Mission to Montenegro newsletter

In our morning service, Stan has been preaching through Colossians 3, opening up the blessing of being God’s chosen ones and our responsibility to ‘put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, and longsuffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another. (vs. 12ff) 
 

The Sunday evening Bible Study has been paused for August on account of so many people coming and going, along with less time to prepare because of multiple medical appointments during the week for Stan.  In lieu of a formal gathering, Stan and Peter have used the freed-up time to make pastoral visits with those in town.

Our inaugural "Receiving Believers into Church Membership" on Aug. 2nd was a joyous event,  filled with praise, prayer, testimonies, and commitment to one another to live together as Col. 3 (and other Scriptures) instruct us.   Not everyone who wants to be a member could be there; we look forward to the membership list growing!

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John and Grace Kremer are scheduled to fly into Montenegro on Aug. 27th.   They will stay with us while searching for a suitable home and begin the process to submit paperwork to stay longer than a tourist visa allows.  This timing is perfect as Grace was instrumental in introducing Mr. N (he who is soon-to-be-baptized) to the church when an intern here.  God does all things well!

Please pray for the upcoming Ladies' Mini-Retreat (mid-September) which will be held in the mountains.  Pray for the Lord to guide and inspire and pave the way for the organizers, speakers, attendees. The overarching theme will be a biblical understanding of work.

Please continue to pray for our Stateside visit from mid-October to mid-November.   We are slowly cementing details but have yet to purchase tickets.  Please pray for us as we prepare to minister at churches (Stan) and the Ladies' Conference (Vicki) as well as visit family and schedule medical appointments.
 

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Join us in giving thanks for all the good things the Lord is doing!  May His name be ever more glorified!

We so appreciate your earnest prayers, your sacrificial support, your quick notes and cards, and the blessing of working together for God's name to be exalted here in Montenegro. 

One with you in Christ,

Stan and Vicki Surbatovich

 

This summer we’ve had two families with young babies staying with us.  This brought back to remembrance our early days here in Montenegro with our five children, ranging in age from 5 months to 8 years old. 

As you know from previous snapshots, when we were first settling in, we relied on Stan’s relative Stanojka and our next-door neighbors to watch the children while we hunted down furnishings, took care of documentation, and ran time-consuming errands.  

Later, we often asked our college-aged neighbor Ivana to watch the kiddos.  Sometimes she’d take them back to her house where 3 sets of adult eyes (her+parents) could keep track of them with the added bonus of additional playmates for her niece and nephew who lived there.

These neighbors naturally took care of them the same way as their own flesh-and-blood.  It was a good thing that Miss M was Baby #5, and I had some experience under my belt; otherwise I would have been discouraged in my mothering abilities by some of the different practices bestowed upon our youngest.

For example, chubby babies were deemed to be healthy babies and as a preemie, Miss M was quite petite for her age.  She was small but strong, and our stateside doctor assured us that by the time she was two, she’d be caught up with her peers (and her own potential) size-wise. (Note:  our doctor was right! She did catch-up!).

But those watching her only saw how tiny she was and did their best to plump her up.  They’d feed her every chance they got, and when they offered her a bottle (something I never did much to their consternation), they’d repeatedly dip the nipple in sugar to entice her to drink more, more, more.  

I didn’t understand this infatuation with fat babies until I learned that many people, especially those our ages and older,  and even more particularly those who had grown up in villages, had had first hand experience that fat babies weathered illnesses (without the aid of modern medicine) and scarce food conditions far better than skinny babies. 

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Another example:  Thirty years ago Pampers were not a thing here and babies were diapered with multiple (3+) cloth diapers which made them oddly shaped to my eyes. We had brought Pampers with us and accordingly used them, which made Miss M oddly-shaped to their eyes and prompted our neighbors to earnestly ask ‘If we’d had her hips x-rayed yet?’.  

At first, I wondered if I had understood correctly, and then tried to puzzle out why they were asking me such a thing? I couldn’t think of a single scenario where we’d want such an x-ray ….?  Of course, I astonished them when I replied that we hadn’t, and in fact, none of our kids had ever had their hips x-rayed when a baby.

It turned out the local population experienced higher-than-average hips dysplasia (which I learned was what our US doctors checked when they rotated our babies’ legs at various check-ups).  When medical care was less available here in Montenegro, wearing multiple diapers to keep the legs apart and slightly facing outward was a low-tech preventative.  And the scheduled well-baby check-up X-ray confirmed the success of the preventive measure or the need for surgery.  (I always enjoyed finding out the 'why' behind puzzling practices.)

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Those experiences were of the “Oh, how interesting!  I’m learning something new” variety.  There was one encounter that left me “Aghast—Stunned into Silence.”

I’m sure most of us can readily picture a group of young moms, perhaps gathering after church, standing in a circle, holding their small infants up to their shoulders, patting their babies gently on the back, slightly swaying back and forth as they chat together.  A rather sweet, serene picture of motherhood at its finest.

Naturally I continued such a calming, gentle mothering technique after moving overseas to Montenegro.  Thus, I was quite distraught when a local young Christian man who was visiting us for a few days, came up to me while I was lovingly comforting my precious baby and asked (in English, with some heat and curiosity mixed together):  Why are you striking your baby?!

Striking my baby???!  Stunned into silence with that accusation, it took me more than a few moments to gather my wits and my emotions and begin to process what was said.

How could he even contemplate thinking such a thing?!  Is that what this looked like to the locals?  After quieting my own emotions of distress and outrage, I explained that this was a loving act practiced by millions of parents and should in no way be construed as ‘striking.’  To his credit, this young man accepted my explanation (and could see how comforted Miss M actually was), but it made *me* look around to see how babies were calmed here.  Didn’t everyone pat and calm their baby like this? (Obviously not, but I had missed that little detail!) 

When I started looking, I saw that once babies were strong enough to support their head and neck, they were held facing outward, legs dangling, and jostled up and down vertically.  This was true whether the adult caregiver was standing or sitting.  Babies don’t ‘sit’ on laps here, but rather the grownup holds the baby around the chest and lets the legs dangle down.  Putting babies into a seated position was (and is) very much frowned upon.  (No wonder we shocked a few people when we brought our sleeping baby in her carry-in car seat and left her in it for her nap).

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Parents love their babies all over the world and show it in a variety of ways. Sometimes it was a challenge to accept another’s version of care and love for our children, especially when it was so contrary to our own, but accept we must and did (with God’s gracious help.)