On Monday I woke up early. There was a kitchen in the church but I couldn't find anything for breakfast. Had a shower and got dressed and went out. Very cold outside and wasn't sure which way to go but headed in towards what I assumed was the town centre. Most of the shops were still closed but close to this huge Greek Orthodox church I found a supermarket. Bought A yogurt, a Twix, a can of coke and a sort of pastry and had that for my breakfast. Healthy or what!
The rest of the guys weighed into the office about a quarter to nine. I had a quick update on the work in Macedonia which seems to be going at its usual speed of flat out with a zillion things happening at once! They are running professional training courses for nurses as a pre- evangelism event, a group of Americans are over and doing a whole "Thanksgiving" event as an outreach including turkeys and pumpkin pie, the whole deal. There are English classes running and an Alpha course. That's on top of the regular church and pastoral work, looking after 20 churches and about 15 "church plants" in homes etc.
I went for lunch to Joan's house, (Joan is a guy, Johannes we might say!) I was served a beautiful risotto and salad. After lunch we headed out to meet a local pastor who is co-ordinating work among the gypsies. It was about an hour's drive and gave me a chance to see the Macedonian countryside in daylight!
We met him in what was described to me as, "the most polluted town in Macedonia!" His name was Dragon and we picked him up in the town square. He took us out of the town and up the side of a hill where there was a small village of (increasingly) narrow streets and (increasingly) ramshackle houses!
He had a Christian worker who was fixing up a house here so that he could live among the Gypsies and evangelise them. The house was a two room affair about the size of a garden shed and he was living here with his wife and baby. He was in the middle of "decorating" when we arrived.
Eventually we were driving down streets with the wing mirrors rubbing against the houses on both sides and at that point we stopped, reversed until we came to a spot wide enough to allow us to open the car doors, and got out.
From there we went on foot climbing higher all the time. By this stage the houses had become shacks patched up with cardboard and plastic sheeting and the paved pathway had petered out.

Amazingly, no matter how bad the shack was, it had a satellite dish on the side, (see photo)! As far as the gypsies are concerned you gotta get your priorities right! We were now on a mud track still climbing upwards. Apparently he had a family
in one of these houses that he was pastoring. Some of the children came to his Sunday school.
We went in and spent a little time with the family and then had to move on as it was starting to get dark and we had another family to visit.
This involved climbing back down the hill and a short car journey to a few more shacks avoiding a pony and cart on the road. Everything out here on the hillside is pitch black!

When we arrived we couldn't get into the house and the man of the house was having a bath. He had got a day's work loading pigskins onto a truck. For a full day's work he had been paid 5 euros.

We had coffee with him (coffee in Macedonia usually means Turkish Coffee especially when with gypsies) I was asked to share something from the Bible using a translator of course and spoke from John 14 about Jesus' great love for us. His daughter was 14 and he was looking for a husband for her as she was now of marriageable age. We prayed with them and left as we had a church meeting to take, at which I was the preacher, (of course!) Found the church and took the meeting and afterwards drove back to Skopje getting in about 10.00pm. Got a chance to do some work on the computer and fell into bed.