Occasion for Praise

This month has been filled with blessed gifts from the Lord from beginning to end! We'd like to share them with you so you can rejoice with us!

• Of course, Dejan's citizenship on the first was a highlight for our family and a relief.

• Then, the second and third weekends in March Dejan was in Northwest Montana at one of our supporting churches to share our vision for Edmonton with the fellowship there. In between those two weekends he applied for his U.S. passport and got his Social Security card status updated.

• This past week we got some encouraging news from another missionary in Canada on a clergy/religious worker visa, Dejan was given an invitation to speak at another church that will be supporting us on the East Coast, and he had the opportunity to be very involved in some local evangelism for three days at our city's spring expo. (Even our oldest daughter was joyfully passing out Gospel coins and invitations to the Easter/Resurrection service next weekend. Her first voluntary service to the Lord--an awesome blessing to us as parents!)

• We also celebrated Dejan's birthday this week. We enjoyed the celebrations with our own family, but Dejan also got a very nice gift from the U.S. government: his passport! The official issue date is his literal birthday, and we received it today, the last day of March, about 3 weeks earlier than we were told it should arrive. (Yeah, we know--praise the Lord!)

So, we are rejoicing in God's kindness and goodness. We do have prayer needs, of course, but we'll put that in another post. For now, we'd just like to glory in the Lord and all He is doing on our behalf, for what He is allowing us to do with Him, and for how He is working in us.

"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me; bless His holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits."

~Psalm 103:1-2

Blessing Him,

Dejan and Julie <><

Dual Citizens

It's official!

On Thursday morning during a very wet snow storm in Boise, Dejan was naturalized as a citizen of the United States of America. We are hopeful that now our entry into Canada will be a bit simpler, as Dejan won't have to worry about preserving his residency here while living in another country. He is a true citizen! Now all of our family are citizens of the same country!

The ceremony included 32 people from 17 different nations from all over the globe, including a little family from Sudan, one Canadian, and of course, one Serbian. They were sworn in at the beginning, and then there was a message from the President, a video presentation and a speech by the official overseeing the proceedings. We had quite a delegation from our family in attendance, as well as some friends from a nearby town. It was a great blessing to have such support.

"All American Family"

We never married with the intention of synchronizing our earthly citizenship. Because we are followers of Christ, we've shared heavenly citizenship since we met. Now we are both dual citizens of the same countries. Lord willing, our children will be one day as well.

We are so grateful to have reached the end of this journey of 4+ years. God has truly given us a smooth, straight-forward experience with the U.S. government from the very beginning. May He do the same for us with the Canadian government and our visas for church-planting!