Day at Camp

Tuesday sadly was our last day with the youth at our camp. All the campers left Tuesday afternoon to return to their family and friends. It was so sad to see them leave, and many were crying and kept hugging us over and over again, asking if we would return the following year. Many of these youth will return to homes that are either not religious or are not Christian (Catholicism is predominant here in Croatia) and a few in the camp who were Christians even mentioned that they are used to getting made fun of others for their faith. And these children continually received love and attention and acceptance at this camp for an entire week, and to leave that environment and go back into the ‘real world,’ which may include a broken home, can be challenging. The most exciting part was perhaps learning that there were two girls that accepted Christ as their personal savior on the last night of the Story of God (Monday night). And not only that, we believe that all other students moved forward in some form. Some who were not necessarily religious are now intrigued about how different Christianity is from their Catholic backgrounds and thus want to learn more and even return to the camp next year. Others who are Christians, including us missionaries, will continue to work on developing a stronger closer personal relationship with God.