Trevor & Leah Sambrooks pictures

The Bihać and Sarajevo teams joined forces with a couple of local believers. Together they delivered over 400 packages door-to-door in two villages in the Northwest of the country.

Using magic to preach the Gospel

The first week was spent cleaning up the local amphitheatre and hosting a series of kids games and movie nights

Time was spent talking with people and distributing Christian literature

The second week saw the Van4Life arrive, a book store on wheels

Arts and crafts, Story time

Sports

The trusty Parachute!

A panorama of the ministry area

The first prayer conference for the Year of Prayer for BiH 2008 was held in
Mostar, about 2.5 hours from Sarajevo. God exceeded our expectations with
over 130 believers attending. This is about 13% of all believers in BiH.

Throughout the weekend there were times of prayer for different places in
BiH, prayer for the different churches, prayer walks in some of the areas
around Mostar used as shrines to false Gods. Below left is a group praying
at Blagaj, where the river Buna comes out of the mountain. Right at the
entrance to the source is a Muslim Monastery.

This year we had an opportunity to take part in the distribution of the
Samaritan's purse Christmas shoe boxes. We partnered with the Baptist
Church from Sarajevo to put on a puppet show about the true meaning of
Christmas.

The event was in a small village called Trnovo which is about 30KM
from Sarajevo situated in the Republika Srpska.

The Republika Srpska is predominantly Orthodox which is why we were
giving out Christmas packages in January. They celebrate Christmas on
the 7th January not on the 25th December as we know it.

It snowed about 8 inches on Christmas day. Our first ever white Christmas.
Above right: Yes, that's our christmas tree!!

The new "old bridge" in Mostar that links east with west. A historic landmark that had for years represented togetherness between ethnic identies, particularly Croatian-Catholic and Bosnian-Muslim. It was destroyed by mortars in 1993, breaking not just a physical link but the political and racial too. The rebuilding wasn't undertaken and completed until 2003.

We've spent a lot of time in Mostar this year as we've been attending the Evangelical Church Bible School.

Above right - This sign makes us smile everytime so we thought we'd share!

Much of Mostar is still in ruins after it was descimated by the atrocities of war. The surrounding hills are still covered in landmines. Today, Mostar is still split, not just east and west, but Croatian and Bosnian-Muslim.

Our team has begun a weekly rotation cleaning up some of the local parks.
After the war people were told not to pick up litter as often innocent looking household items were used to house explosives.
Many children and adults alike suffered from this cruel method of war.
Even now it is rare to see people picking up rubbish. Old habits die hard.

Each year the Evangelical churches of Bosnia get together to run a series of camps throughout the summer. These camps are for believers and non-believers alike. Trev spent 7 days helping at the "Youth" camp (18-30's).

Above left - during the prayer camp, verses were writen on stones and used to build an old testament style alter to stand in front of the meeting tent.

Different activities included a range of team building games.

Each morning Trev helped to run a Canyon scramble up the mountain river that feds the nearby lake, the highest in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Below - Able musicians led a time of praise and worship each evening combined with a powerful evangelistic message.

Graffiti is everywhere. It doesn't have to be dark for you to see someone adding a new image to already well daubed walls.

Many walls still bear images of Tito, war slogans, the names of war "heroes", the names of those who died. And many are adorned with rude phrases, gang names, swear words. All beautifully and lovingly created and painted.

Just 500m up the road from where we live is the Republika Srpska, known as the RS. This was formed as part of the Dayton agreement at the end of the war in 1995. It's not hard to tell when you have left the Federation and strayed in to the RS as all signs change from being in the latin alphabet to being cyrillic.

Above - Dobrinja from the office and one of the local mosques.

Above - A gypsy lady going through the rubbish bins.

Above - A ruined building near to where we live, another local mosque