Language, Kids and Worship
December 2, 2009
The most recent from Christina Melton –
Hi all! I just wanted to write a little bit for those who read the blog and want to understand life and ministry here in Montenegro.
As many of you know, I have 3 primary responsibilities here: learning the language, working with teenagers, and developing the worship team. I want to report on these three things briefly so that you all can understand the work here and how to pray.
Language has been more difficult that I thought it would be. I have an excellent teacher who comes to my house to teach me 3 times a week, and I have a fairly new, well-structured book from which to learn.
I am also surrounded by people who want to help me learn Serbian. However, I am finding that this strange fear rises up every time I want to speak, and I slip and suddenly my accent is horrible and the person to whom I am talking recognizes this as an opportunity to show off his knowledge of English.
My level of understanding has greatly increased, and I can structure sentences in my head, but I have to practice and speak and mispronounce and practice out loud and do so constantly.
Naturally, it is tempting to default to English, and I have to pray for the ability to speak without fear. It will be a supernatural occurrence, but those are exciting, so that is a good thing.
Secondly, teenage ministry! I have spent the last couple of years working primarily with college students, so it is actually refreshing to be with teenagers again! They have so much energy and so many interests and ideas and are confident that they want something even when they don’t know what exactly that is.
There is no Wal-Mart here, so finding games that don’t need props, or that only use items we already have, is difficult. It is proving to be a fun challenge and I have enjoyed trying to come up with teaching that meets them where they are and games that give them something fun and exciting to do.
We meet on Friday nights, so we compete with every other plan a teenager can make. Our prayer is that the church will feel different somehow, and will be a place that they feel at home.
Last week we talked about dating/marriage, and this week is the sex talk! After that, we will talk about Christmas and the significance of Jesus’ birth, and have a fun even with some of the teens in Niksic, about 1 hour away.
Finally, worship team development! The church already has an excellent worship leader, Marijana, and a few people who are gifted musicians. As I told Marijana today, I would like to serve these people by just showing them all kinds of new strum patterns or rhythms or song styles, and find out what they like, and help them incorporate those into worship.
We serve a creative God, and we are created to be creative!
Technical skills will allow us to take what we hear in our heads and realize it on our instruments. After the new year, we are planning to start a small group for people interested in worship in music, hoping that it will give people an opportunity to become more involved in church and to begin to walk like Jesus more and more.
So there is the informative post, and I hope it is not dry, but I don’t know how long my internet connection will last, so I have to end here!
Related posts:
- Settled in Montenegro
- Montenegro — Deepening Relationships
- Fear and Rejection
- Znam gdje smo!
- Working Together
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