The first night I spent in Bosnia was up in the mountains where the 1984 winter Olympic games were held. It was a sight for sore eyes! It was about 40 degrees, there were pine trees everywhere, and it reminded me so much of Colorado. Coming from Asia it felt like we were in the frozen tundra. I even got to use the sweatshirt I brought! An added bonus is that Bosnia has delicious meat and cheese EVERYWHERE!! It was awesome! For ministry we had our Ask The Lord (or ATL) month, which means that we did not have any assigned ministry to help with and were given the freedom to ask God where He wanted us to go. We even prayed over the neighboring countries to see if we felt like God wanted us to stay in Bosnia the whole time or move around. We ended up staying in Bosnia for a little over a week and we did cafe/park bench ministry, and we also got to learn a lot about the history and culture. We would sit by ourselves and pray for the city and the people that walked by. My favorite thing to do was to sit on a bench by a busy bus station and pray that God would send someone that needed a touch from Him to sit next to me.
It was quite the challenge to stay focused in prayer, and sometimes I would sit for almost an hour before someone sat next to me. But over time that spiritual muscle has gotten stronger, and I got to have some really cool conversations with people. I had a Muslim high school student sit next to me while he was waiting for his bus and he was so excited just to talk and ask questions. We had a really good conversation and it was so refreshing to be able to talk about lots of different things while completely respecting each other’s beliefs. Another girl was a college student and she asked why I was in Bosnia, and I told her about the race and what I was doing before I left, and we started talking about animals and swapping pictures and we had so much fun that she almost missed her bus! I also had a lot of elderly people that would come sit next to me. Usually they did not speak very much English, but we were able to introduce ourselves and I would say where I was from and then we would exchange pictures of our families. This one elderly man literally did not speak any English, but he wanted so badly to talk to me and he talked for at least ten minutes in Bosnian. I stayed engaged and listened intently and he really appreciated it. It reminded me how sometimes people just really need to talk. They don’t always need me to have all of the right answers; they just need to know that someone cares. I learned that a lot of Bosnians feel forgotten by the rest of the world and even their own government.
The Bosnian War took place from 1992, just a year before I was born, to 1995. The city of Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and is also called the Jerusalem of Europe, because they have people of many different religions that all live together in harmony. In the old town area of Sarajevo there is a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic cathedral, and an Orthodox Church. Sarajevo and other major Bosnian cities were under attack for three years and it is estimated that 100,000 people died in the war, but they still haven’t found a lot of the bodies. The UN agreed that there would be a safe zone for civilians up in the mountains of Bosnia in a town called Srebrenica. So they sent all of the people from the city up there, but the Serbian army ended up bombing the civilians. All of this took place just 26 years ago! As I looked around the city of Sarajevo I could see building after building that was damaged from bombs and bullets in the war, and these buildings serve as a permanent reminder of the horrors that the Bosnian people lived through.
With all this history, the country is very much on edge and everyone is concerned that there will be another war. The people are friendly, but there is still a deep level of pain from suffering the loss of family members, some of whose bodies were never found. I left Bosnia two months ago now, and I really didn’t want to write about it because it was so sad, but these people need to know that they are not forgotten. But even more importantly, the Bosnians need prayer. Please join me in praying for peace in the Balkans, a political transformation where the people feel like they are being represented well (they currently have three presidents), that the Christians would have courage to share their faith, and that the church would grow.
I’m thankful for the time I got to spend in Bosnia and all the people I got to meet. I know for sure that I will never forget them.
In Him,
Heidi
