The Gypsy Village

Introduction to the Area
Shutka is a large gypsy area of Skopje (the capital of Macedonia). Skopje has the largest settled gypsy population of any city in Europe (70,000 people). The needs amongstthese people are great. Housing is poor, with even basic amenities very often lacking.

Our Involvement
We have been working in this area since 1999 where we have established a Church and a Pre-School. Recently the church has managed to buy a plot of land that we want to develop into a centre for this community.

The Project – A Centre for the Community
We plan to have various facilities on the site: Pre-School, Sports Facilities, Hall for church meetings, concerts etc. offices and smaller multi-purpose rooms, accommodation for teams and a children’s playground. We have planning permission for all of the above and have started work on the site. The shell of the Hall is complete as well as a security fence, well and septic tank.

Pre-School (“Little Friends”)
Since the Pre-School was established in 1999 we have been using rented accommodation for the project. We would now like to have our own purpose built Pre-School on the community site. This will allow us to develop and expand the Pre-School as well as giving us closer links with the church. The reason we want to expand is that we have seen the tremendous fruit of this work. We are changing the mind-set of many parents who, instead of sending their children out to beg, are seeing the value of sending them to school. The children that are leaving the Pre-School and going into school are getting extremely good results, their teachers are asking them “where did you learn all of these things?” and many more families want to send their children to the Pre-School.

One of the new developments would be
to provide a Feeding Centre in the Pre-School. At present we give the children a
snack but would like to be able to give them a hot meal every day.

This is a huge project that will change the community of Shutka, something that God has put on our hearts, and we need help to accomplish this. Macedonia is a very poor country with extremely high unemployment; we therefore need resources from outside to help us accomplish our dream.

Conferences

There are several conferences that are put on every year in various churches throughout the Middle East and the Balkans. Some of these conferences are for chuches who are under persecution. They cross the border and enjoy a taste of freedom. It’s an amazing opportunity to build up the Body of Christ in these regions (10/40 window).

Lebenon from Tommie Naumann on Vimeo.

Women’s Conference

This year we hosted our first Woman’s Conference in Beirut. It included churches from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. We believe the Lord is doing a great work among these women! We are in the process of planting a Middle East women’s ministry that will be co-led by local pastors wives from these various nations, serving the women throughout all of the mIddle East. Please join us in prayer for this.

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