Croatia Mission Trip, June 12 - 27, 2009

The team taught English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, visited orphanages and ministered through sports evangelism and music. Thank you for praying for them – it was a great time of ministry!  Team members were David Boncler, Alex Riehl, Jacob Boyd, Rachael Schneider, Kyle Eichelberger, Danielle Doyle, Samantha Moss, Heidi Pence, Julie McElroy, Charles Fowler and Patrick Newman.   Click here for more pictures, or you can view their itinerary (PDF file) and see their schedule.

David's Trip Report from the August 2009 Business Meeting

Croatia was a great time of ministry and everyone did amazingly well.  Each allowed God to use them daily... and ALL day in service!  The sports evangelism went great even though it rained almost every day.  We just went out, played in the rain, and built relationships out there anyway.  It made the kids we worked with realize there was something different about us.  They really wanted to know more about who we were and what we were about.  Lots of seeds were planted, and we even got to share salvation very clearly with several, of which there was some salvation!!!  The adults who went did great.   I also saw a lot of spiritual maturity in the youth band who returned with me this year for the second time (as well as the additional member we picked up this year).  It was such an encouraging blessing to see the spiritual strength in their lives, and to see it acted out as they reached out to an even deeper level this year.

2008 Croatia Mission Trip Highlights

Vista Grande sent 11 people to Karlovac, Croatia to teach ESL for the 4^th year in a row.  Five members of the group were involved in the English ministry: Tally Paulich – Beginners; Andrew Kuster and Heidi Pence – Intermediates; Danielle Doyle (Bruno at the time) and Lona Webb – Advanced.   There were an average of 35 students per night for the two weeks.

Pastor David Boncler, Jacob Boyd, Alex Riehl and Kyle Eichelberger brought their guitars and the plan was to share music at the various coffee shops.  These coffee shops were also considered bars, so they had to change plans.  They played music every night before the English classes started and this became very popular within a couple of days.

During the day, most of us went out to the park and sports ministry took the place of the coffee shop ministry.  God had something better planned for us!  We played basketball and soccer with the kids at the park nearly every day.  Several of these kids ended up spending a lot of quality time with the group at the church each evening.  Also, several kids were coming to the English classes from a nearby Children’s Home (somewhat like an orphanage).  We started playing with them at the park and the older kids spent the evenings at the church as well.  Through these two community outreaches, many new contacts were made for the church.  For more pictures of the trip, please follow this link.

The last two members of the team, Larry Boyd and Mark Webb, did whatever was needed: team photographers, room tear down and set up crew, water boys, roadies and Mark preached a couple of times.  Overall, it was a great trip with more ideas for next year.  We will be planning to teach English at two locations, conduct Vacation Bible School and continue with the sports/park ministry.