K is for...

Kosova*

I can write a book about this topic. I actually should and then maybe my feelings for the place wouldn't be so bittersweet. But, I'll try to keep this as short as I can.

When NATO bombed Kosova in 1999 and the world was made aware of what was happening there, I remember sitting in front of my TV and for the first time, being moved by something happening outside my world. I was just graduating high school and had my scholarships and funds set up so that I could attend college fairly financially pain-free. I remember watching the news and thinking, "I want to help. Here I am, blessed and free, and there are people being pushed from their homes and being separated from their families." It was the first time I'd ever really been aware of suffering in the world and actually wanted to help.

I went on to school and eventually became involved in the Baptist ministry on campus. We had a high population of International students from the Middle East because of the Petroleum Engineering program. I started becoming interested in Islam and started researching it. I felt like I wanted to spend a summer doing some sort of mission work with Muslims, and I got on the Baptist's International Mission Board website. I entered in that I wanted to work with Muslims, I entered the dates I wanted to go and the budget I had, and guess what opportunity was the first to come up? I quickly signed up and soon was approved to go to Kosova for a 10 week stint teaching English to ethnic Albanians.

The summer of 2001, I got on a plane all by myself and went overseas for the first time in my life. I remember flying into Prishtina and seeing the evidences of NATO's bombing from the plane. My heart instantly broke for the country and the people and my tie to the place was bound. I spent that summer teaching English and making wonderful friendships with some of the coolest people I have ever met. I worked with the children of the neighborhood I lived in teaching them Bible stories and we even put on a play for their parents at the end of the summer of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I cried when I left and promised my friends I would try my hardest to come back.

The next year, I worked hard to be able to return to Kosova the next summer. I did my required internship for my major while I was going to school full-time just because I wanted my summer free of obligation. That year of school was the most difficult ever, but I was focused. God provided, and I soon had the time and the funds to return. I returned as an independent missionary and lived on the balcony of a missionary that was there with the IMB. I quickly found that if you go into the local university and say, "I'm a computer science student from America and I would like to volunteer tutoring or teaching." you are soon snatched up and have more work then you know what to do with. I taught beginner database classes to people through a program at the university that provided the classes free of charge. Many of my English students from the previous year even signed up for the classes. It was, by far, the most fulfilling thing I have ever done. It is still to this day the only time I have felt that my degree was used for something bigger then just myself. I was able to give job skills to people that lived in a country with a unemployment rate that was almost 60%. It blew me away.

Like I said, I could write a book about the people I meet, experiences I had, lessons I've learned. I think about how driven I was. I've never been that determined about anything like that in my life...and have yet to be again. That's how I know it was a God-thing that I went and that it all happened for a reason. Why else would someone sleep on a foam mat on concrete getting bit by bed-bugs every night, or never know when you'll have electricity or water, but yet still be completely happy? My time there shaped me. It changed me forever. My view of God, the world, and people are all different because of it. I made lifelong friends. I made a difference. And I made some big mistakes. I learned about evil and ego and the true depravity of man...in myself. I didn't realize until much later that the reason I was sent there was not so that I would help and change others, but it was so that God would help and change me.

*Please note that the spelling I've chosen to use is not because I'm on one political side or the other, or I'm anti-Serbian. It's just that most of the people I met during my time in Kosova were Albanian and that is how I learned to pronounce and spell it during my time there.