Street Level in Slovenia

What do performing a drama on a village square outside a small castle, playing acoustic guitar in a public park, and singing gospel music selections on Slovenian city streets have in common?

Our past week of team ministry, that's what.

It all began Sunday, with a typical church service at which we helped lead a few worship songs, performed our drama, and listened to one of our leaders deliver the message. That night, however, we took the show outside to street level for the first time with an open-air concert in Murska Sobota. There was only one problem: rain. Intermittent showers forced us to run for cover with the instruments a couple of times before the concert, leaving us with nothing to do but pray for the sky to clear for the duration of the concert. As we started singing, patches of blue began to overtake the sky, allowing low sunlight to illuminate the massive trees around us. And--though I must have been facing the wrong direction to see it--I hear there was even a beautiful rainbow overhead. 

(The best is yet to come! Please click "Read More" to continue.)

On Monday, we spent the day helping with Youth Camp in the same facilities where we'd worked with the Young Adult Camp the week before. Highlights of the day included helping out with an incredibly high-energy worship night and spending time with the youth. --And having them teach me Slovenian tongue twisters like "pešec (PAY-shets) prečka (PRAYCH-ka) cestišče (tse-STEESH-cha)." (Translated "the pedestrian crossed the roadway.")

The building where we held our Canada Presentation
Tuesday night, by the park where we held our
open air concert Sunday evening

Tuesday and Wednesday we returned to the park, setting up shop in the open to play guitar, sit in the grass and sing worship songs, toss Frisbees, and hand out invitations to passersby and Pokemon players (many of whom were gaming in the park) for the evenings' events. 

The front and back sides of the invitations we handed out in the park

For Monday night's event we held a Canada presentation in the castle-like building we had performed in front of Sunday evening. As I stood in the courtyard to greet people coming in, a teenager walked up and asked "is this where the Canadians are?" He stayed for the presentation, and afterward said he would also come to our next event Tuesday night--an outreach service at the Murska Sobota church. 

Sure enough, when we stepped onto the stage Tuesday night to begin our worship set, there was our teenage friend sitting near the back. At the end of the service, when an invitation was given to anyone who wanted to answer the call of Jesus, he was one of the people who raised his hand. :)

Wednesday and Thursday we switched settings, moving from Murska Sobota to the much larger city of Maribor. Having met at the church with the Slovenian team who would be joining us (including several familiar faces from Young Adult Camp) we struck out, Canadian shirts on our backs and music lyrics in our hands, on foot towards downtown. Magnificent but weathered buildings, their paint peeling and stonework crumbling with the passage of time, lined the cobblestone streets on both sides as we made our way to "City Centre." There, our bright Canada gear and harmonic English singing seemed to turn quite a few heads--hopefully for the right reasons! In between song/testimony sets, we joined up with Slovenian team members to walk around handing out invitations to Wednesday night's Canada Presentation and Thursday night's church service. 

The cafe where we held our Canada Presentation Thursday night

Both evening events turned out well, but Thursday's service--our last night of team ministry--was especially climatic. More than half of the attendees, we later heard, were people we had encountered on the street the previous couple of days. One of them was a middle aged guy who had run up to me and my Slovenian friend on the street earlier that day, asking for whatever we were handing out. The two conversed in Slovenian, after which my friend translated: he was a Catholic guy. Believed in God. Wanted a Bible. She had told him she'd make sure he got one if he came out to the service that night. Sure enough, that night, there he was! I didn't see him till after the service--after he too had stood up at the end to accept the unimaginable invitation extended to him by Jesus. 

But I think my favourite story from the night was the one our team leader, Mikel, told us when we were all in the van, headed back home under the nighttime sky. "One of the ladies who came from the street tonight," he began, "wanted me to tell you guys this. She told me that at the beginning of tonight, she hadn't believed that a God exists. But at the moment our team stood up and walked onto the stage to begin the worship set, she knew there is a God. She could see it on our faces, she said."

Isn't He amazing?