Go2bless broke new ground this summer; sending short-term mission teams to serve local churches in Bosnia, Croatia & France. Forty students from five nations gathered at Bethanie for four days team training before being sent out across Europe to Live for others.

This years summer mission to Croatia was quite different to previous years. In some ways it was quite a difficult year due to various challenges; we didn’t have a cook, we couldn’t find accommodation, an american team who we usually team up with to run basketball camps pulled out, we had to shut down ‘youthspace’ [the youth drop in centre we we usually run every evening] due to noise complaints, and the heat and mosquito’s were bordering on unbearable..

But it was precisely these challenges that led us to do new things like running our own sports camp for the first time – which was a success, staying with Darko and Gorona and their family [the Pastor and his wife] for the first time – which gave us the opportunity to really get to know them, and hanging out with the youth in the evenings in town rather than in the church – which we found to be massively fruitful as we recognised the significance of going out to meet the youth rather than expecting the youth to come to us.

Our daily prayer times were a key part of what were doing too. As a team we learnt to listen to and engage with God’s heart for Slavonski Brod, and so became increasingly aware of the importance of prayer as foundational to everything we do.

[Anna, team leader, Croatia]

English, Polish, Dutch, French and American nationalities ranging from 16 to 27 years old, made a dynamic team achieving the awesome task of changing a patch of rubble into an amazing beach cafe area to invite locals to come and meet the church and have fun at five different themed evenings. It was hard work, but everyone pulled their weight, and team bonding happened!

Our aim in the day was to visit the local estate and run a kids club, hoping that word would get around and local kids would feel like joining us. The French system was too complicated to do this officially. Although it was a slow start we had a full kids club by the end of the week, made some great friends and had lots of fun ourselves. Many of the kids were sad to see us leave.

We had a few difficulties we didn’t anticipate, eggs dropped on us from a top floor apartment hitting our team and a child who was playing with us, fire works directed across the floor towards us, but with Gods help, major prayer (some actually written on our shoes and walked around the perimeter of the club) and worship and the constant presence of the local pastor we were working with, we overcame the difficulties and had an amazing week culminating in an unbelievably successful last day.

After a week of  opening the church beach cafe in the evenings and not seeing many come, the last day blew us away… a large group of 40 people walked down from the estate into town to join us at church for a fun evening of music, bouncy castle, ping pong and chocolate fountain. For a small Baptist church plant in an old wine cellar this was a major step, contact with local people taking them seriously is hard and with God directing our mission this week we saw a major spiritual step taken.

To be a part of this team was an honour, to see five nationalities work together towards the same goal was inspiring. To see God move in the local people on the estate is something I will never forget.

[Caroline, team leader, France]

Over the summer of this year we travelled over land with 20 young people to Slavonski Brod in Eastern Croatia. The journey seemed to last much longer than expected; especially when you are cramped in a mini bus with no air con and 8 other sweaty people. We saw God draw the team closer together through team training in France and during the first few days of travel.

Over our time on mission we supported the local church by running an international sports camp, basketball camp, and two kids clubs on local estates and running a Youth Space out of the church basement. Over the years we have seen a real connection with the local young people and this year was no exception; we seem to be attracting more and more young people to our events. Pastor Darko is so supportive and helps us in many ways to make sure our ministries are prayerfully considered, that we are all on the same God page an that we understand the cultural context that we are entering into.

As a team we set aside time each day to worship, pray and do bible studies. These times have been particularly significant as God has clearly been leading us on the right paths and strengthening us physically and spiritually. One thing that I am reminded of from this year’s mission is the amount of times we have ran into the police. In the past running into the police is uncommon; somehow in each situation we were let off the hook – for me personally the sense that God was protecting us was more than obvious.

One week into the mission 9 of the team went to pioneer some work in Banja Luka, Bosnia. With the team split in half we then began to draw much closer together because of the smaller numbers. Over the last week we built upon the friendships already made and saw some truly significant transformations. Each year we aim to be more like Jesus in the places we find ourselves; Croatia is a war torn place filled with hopelessness. By being ‘Jesus like’ in these places we see light being shone into darkness and hopelessness turned into hope. Our volunteers always take away that sense of hope into the places where they have come from; bringing Jesus’ love into everydayness.

[Chez, team leader, Croatia]