Yours in Christ,

Roni (and Kingsley and the gang)

Dear partners in prayer,

Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Šmartno ob Paki. Our family visited their church service last Sunday and Kingsley preached. Their pastor is Jovan who badly injured his head in a fall last year. Thank you for your prayers for him. Please keep praying. He is slowly recovering. He can now walk, eat and talk and is now in a rehabilitation centre in Ljubljana for a number of months to improve his physical dexterity. This small church was heavily dependant on Jovan for leadership and Bible teaching and has been reliant on guest preachers for the last few months since Jovan’s accident.

We learnt that they have not been meeting for Bible study since Jovan’s accident and on Sunday Kingsley offered to lead a Bible study there once a fortnight for a season. They were keen to meet for Bible study and so Kingsley will be starting this week (Thursday night). He will start a series on 1 Peter.

Yours in Christ,

Kingsley and Veronica Box

Dear praying friends,

After a month of being back home in Maribor, we are slowly settling back into our life and routine here. Some of the groups we were involved in with our church and with students have waned or were in recess over the time we were away. There are also other opportunities and areas of need that we can see around us (starting a kids club for evangelising our children’s friends, helping the church in Smartno ob Paki). We are currently thinking and praying about which things would be best for us to channel our energies into.

Please pray with us:

- that God will give us wisdom as we make decisions as to which activities to spend time on.

- that God will give us opportunities to teach his Word and to train Slovenes in how to more faithfully teach his word.

- pray that God will lead us to students willing to look at his Word.

- for his Spirit to work in people as they read His Word.

We thank God for your prayers for his work in Slovenia,

Kingsley and Veronica Box

Dear partners in prayer,

Hello from cold and dark Maribor! I am writing to you on the shortest day of the year, which is a bit of a relief, because from now on at least the days are getting longer! At the moment it is dark at 4.30pm and light again after 7.30am, which is a bit depressing. Snow arrived this last week but there wasn’t heaps and it is slowly disappearing or turning to ice so unless it snows again we may not have a white Christmas as such. We arrived safely back in Maribor and have now adjusted to the new time zone. Our bodies are still making the adjustment to the weather though - after six months in Australia of being almost sickness free, we have come down with colds this week. (We were expecting that though…)

We are still trying to find our feet here and get our life worked out again. We have to work out which things to get back into and which things are better not spending time on. Pray for wisdom in knowing how best to serve God with our time.

We had the student couple we have gotten to know better around for dinner on Sunday night. It was good to see them, and we hope to continue to get to know them and their family better - they are keen for us to join one of their family gatherings in the New Year again. They are not really studying anymore, as with a lot of the students that came to Kingsley’s group last year. Kingsley is hoping to start up another group after the winter break - probably late February. Pray that some students might come back, that we can contact some more students and that Kingsley can have some good contact with students in the next couple of months before it starts.

The contract on our apartment finishes at the end of February, so we have started looking around at what else is available in Maribor. (We are currently in a 2 bedroom apartment and on the 2nd floor with no lift, which means Kingsley can’t have his Bible study at our place - the older ladies can’t handle the stairs.) There aren’t many three bedroom apartments or houses around in Maribor - four or five in total. Pray that God will give us wisdom about whether to move and which things we should prioritise in a house/apartment.

Kingsley will be preaching in Smartno ob Paki on Sunday 1st January. He is preaching on 1 Cor 15. Please pray that God will give him the right words and that he might preach faithfully. Pray that God will help Kingsley as he talks with the church about whether he can help them more regularly while Jovan is recovering. Please continue to pray for Jovan. He has shown some improvement in recent weeks and was even allowed to go home for a couple of days last weekend, but now has developed a fever and an infection.

The boys are settling back into school okay. Zac and Sam’s friends were all very excited to see them again. Timothy started preschool this week and is finding it hard to remember his Slovene. It is also a bit harder for him because he is starting in a new group - he feels like the other children don’t play with him. His Slovene will come back to him, but it will take a few weeks. Please pray for all of the boys as they get used to school and preschool again in Slovenia.

Tomorrow Kingsley and Zac will be attending a funeral for a boy who was in Zac’s year at his school. Jakob had leukemia and died last week. His family is not Christian, but his father has been attending the Baptist church for a number of months now. Their extended family and friends were not very visibly supportive and didn’t really visit Jakob in hospital, especially towards the end, but our American friends Randy and Joan from the Baptist church have been giving them lots of support and visiting him in hospital. Randy says Jakob trusted Jesus and was not afraid to die, so he is now with Jesus, which is great. Please pray for his family and friends, that they might be challenged by Randy’s message at the funeral and that God might be glorified in this boy’s death.

JOVAN IS AWAKE - PRAISE GOD!

Dear praying friends,

We have just returned from a couple of weeks’ holidays and had a lovely break together as a family. We are now gearing up for visits to a few more churches before we head back to Slovenia in early December.

Please continue to pray for Jovan (pronounced Yo-varn), the leader of a small Brethren church in central Slovenia. He fell from a ladder a number of weeks ago and hit his head on a concrete path. Doctors have a number of times given him little hope of recovering. We are very thankful to God to be able to report that he has woken from the coma and is responding (non-verbally) to instructions. He can move his right-hand side at the moment.

Thank God for keeping Jovan alive and bringing him this far.

Please continue to pray for him and for his wife and family as he inevitably has months of rehabilitation in front of him and it is already at times overwhelming for him and his wife.

Thank God for the Christian brothers who are preaching in his church in his absence and pray his church will be strengthened and grow through this time.

Our program for the next seven weeks:

Oct 23rd - 28th Engadine Anglican church

Oct 30th Katoomba Brethren Assembly

Nov 5th Picnic with the Boxes

Nov 13th - 18th Christ Church Bexley

Nov 20th - 25th Earlwood Anglican church

Dec 3rd - 4th AFES National Training Event

Dec 5th Commissioning

Dec 8th Depart for Slovenia

Two events for your diary (if you live in Sydney):

If you would like to catch up with us before we head back to Slovenia, we invite you to come and picnic with us at Blaxland Riverside Park, Jamieson St, Newington, on Saturday 5th November. We will be there from 3pm and will aim to have some dinner at around 6pm. Please bring your own picnic dinner (bbqs are available). The park is quite large, so please give Kingsley a call when you arrive on 0421 387 370, so we can tell you where to find us.

On Monday 5th December we are holding our commissioning service at Village Church in Annandale. We would love you to come to send us off for our next tour of missionary work. Details on the attached invitation.

Thank you so much for your support and prayers,

Kingsley & Veronica Box

Dear praying friends,

Hello! We are currently packing to head on holidays today, having arrived back from Camp Milimani on Friday and spending the weekend trying to wash and dry clothes (not the best weather for it). I thought I would send a quick update to let you know what we are up to and how we are faring before we disappear for a couple of weeks. We had a fun time at Milimani - all of our children were occupied for the whole week. Zac and Sam were campers and enjoyed the week’s program. Tim managed to get himself involved in almost all of the program and was looked after by some considerate Year 6 boys. I have attached a photo.

The news about Jovan fluctuates greatly. It appeared he was going to die a couple of weeks ago, but then the pressure relieved somewhat when we heard his body was functioning normally. Yesterday we received news that he was in a natural coma but that he was in a vegetative state. This morning we heard that he tried yesterday to open his eyes and that he was answering questions without speaking but forming yes/no with his lips. Pray that he might still be healed, pray for his family (his eldest son has actually turned back to God during this last year) and especially pray that God will care for his church in Smartno ob Paki, which has been very dependent on Jovan - there are only a couple of other men in the church and they have both become Christians in the last year. Pray also for wisdom for us as we consider how we can better support this church when we return to Slovenia.

We thank you for your continuing prayers and support.

love in Christ,

Kingsley, Veronica, Zac, Sam, Tim and Sophie.

Dear partners in prayer,

We would appreciate your continued prayers for our friend Jovan, who had a fall from a ladder a few weeks ago. We have received word that there has been no significant improvement in the swelling in the injured area of his brain and that it is possible he will continue in the artificial coma for quite some time. Thank God that the church has received offers of help with preaching. Pray that God will strengthen his church in Smartno ob Paki in this time of hardship.

Our timetable for the coming weeks:

15th September  Hunter Bible Church, Newcastle

18th - 23rd September  Annandale Village Church

26th - 30th September  Camp Milimani, Katoomba

1st - 2nd October  Mission Minded Network Conference

3rd - 17th October  Holidays

Thank you for your prayers,

Kingsley & Veronica Box

Dear partners in prayer,

Earlier this week we asked you to pray for Jovan (pronounced Yovan), the pastor of the other Brethren church in Slovenia, who fell from a ladder and injured his head. He was put into an artificial coma to allow his brain swelling to reduce. The skull isn’t fractured and his internal organs are functioning normally. They are planning to keep Jovan in the coma for another week to allow total rest. They can’t tell at this stage how much damage has been done to his brain.

Please continue to pray that God will heal him and for his family as they wait.

Kingsley & Veronica Box

Dear partners in the gospel of hope,

We just received news that Jovan Stupar (pronounced Yovan), pastor of the brethren church in Smartno ob Paki, has fallen from a ladder and badly injured his head. He is currently in a coma on life support in a hospital in Ljubljana. Please urgently pray to God for mercy on him, that he would rescue him from death. Pray for his wife Martha, children and grandchildren. God has used this man greatly in Slovenia. Pray that he would grant him more time to build His church in Slovenia. Pray for all who know him to put their trust in God’s goodness and sovereignty at this time.

Love in Jesus,

Kingsley and Veronica