Samo 10

Last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, a few of us missionaries and volunteers from the church spent the mornings putting up advertisements for this event that will take place at 7, tonight (Monday) through Friday in the Bosnian Cultural Center.

In Bosnian, "Samo 10 (or deset)" means "Only Ten." What sparks the curiousity is that the ad fails to elaborate--only ten what? As we've been hanging posters, passers by have stopped us on the streets, asking what Only Ten means, and we've had some fun and let them try a few guesses before telling them that it's actually referring to the laws God gave to Moses for Israel.

Faces inevitably fall in disappointment, and some Bosnian equivalent of, "Oh, that ten," follows, and they mutter and walk away. One guy actually corrected us and said there are only seven laws of God...we figured out later that he had mistaken the ten commandments for the seven deadly sins.

So anyway, every night this week, the Evangelical Church of Sarajevo Pastors Slavko and Sasa will each give a short 15 minute teaching on the ten Commandments, and then.....? Those who are interested will be invited to the church, or to receive more literature and information, and we're hoping that a lot of fruit will come from it.

We don't know who will come or how they will respond, but we are praying for great things to happen this week. Please keep Sarajevo in your thoughts and prayers!

Me, proud of how straight my posters are hanging :)

As you see, no one really cares what gets hung up on the walls downtown...anything goes! Great for us--we don't have to deal with the government for permission

Zeljko (Jel-ko), zealous and in charge

Addicted

I don't know why I'm subjecting my hair to this...it must be so damaged by now, it's hatin' life (notice how my facial expression looks like I wish to hurt small animals?). But once you start highlighting, unless you paint it all brown again, you have to keep going and going and going, as it becomes lighter and lighter and lighter.

I'm caught in a vicious downward spiral of blond and can't fight my way out. I know that one or two more highlightings from now I will make the decision to take on the mall chick look and start letting dark roots rear their unattractive heads, or make everything all one fakey color in an attempt to recapture my former natural color, if I can remember what that is. Or I could just go the Sinead O'Conner way, which I think would make not a few people very unhappy.

I like blond....a lot. But false blond, no matter how lovely it looks, is like an addictive drug that only leads to despair and destruction, or total, platinum blondness, in the end. I am imprisoned by my ever-lightening hair.

Hiking Bjelasnica with the English class

The lone streak

Barren

This is before the actual hiking...we are men of philosophy, not of action

It was hot

Elena and Jan (Yahn) like rocks; don't mess with them

Girls, we are gorgeous

Enisa, getting her sun on

So deal with it, Bekah

I'm having a Just Because day. I love my friends Kevin and Pari, because they coined the term; Just Because days are days when you decide that enough is enough, throw out your schedule, and take time just to be alone and deal with it. This morning I woke up feeling that I needed to scream, and that's never a healthy attitude to bring to a morning prayer meeting at church. Sometimes when I have felt like that, I've gone on anyway, and I realize later that I probably should have stayed away and spared everyone my poison and negativity.

This makes me sound like a wretched person, and I am. I'm going to be totally honest. Sometimes it feels like the only thing redemptive about being in Bosnia is the coffee. I am often frustrated by the lack of morality I see in the mundane: police pulling foreign motorists over and scamming them out of 20 marks, waiters giving incorrect change and then swearing that you gave them a 20 when you really gave them a 50, beggars ceaselessly haranguing you with their stolen sunglasses and perfume while you try to eat lunch...I could go on and on, but this is all every day life here. I signed up for it, but sometimes I feel like I've bitten off way more than I can chew.

Anyway, forgive the complaining; this is reality, though. It always helps me to be real about these things, and to face the fact that it's really hard, and often not rewarding. I think Laura (see Asia and Chocolate) put it best, when she said something along the lines of, "I can't pretend that everything about it [missions] is wonderful..." Something like that. A lot of it is wonderful, but a lot of it feels like crap. That's the truth.

This article gives you a sense of how draining it often is to live in Bosnia. The truth of the matter is that Bosnia seems like a hopeless and forgotten nation, and in many ways it is, but I don't want to paint you a completely black picture. I love Bosnia, and the reason I'm here is because I want to see things change, and I believe they will...but there is a price to pay for anyone who is here and has that desire.

I do NOT consider myself a martyr or a saint because I'm in Bosnia, quite the opposite...often I wonder how in the world I was so blessed to have this opportunity to live in such an amazing country; last weekend I spent the day hiking in the mountains, and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life. But I see now what a huge sacrifice one must make to fight for a fair and strong nation, and after only one year of being in that struggle, I wonder how others have done it.

I am absolutely spoiled rotten. I have an American passport and I could return to the States or go anywhere else in the world and never return to Bosnia. I think I complain more because I know I have freedom and yet God has called me here, and because I am used to all the priveleges and liberties I was born into, but God wants me to give those up, for at least a season. So, in other words, I don't have the right to complain, but I feel so ragged and thin and weary, I need to complain.

My homegroup back in the States was absolutely lovely and sent me a care package recently. You can never know what a comfort marshmallow creme can be. I am sitting here with the jar and the spoon and my laptop, letting the world (or the 7 people who read this) know why I decided I'm at the end of my rope and needed to be completely lazy just because. There it all is, the ugly all exposed and out in the open. It feels wonderful to know that I can feel like the yuckiest scum, and know that I am but for the grace of God.

Please take a Just Because day sometime if you don't already--they're very therapeutic, and they often teach, in wonderful ways, the truth about the desperate wickedness of our hearts aside from Christ. Yuck.