My first impression about last month is that it was terribly cold!!!!!!! I usually love snow but we had so much of it that I could hardly drive.

It's been 5 years now since I first started to give a ride to woman and her children to the church and back. She lives 13 km away from this place.  Before planting the mission in Smederevo, I used to give rides to several people to our church. It was so cold one Sunday that I get out to take them.

It's been a year since a Gypsy gentleman first started to come to our church. He either rides a bike or hitchhikes. He lives 13 km away. Everytime he comes, he asked me to help him. He has invited people to his place to have a prayer time together. But I have turned down his invitations telling him that God didn't call me to work with Gypsy people. He never gave up. Once, when a group of people from Romania came here, this gentleman, Ivica, invited them to come to his village, Gaj.  A short while later, that group from Romania called to tell me they were going to his village and they wanted me to come with them. I couldn't say no because they needed me to interpret. To my surprise, when we got there, we saw that the room was full of people. Some people stood up the whole time. Brother Ivica introduced me saying the following, "this is pastor Zoran that I have been inviting to come preach the Word to us for almost a year". I didn't feel good about it but I promised now that I would go there once a week to preach. We managed to get seven chairs but we still need some more. The second service was an evangelistic one where there were already people who wanted to be baptized. This is how the Gypsy ministry started. We meet at 5 p.m. now on Saturdays.

I've been looking for missionaries to help with the ministry here for years. It seems that no one wants to come to such a poor country. I have started to make some disciples and hopefully we'll have at least one person both in Kovin, Gaj and Smederevo. One of them is already attending aBbible school. I will take the other two to the same school once a month. I pray that God will help us in this respect too.

We had Christmas and New Year's here according to the old calendar. Christmas was on January 7 and New Year's on the 14th. We took advantage of these opportunities to proclaim our faith. We invited unbelievers to come to church and gave out presents to the children.

Mirela is a 57 year-old woman and lives in Smederevo. She attends the church on a regular basis. She expressed her desire to be baptized. My wife invited her to come and spend a few days with us because she lives alone. They made cookies and we talked and prepared her for baptism. It was a blessed time for all of us. There are already three people from our church that are getting baptized and a few others from our missions. Lord willing, we'll have a baptism service this coming spring. We'll be happy to see the fruit God has blessed us with.