Our plan was never to stay in Serbia for that long… but we’re learning that having flexible plans is the best way of life when you’ve got a motorhome. We’d found that we could be useful in Ruma… so we stayed there for a few days longer than planned. We found that we could be useful in our next destination (Belgrade Bible School), so we stayed there for a few days longer than planned too!

With our move from Ruma came the first illness of the trip; I had a spectacular bout of man flu, with lack of energy, blocked nose, hacking cough… yet still we were welcomed with open arms at the Belgrade Bible School. It soon transpired though that we weren’t the only guests there; Howel Jones, a visiting teacher from Wales arrived soon after us, bringing wisdom, gentleness and welsh cakes! He was followed shortly by rather more unwelcome guests though… snow and ice!

When it came to clearing 4 inches of snow from the roof of Bertha, we realised our attempt to out-run the cold weather had been in vain. After the one day of snowfall, the temperature remained low and whilst we could warm Bertha during the day, at night the mercury plummeted. I think -7 degrees was the coldest it got outside, which corresponded to an internal temperature of -2 when we woke one morning. Inside our sleeping bag, with a duvet on top, we’ve actually been really quite snug, but you realise that you’re living life on the edge slightly when you’re scraping ice off the inside of the windows in the morning! However, it has been really beautiful in the wintery conditions too!

Once we had arrived and greeted people at the Bible School, we had a bit of a skills audit session with Sladjan, who runs the school with his wife, Jaroslava. We’d said when we set off from England that when we arrived at a project, we would serve in any way we could. At the Bible School, this took the form of me working to re-platform their website from Joomla to WordPress (a fun task for a multi-lingual site!). Meanwhile, Kiri set to work on multiple projects, including designing the Christmas card for the school, creating illustrations of Ezekiel 1 to help in teaching sessions, moving half the library and designing their latest newsletter. Note to self: when taking pictures of students in the snow, it might seem like a good idea to get them to throw snowballs at you… it’s not!

We’ve once again been overwhelmed by the Serbian hospitality here; everyone is so willing to give and we have eaten so well, that we might take Bertha over her GVW rating! Whilst we’ve been sleeping in Bertha, we’ve been joining the students for their daily morning prayer meetings and eating all of our meals with them. This has been a great chance to get to know some of them; they’re such a fantastic group of people. We can’t quite keep up with them when it comes to consuming bread though; it seems to be eaten at every meal in vast quantities… maybe we need to go into training!

A close subject to bread… beard (well, nearly!). One positive about being at the bible school was that it had mains electricity, so I was finally able to shave my beard, having got to the stage where I looked like Fagin!

After just under 2 weeks, we got to the stage where we had offered nearly all we had to offer; the graphic design and website work was complete, so we offered a cup of tea in Bertha to the staff. They had gone out of their way so many times for us during our stay and we really felt part of the team, so wanted to offer them something in return.

Sadly, that signalled the end of our stay at the Bible School; much as we didn’t want to leave, the weather was beginning to force our hand. So, on a cold and icy Thursday morning, we started Bertha up (first time!) and off we headed in search of warmer climes.