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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hello there to everyone reading my blog!<\/p>\n
First \u2013 a few words of introduction. My name is Ivan Bel\u00e1ni (or Belanji \u2013 if you want to spell it in Serbian) and I\u00a0am a\u00a022 year old (soon to be 23) student of Evangelical Lutheran theology in Bratislava, Slovakia. \u00a0I\u00a0was born and raised in Vojvodina, a northern province of Serbia; baptized in a Slovak Lutheran church in Serbia (there are quite a lot of Slovaks living in Serbia \u2013 we have our churches, our elementary schools, high schools etc.). I have wonderful parents called Juraj and Vesna, a brother Jurko and a beautiful girlfriend of three years Dada. I just finished my fourth year of studies at the Evangelical Theological School of Comenius University in Bratislava. This is my second time in the USA, second time in this program of Slovak Zion Synod and second time in Reading, PA \u2013 I was here two years ago, in 2013. I got enrolled in the program because I wanted to stay after the summer for a semester at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg \u2013 to which I was accepted to! Yaaay for me! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
So, that\u2019s it for the introduction (if you want to know more about me, feel free to ask!)<\/p>\n
This is my first week in the USA this year. The flight from Vienna do Washington was great but in Washington the flight got a little delayed. But other than that – everything went smoothly.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been staying this first week with Deborah Graf, a deaconess at Trinity Lutheran church in Reading, and her family \u2013 husband Peter and daughter Kathrine (they also have a son Daniel who I have not met). So far it\u2019s been great! Watched a lot of movies (Interstelar; Guardians of the Galaxy; Edge of Tomorrow; Dan in real life; Inside out; and some more).<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t get to do a lot of things during the service or in church yet, since Trinity Lutheran is having their \u2018transition period\u2019. They just elected a new pastor! So I got to see the whole process of electing a new pastor in the ELCA \u2013 got to meet him at Meet&Greet, got to hear his trial sermon and to see the process of voting for a new pastor. So congrats to pastor Alan Wolkenhauer!<\/p>\n
I also got to be at the pastor\u2019s Bible study again (great to see some familiar faces after two years). I loved the texts for my first Sunday in US that we discussed about the Bible Study. It was my favourite (favorite for US readers) text from the Old Testament \u2013 Lamentations 3:22-26.<\/p>\n
This week I also got to visit a pastor\u2019s retreat that was led by a person that converted from Buddhism to Christianity. We did a lot of anti-stress\/anti-anxiety meditations and exercises, which was great. It would be even better if I wasn\u2019t so restless and had problems staying in one place and not moving! But it was a great reminder of the fact that God put so many ways that the body and mind can recover from stress\/bad experiences\/other burdens. I loved the thing he said about what was one of the things that changed after he converted: in Buddhism the goal is to find Nirvana, to experience the inner peace, but in Christianity things like that are just means of acting and loving others, which is the main goal.<\/p>\n
Soooo\u2026 that was pretty much my first week. There were not many things that I was supposed to do, but it was a nice week to relax, to recover from jet lag and get ready for all the things that await me during this summer. Beginning with Wednesday I’m going to stay with Doug Didyoung and his church st. Mark’s Lutheran, where I’ll get to help out more.<\/p>\n
Wish me luck and keep me in your prayers!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello there to everyone reading my blog! First \u2013 a few words of introduction. My name is Ivan Bel\u00e1ni (or Belanji \u2013 if you want to spell it in Serbian) and I\u00a0am a\u00a022 year old (soon to be 23) student of Evangelical Lutheran theology in Bratislava, Slovakia. \u00a0I\u00a0was born and raised in Vojvodina, a northern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americantime","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/slovakzionsynod.org\/sip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}