What can a group of college students accomplish in a country where the Church of the Nazarene has no established presence? With little money and with cultural knowledge developing in real time, what could really be expected to happen?
In the early years, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, finances were stretched but the passion to reach both Croatians and Bulgarians was stronger than the limitations of money. God called young people, first from SNU and then from TNU to enter into friendship, to reach out through the imperfect impetus of learning language and culture. We believe that prevenient grace leads us beyond the borders that strategy and budgets are impotent to cross. Croatia is a great example of God’s use of perfectly imperfect people to build his kingdom.
Somewhere in that beautiful love story that God wrote to us, he reminds us that it is He who builds His kingdom. We see that truth today. Though we see it through a dark glass, we still can recognize the healing that such a kingdom brings one precious life at a time.
The litany of lives that have entered into that stream of faith for Croatia is a beautiful testimony of God’s ability and desire to slip into the mouths, the arms, the feet of ordinary lovers of Jesus. Jason Lipscomb, students from several Nazarene universities. Kathy Mowry and Tim Green, and Daniel Psaute, Duane and Linda Srader, Franklin Cook, Howard Culbertson and so many more. You have made an eternal difference.
Today, Dave and Betsy Scott stand in the gap between the mercy of eternity and these moments in exile. Together with Croatian families, they offer a place where one can find shoes for a weary soul and drink for a thirsty heart.
What can God do? Only He knows but the history of Croatia teaches us to expect an extravagant kind of grace that crushes the borders of our human limitations.
teanna sunberg 