Do you know where Montenegro is? Honestly. If I pulled up a world map could you point to it?
Montenegro has been a country for 12 years. It’s a small country in the Balkan region with rugged mountains, medieval villages and a bit of coastline on the Adriatic Sea.
This past month I spent nearly three weeks in this beautiful and mysterious place. My time was pretty loaded as I moved through different training and debrief time. The WR Fusion group is about half way through the year, which at times is hard to believe, yet in other moments I feel like we started this journey in Colombia years ago.
We had four incredible leaders serve for the past 6 months and part of my role in this trip was to debrief and celebrate them well. Some of us actually did this across the border in Croatia for a few days.
Along with this change in leadership came the training of two new squad leaders, Kate and Vanessa. They are both incredible and gifted in their own unique ways, but together I can’t wait to see how God uses them to continue to steward the squad in the direction God is leading.
For all of Montenegro’s beauty it was a challenging place in the spiritual realm. The majority of the country would claim Eastern Orthodox Christianity as their religion, or point to the cross hanging from their taxi cab mirror…but hardly anyone knew the name of Jesus Christ. A lot of conversations about Jesus were met with skepticism, curiosity and in extreme cases there was rude aggression.
At first I thought it was so drastically different than the ‘South’ of the USA, where a lot of people had at least heard the name of Jesus.
Yet on my flight home I was reflecting on this and realized that Montenegro might not be that much different than my lovely home of Georgia. Sure Gainesville is missing the stunning rugged peaks and coastline, but we have the same ability to point to the cross jewelry and miss the relationship of Jesus.
It’s always an incredible opportunity to visit a country that hardly knows the name of Jesus…but it’s also convicting.
Many of the people of Montenegro were walking around void of the freedom and truth of eternal life that Jesus provides. How many of our neighbors here in the USA are doing the same?
Only 12 years old, I would consider Montenegro a hidden gem. Perhaps years from now everyone will know it as a popular tourist destination, but in the meantime it’s a small country that is slowly discovering the name of Jesus. I pray it one day sends missionaries to our communities…to remind us as a country the life that Jesus brings.
