Johnstein!

On our last full day in Kosovo we were able to meet up with the group of kids who have been playing ball for the last couple of years...this is the same group who we met up with on our first trip. Pete and I got to the field a bit early so we just started playing some catch and waited a bit for the kids to shop up. Unfortunately it has been a while since they've played and it was the middle of Ramazan, so the turn out wasn't so great. But the kids who were there were excited to play. The thing is that none of them have their own gear as they share a couple bags of team gear...which of course they were unable to bring along on this day. Fortunately, we had a bag of gloves that we were looking forward to leaving with them. We handed out the gloves and got started. As we were working on the mechanics of throwing, there was a little guy just sitting on one of the steps nearby who really seemed to want to get involved. I walked over to him and asked if he wante...

We were in full "tourist" mode as we drove through the streets of Mitrovice and looking forward to our visit to "THE bridge" , when we saw a sight that made both Pete and I do one of those sitcom doubletakes...and if we had been drinking some water, we definitely would have spit it out in surprise!  There was a little girl on a bike struggling to keep  balance while she held on to her yellow wiffle bat! So...we parked the car and Pete knew that he needed to give this girl a few wiffle balls so she could use the bat for it's intended purpose. Fortunately, we still had a bag of gear in the truck and while we had given away all the hardballs, there were still some wiffle balls. The kids assured us that they knew how the balls and bat were supposed to be used...

There is a city in the north of Kosovo that is essentially divided into a Albanian side and a Serb side. The Serb residents staunchly defend their desire to see Kosovo returned to Serbia and so this city has become a very tense place. Over the last 15 years there have been a  number of fights, riots, etc at a bridge crossing the river which divides this city. It's a Kosovar city fully within the borders of Kosovo. But it is in also in the northern portion of this young nation, so it's got a large Serbian population. Like their home country, the Serbs in Mitrovice refuse to recognize the Kosovar government. Understandably, they desire to remain in their homes. They don't want Albanians anywhere near them. However, they live within the borders of a nation that, though unrecognized by some, isn't gonna suddenly rejoin Serbia. So there's some tension. This is probably the most tense European flash point that most people have never heard of. This city divided by a ...

We expected many challenges when planning this new ministry in Kosovo...scheduling, cultural differences, language; you know, the normal challenges of cross cultural work. Challenge #1 happened before the camp even began. The Director had called our host and told him that he was concerned about the schedule that we had agreed upon...and, to be fair, it was gonna be quite a haul; 9-5 with an hour for lunch (granted the kids weren't all gonna be there for the whole time). So (on the morning of day #1) we sat down and worked out a solution; 9-noon with all the kids together instead of 9-5 with the kids split into two age groups. No problem. Well, not true...at the time we were concerned because the change meant that we would be splitting the entire group of students into 2 rather than 4. We were so worried that our instructor to student ratio would be unmanageable. Did I mention that we made this change mere minutes before we started the camp? I am gonna take this moment t...

A couple of years ago I started meeting with a couple of friends at ICSV for a weekly discipleship/accountability/bible study time. We soon started calling this meeting time "GCF", short for Good Christian Fellowship. The reason behind the name is not important, and really is an inside joke that none of you would find funny anyways...but, I will be referring to it throughout this post so I figured I'd at least give a cursory explanation. I really appreciated this time because it gave us a chance to encourage one another in the Word and share what God was teaching us. This time and these guys is one of the things I was most saddened by leaving behind. Well, turns out that God will still use the GCF guys to encourage each other, even if we are on different continents. I began reading through 1 Thessalonians while we were doing the camp in Hungary...and at the same time, Pete (my colleague with Global Baseball) and I were talking a lot about the challenges, shortfalls, and...

Today's post will be the first in a series of some reflections about our last trip to Kosovo. With the duties of managing this camp and a group of 15+ volunteers, I was never able to post regular blogs as I had hoped...but, here it goes. Saturday, 21 June. This was the first official day of the Kosovo trip, but in reality most of the team of volunteers had already been in Europe for a while. On the Baseball side, the coaching team had already been together for a week since we worked in Hungary for a few days alongside an OM missionary using baseball as his main ministry platform. So we were comfortable. And really, that morning was the first logistical test. We had to get 19 people and 25 bags from 4 different locations in Vienna to the airport by 8:30am. No problem. One call to the taxi service and the first logistical hurdle was easily cleared. Certainly, there were a couple of small issues; extra baggage fees, boarding pass printing issues, a couple people (all the coaches...