The story begins in 2016, during my first missionary trip to Ukraine. At the end of our trip, Rostislav Borishkevich gifted me a small book – The Challenge of Missions by Oswald Smith. In this small paperback Smith discusses a big problem in missions; the places that have missionaries get even more missionaries, and the places that are largely unevangelized remain unevangelized. The book impacted me and really put one main question before me – If I am to be involved in missions, where does God need me? This question occupied me for a long time. One day I was doing some research, and Serbia somehow stood out to me. As I learned more about the country, it became clearer that Serbia needs missionaries and evangelism as the entire country has probably less than 10,000 evangelical Christians (0.01%). I started praying for Serbia and seeking God's will. Could this possibly be for me?
One year later (in the fall of 2017) after coming back from a second trip to Ukraine and planning on a winter trip to India, I attended a regular Thursday prayer service at my church, and Sergey Savchenko called to pray for missionary work. As he was speaking, I remembered about my Serbia desire and something inside me became disturbed. I remembered hearing testimonies of how God called missionaries to random parts of the world where they would just pray, spin a globe, point and go where their finger landed. Honestly, I don’t even know where I heard this or if it was true. But, as we got on our knees to pray, I cried out to God, "Have you changed? Do you not speak to us today as you did to our fathers? If you gave them clear direction, and they went by faith, why can’t we have that today??” As I was praying these words, I got an idea; I didn’t have a globe right then that I could point to, but I had my cell phone. Right there during the prayer, I went to Google and typed “Random Country Generator.” I opened the site and click “Go,” and guess what comes up? Serbia. Now to some this might sound silly or a coincidence, but I felt shivers run down my spine as I stared in unbelief at the result on my screen. Out of 195 possible results, I get the one that has been on my heart and mind for over a year. I had my answer.
After searching online for any protestant church in Serbia (there weren’t many results) and emailing a few organizations, on October 25, 2017, I heard back from Bojan (the only response I received). Bojan was a young man involved in youth ministry and agreed to connect over Skype to discuss a potential trip to Serbia. After sharing my thoughts, we decided that he would help us find someone who could show us around Serbia and go with us to various cities and churches.
Between 2017 and 2020, we exchanged a few more emails, but still there was no clear path for Serbia. For 4 years, I continued to pray for this country and even started sharing this desire with others. In 2021, again the thought of visiting Serbia weighed heavy on my heart, and on February 12th, I reached out to Bojan again to see if anything had changed. Seven days later, he responded with an introduction to Stojce. Meet Stojce—A young man born in Macedonia, but after studying in a Serbian bible school, he felt the calling to serve in this country and moved with a single suitcase at age 21 with this simple understanding— If God called, then He will provide. On March 10, 2021, I had a Zoom meeting with Stojce for about 15 minutes and he agreed to host us and show us around Serbia.
I write about this as a sequence of events, but the one thing I cannot convey is how much doubt and fear I had between the moment I knew for myself that we should go to Serbia to the moment that we actually bought the tickets. Up to this point, our church had never gone to a place where we didn’t already have connections or someone working there. Most people did not even know that Serbia existed, and I had trouble explaining why I thought we should go there. I battled with these thoughts for many days until I finally told Nikolay Tkachenko about this desire.
At this time, I knew very little of Stojce, and he knew almost nothing about me. However, after discussing the desire to visit Serbia with our church’s missionary director, we agreed it was worth a try. So, in July of 2021, my brother Andrey, Ivan Savchenko (a brother from our church) and I flew out for Serbia. Upon arrival, we waited for Stojce (a total stranger whom I had only spoken with a few times) to pick us up from the airport. I honestly had my doubts that he would even show up, but he did! I remember very clearly how we recognized him; he had the biggest smile on his face. He was a stranger whom I had exchanged two emails and one ZOOM call with, but after our initial greeting, he grabbed one of our bags as if we were longtime friends. By the time we got to their church in the town of Backa Topola, we felt like we were brothers and had known each other for a long time. It truly is incredible how someone so far away, by worldly standards— a complete stranger, but in Christ we immediately felt like family. During the following 2 weeks we traveled all over Serbia and met many leaders from different churches, backgrounds, and regions of the country, and we also had a chance to serve with Stojce’s local church in Backa Topola.
One thing was immediately clear—this was not Ukraine. The culture was similar, the food was familiar, but the churches were very different. None of the congregations we visited were like my home church, and I frankly don’t even know what it is we were looking for or expected. After the initial shock, we understood one simple thing—The mission field in Serbia was huge, and I don’t know how, with whom, when, or where, but we needed to get involved however we could. Before we left back home, we met with the local team in Topola and discussed our desire to come back.
During our tour around the country with Stojce, we met many people and visited many cities, but I want to focus on three areas where the story gets interesting. Backa Topola, Novi Sad, and Novi Pazar.
Backa Topola: This is where Stojce’s local church is located and it is in the Northern part of Serbia, near Hungry.
Novi Sad: Second largest city in Serbia, located about 1 hour north of the capital Belgrade.
Novi Pazar: Southern part of Serbia near Kosovo that is predominantly Muslim. This city has no known evangelical believers.
Every contact, every trip, and every project is a step of faith. At first, I thought that the initial trip would be the biggest step of faith and then things would be clear, and we could move forward with our own understanding, but that was far from reality. I had doubts over and over, but God has been faithful and always gave just enough confirmation to take the next step. So far, I have learned one big lesson — We are not the main characters; God is. All of the stories that I will share convince me over and over again that missions are God’s initiative, and if we take a step of faith, He uses us as a piece of a puzzle in His grand picture.
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