Summer in the City

Dear Family in Christ,

We are blessed this summer to have 3 sets of co-laborers! Any and all service offered is such a blessing as it expands our capabilities to impact both the church body and the communities around us here in Edmonton.

Returning Labourers
At the end of June a family that had visited us last July returned for a week of blessed reunion, fellowship, prayer, ministry and good plain fun. We were so thankful for the heart of this couple who so willingly invested their time and resources to coming to support us and the church here. The Lord permitted us to team up and minister to people in ways we could not have done just with the two of us. Christ was preached, His Word was received, people were encouraged, challenged, and one made a commitment to follow Jesus and receive His salvation! This was an incredible gift to have this family return and we all felt the boost spiritually, mentally and even physically, despite long days and late nights.

Team 1
At the end of this month we will have two teams visiting us. The first group is coming up for a weekend of outreach from our own backyard at Rocky Mountain Calvary Chapel in Calgary. Several brothers are offering themselves to go out on the streets and do one-on-one evangelism with Dejan. They also plan to stay the night and join us for Sunday service, which is always an encouragement to the body.

Team 2
The second team is coming from our home church in Pocatello. They will be in the city for about 6 days, with a multi-faceted outreach. The first weekend of August in Alberta every year is a 3-day weekend with a special festival called Heritage Fest. It is the largest festival hosted by the city, when all of the countries represented in the city showcase their culture; over 80 nations converging on one of the largest parks. This festival is typically attended by more than 300,000 people over the three days, and it is an excellent opportunity to "go into all the world" without travelling around the globe! The team will be there for evangelism throughout the bulk of the festival.  Additionally, we will be having a baptism and the team will participate in the Sunday service. We are always blessed by the group that comes up from Idaho, and we are greatly anticipating what the Lord is going to do this summer.

Prayer Requests
Please keep us and the church in prayer. Many are coming and going with the warm weather. Many are absent due to work and travel. There are hurting hearts and needs, just like in any church, and our desire is that our part of the body of Christ here in Edmonton will have each member doing its share, ministering to and building each other up, just as Jesus desires. We are not able to meet everyone's needs, though we very much love each person in this group of believers.

Please, of course, pray for the teams who will be joining us, July 23-24th and July 28th-August 2nd; for their safety in travel, for God to use them, speak through them, grant them boldness and times of sweet fellowship with Him.

Lord willing, we will be able to post some updates and photos of the summer in the coming weeks. Until then, we are so blessed and encouraged by all of the prayers offered on our behalf for these things. We couldn't be here without God's call and His vision, but He is using you to supply in so many practical ways, especially in prayer.

In the love of Jesus,
Dejan and Julie

Merry Christmas

Thank you to all of you who have given your time and energy for us this year in praying for us, in some cases physically coming up here to join us in the work, and for the others of you who are also gifting your financial resources to enable us to live and serve here in Edmonton. We are grateful to the Lord for each of you!!


We are celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus at home as a family, after a Christmas eve fellowship with some people from the church, and on Sunday we will have a special Christmas Sunday service.


We hope your celebrations are uplifting and draw you nearer in love to the LORD and to one another. He is the reason for it all!

Harvest Prayers and Answers

Jesus gave us clear instructions on what to do when we need help in ministry. Primarily, we are to pray. Sometimes fast. But, always, the instruction includes prayer.

He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest."  ~Luke 10:2

So what have we done for many, many months? We have prayed. And God has answered!

We have had many teams come to visit us this year, and each group has been a blessing.

1st Laborers
In late winter/early spring, a group from Calvary Chapel of the Flathead Valley came and blessed us with their fellowship, their willingness to pass out gospel tracts and to help in children's church. We even got to sneak in a nice visit with a couple of close family members who were on the team. :)

Team from CCFV

Edmonton hosted an event for an emerging sport known as ice cross; a sort of mix between roller derby (on ice), hockey, downhill slalom and ice skating. The international Crashed Ice competition drew around 70,000 spectators. This group went out that weekend to help spread the word with Dejan and another man from our fellowship. In church Sunday, Pastor David Mercer shared the message, the children's church got a puppet show on Zacchaeus, and Julie got some help from our oldest nephew during class time.

2nd Laborers
In early June, a team of 14 people from our home church of Calvary Chapel Pocatello drove up for 10 days. There were six children, in addition to the adults, our pastor and his wife. Our girls were so blessed and excited to have other (Christian) children around. It was an amazing gift for them. Our pastor did the baby dedication for our newest addition, which was a great blessing, as he shared in our other girls' dedications when they were infants.

baby dedication

let the little children come!

This team was primed to evangelize (even the little ones!), and they hit the streets enthusiastically and often during their stay in Edmonton! Their outreach was timed to coincide with the FIFA Women's World Cup soccer event, of which Edmonton was a host city. The team also did alot of ministry around the University of Alberta and surrounding area. Truly they were able to do more work during their 10 days than we could do alone in 10 months or more. It was such a help! They also used their van to help pick up a horse trough we purchased to use for a baptismal, and led worship for our first church baptism.

baptism

Gospel goes FIFA

3rd Laborers
Last fall, you may recall that we had a group of men from Calvary Chapel Meridian, Idaho visit us, as several of them were praying about coming to Alberta for ministry. They stayed at our place overnight, did a quick tour, and prayed over our adopted city before their next scheduled stop.

Among that group, God touched the heart of one man to come back to Edmonton with his entire family for a portion of the summer. We were both amazed and humbled when he shared this with Dejan. But then, it actually happened. For the entire month of July, this precious family of six camped out in a small hotel room and served our family and the church with joy and love. We had help in worship, children's church, men's and ladies' fellowship, evangelism, prayer; it was amazing.

new friends

with our month-long team members!

worship & prayer for the city

Since their departure, we have clearly seen the benefits of having another couple or family join us full-time. However, we are thankful that the Lord was so gracious to grant us those weeks of ministry.

4th Laborers
In early September, a team from Calvary Chapel Whitefish came up for a weekend, and totally blessed us. They joined in our church prayer meeting, ran our children's church, and Pastor David Halan preached on Sunday. They came up to see the city, serve the church and to encourage our family. Mission accomplished! Their hope is to send "weekend" teams periodically to help out, and we are excited at this possibility.

So as you can see, though we didn't get any permanent team members yet, the Lord was faithful to send out laborers to Edmonton. We pray that more will come and have been so encouraged by every person who gave of their time, resources, gifts and energy to serve alongside us. And we are thankful also to all those who were involved in supporting those who came in all the many ways necessary to send them to us.

Thank-full,
Dejan and Julie <><