Mission to Montenegro newsletter

As hinted at above, we have many happenings and events on the short and long-term horizon and are preparing for them now:

• The monthly Ladies’ Brunch outreach is this coming Saturday, March 22.
• The children are continuing to progress through the Christmas outreach follow-up.
• We are hosting a UCCF (Christian British) team for Student Outreach beginning March 29. They’ll be here for a week.
• Our church will be the hosts for the Once-a-Month Fasting Prayer Meeting (evangelical churches participate as they are able) on March 29 as well. The purpose of this gathering is to pray for Montenegro as one united body and for any special needs a church might have. We finish this time of prayer and fasting with a host-provided (that will be us!) light meal.
• An Evangelistic Service on March 30 followed by our Fellowship (Potluck) Lunch.
• Our Easter Celebration (April 20—Orthodox and Western dates match this year!)
• Two TBD outreaches in May—more details as they are confirmed (or determined that now is not the time)
• A major Pro-life Conference is scheduled to take place in Nikšić in early June. We met with the organizer today, so this is still in the very early stages of planning. Vicki’s Snapshot (below) will expand on this a bit.
• Camp Monty Sports Outreach in July
• Anticipated arrival of John and Grace Kremer in August, new missionaries here in Nikšić.
• Mini-Furlough (to States) in October
• Plus all the usual comings and goings of families and individuals.

Please pray for these events—that the seeds planted, sown, and watered would bear fruit unto the Lord.

Please pray that those involved in all these events would stand firm despite hindrances and spiritual attacks.

Please pray for the continued unity of the local churches to advance the gospel and God’s kingdom here in Montenegro. The enemy ever seeks to divide us.

Stan and Vicki Surbatovich

Inspired by a recent question asked by a good friend, I had every intention of writing about the Wild Beauty of Montenegro. We can take for granted the blessings of our local environment, and I realized I haven’t shared much about our times out and about in nature here. I can confirm that Wild Beauty is 100% accurate!

Official slogan and logo.

However, after our meet-up with Svetlana who is organizing the upcoming Pro-life Conference on behalf of the Balkan Network for Life, I wanted to use my Snapshot to picture for you the difficult, ugly, heartbreaking subject of abortion here in Montenegro. So, be forewarned that this will not leave you smiling but grieved and prayerful.

Before I get into some grim facts, I want to make clear that Montenegrins are not anti-child. When people find out that we have five children, we are routinely congratulated with “Bravo! How wonderful!” To aid parents in providing necessities, the government pays a “Universal child allowance” for a number of years which is a real help for most families. Children are often indulged (maybe overindulged!) by loving family members.

There is no sense of “children are a nuisance,” but rather they are seen as something wonderful, the future. Which makes the fact that abortion is a given rather puzzling. This flies in the face of the fact that 70+% of Montenegrin adults claim to be Orthodox, yet Orthodox churches are staunchly anti-abortion by doctrine.

Truly, the notion of abortion is not controversial here—it doesn’t come up for political debate— it doesn’t define a political party. People don’t think abortion is some great thing but rather a valid option, especially when facing tough circumstances.

So what does this look like in reality? For approximately half the young couples who get married, the wedding date is determined by when the baby is due. Obviously not every out-of-wedlock pregnancy ends with marriage, so those pregnancies end with an abortion; there are very few unwed mothers here. Single mothers post-divorce, yes; never married mothers, no.

Any woman going for a prenatal check-up is asked if she wants to keep the pregnancy going—this is true for married women as well. In fact, married women are the largest demographic choosing to end a pregnancy. Perhaps the pregnancy was unplanned. There is definite pressure to choose abortion if testing suggests abnormalities. Some families choose to not keep the pregnancy for fear of not being able to provide for a child when finances and daily living are already an ongoing struggle.

Sadly, Montenegro ranks amongst the top ten nations in the world for sex-selective abortions because the culture values boys more highly than girls. The problem is so pervasive and the consequences so troubling that the government has made it illegal and even ran a campaign against selective abortion of girls (but not abortion in general). The problem still persists.

#Unwanted. It is the name of many girls in our Montenegro

To get a feeling for the size of the problem, I asked the organizer of the upcoming conference what she knew of the statistics for MNE. As she put it, reported abortions (ie. at a public hospital or clinic) for our small country (600,000+ people) are twice the number of reported abortions in Macedonia (with three times the population). The suspected number of actual abortions is 5-10 times higher because private clinics don’t have to provide any details. This is tragic.

The upcoming conference ("Together for Life - the Next Chapter”) is the result of *many* years of prayer for Montenegro, especially by those involved in the Balkan Network for Life, who deeply understand the political, social, and cultural challenges of the nation.

Please pray for:

• the organizers (especially Svetlana),
• the speakers (from various Balkan countries, other European nations, the US),
• funds to allow as many people as possible to attend (est. cost: $20,000)
• Stan as he prepares a devotional of the necessity of the Gospel in pro-life ministry.
• protection from our adversaries (human and spiritual),
• many Montenegrins to hear these messages of life via conference and media opportunities.