Kosova 1, part 3

Sunday, we went to Artur’s church , Fellowship of the Lord’s People. There service was similar to ours at Fellowship Church’s, minus the language difference. I remember there was a man with a very disfigured baby a few rows ahead of us. Apparently, the collection that Sunday was for the baby, who had severe burns, to receive medical treatment.

We went to lunch with one of the younger men in the church (I think he was in high school, but then, most of the church was made up of young people). He was our guide for most of the time. Lunch took several hours, so much so that we didn’t eat dinner.

Monday was supposed to be our first day delivering shoeboxes. The large boxes were filled with the shoeboxes, mostly from Great Britain, and they were stored in the Agape House down the street from the church. A truck took several loads to a local school down the street, and later when we were more organized, we walked over. Jeta and I walked arm in arm (sister-like) and chatted as well as we could. Once we were all at the school, it took a while to get organized again (catching onto the theme?). The plan was for a couple of volunteers (us and YWAM people) to go into each classroom with an interpreter from the church. The volunteers would speak about why we were there and tell them what the boxes were for, then hand out the shoeboxes to the children. It sorta went that way.

The first part was difficult because the interpreters had to keep up with us, but the point got across. The second part was miraculous—to see the children’s eyes open wide and giggle while they opened their boxes was wonderful, even addictive. We all got into the spirit of it all. Isn’t that what’s its all about? The YWAM people put on a show later for the kids. It was a narrative about the Christmas Story. Their “Mary” was sick, so I had to play her—too funny for me. We led them in some cute kiddie songs, too.

The next few days we delivered boxes and introduced ourselves to kids during the day and worked for Campus Crusade at night. Most of the time, the group was split up. We hung out at the church a lot and had some down time in our meeting room and sang songs and prayed. One memory hangs on the most—we were in one of the last schools and I was wandering around while people were in the classrooms. I was drawn to a wall covered in hand-drawn pictures. It was art-therapy. The children had been encouraged to fight their fears by drawing what happened to them during the war. The one that broke my heart was a picture of a house with gun-toting men inside, while the boy figure tries to escape out the window and it met with a gun pointing to his head. Bodies were drawn on the ground. I cannot imagine such horror.