Bosnian Bulletin #11

September 25, 1999

Greetings everyone!

Summer is over and fall is just around the corner. Here in Sarajevo, people are returning from their summer vacations (usually quite lengthy), the hottest days seem to be over, and the school year is starting. It's been two months since we last wrote. I had been writing every month, but judging by the dwindling responses we're receiving, we've determined you're all either very busy during the summer, or you're tiring of our updates! Please let us know if you'd l like to be removed from our list -we won't be offended. At any rate, I will try to keep it short this time!

August was a busy month of travel for us beginning with MCC summer retreat on the island of Texel just off the coast of Netherlands. It was a wonderful week of fellowshipping with fellow MCC Europe (including Former Soviet Union) workers, riding our rented bicycles around the island, playing in the North Sea, singing hymns (during worship times and around a late night campfire), an MCC Coffeehouse with our hosts playing accordion and singing Dutch folksongs, and a day trip to Amsterdam (boat tour through the canals) and Haarlem (tour of a "hidden" Mennonite church and the Corrie Ten Boom house).

It was so good to spend time with people that understand what we're doing (and why we're doing it!). It was also good to spend time with people that are genuinely interested in our lives -including work, social, spiritual, emotional, etc. We really value the opportunity to hear about other MCCers' projects, struggles, inspirations and ideas.

Following retreat, John and I had the opportunity to do a little traveling on our own. We spent the first couple of days in the Netherlands: visiting the monument to Menno Simons in Friesland (a favorite area for us), staying in "Mennonite Your Way" homes, enjoying the beautiful Friesland countryside, a tour of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, and a visit with my former Freeman Academy foreign exchange classmate, Shirley Bakkeran in Rotterdam. That was very special to me (and her!) and a wonderful opportunity to renew our friendship, as adults.

Next, we spent a few days in Germany visiting our friend, Thomas Wegner (who we know from our days at Bethel College) and his wife, Susanne. They showed us around Wuppertal and we had fun visiting with them and relaxing in their hospitality. John and Thomas shared quite a few laughs at old memories!

Then we visited Dick and Dorothy Rempel who had been John's pastor at Eden Mennonite (Chilliwack, BC) during his teenage years. They're working with Aussiedler from Russia/Ukraine and the Berlin Mennonite Church. Dick and Dorothy took us around the city, all of which was made more interesting with the Rempels' stories -Dick's memories of being an "enthusiastic Hitler youth" and the ensuing war, etc. We enjoyed evenings with them -visiting about John's home community and about life overseas!

On the way home, we spent two nights in the beautiful, old city of Prague, Czech Republic (John's first time there). We spent most of our time walking around the old city square, the Charles Bridge, the Prague Castle and Wenceslas (Vaclavske) Square. One of our favorite cities in Europe (so far!)

The whole 2 1/2 weeks were very enjoyable, except for a bad cold John had during retreat, which he generously passed on to me in Germany! We returned to Sarajevo tired, but renewed in a different way. It was so good for us to take a break from our work here. By the time we came back, we were ready to be "home". We'd missed our Sarajevo.

The next couple of weeks were very busy trying to get caught up on correspondence (fra Ivo had also been gone for a month in Germany, so the office had been closed). Pontanima (the inter-religious choir that is a project of Face to Face) began rehearsing three times a week in preparation for a short tour in Croatia and Italy. We also worked on the final editing of the text insert to Pontanima's first CD. The CD is finished and while we're not pleased with the quality (the mixing or our singing!) we are happy to have produced this symbol of inter-religious dialogue which we have put much time and energy into. The CD will be available to purchase for $10 US.

And as we mentioned, we did go on a 10-day tour through Croatia and Italy. The Italy portion of the trip was supposed to be sponsored and organized by a small Italian organization (with an office in Sarajevo) but was so DIS-organized, that that portion of the trip was a disaster!! To be brief, the sleeping conditions were atrocious (usually not collapsing into bed until 3 -4 in the morning), there wasn't enough money for food (so we spent much of the trip feeling hungry), and our choir members didn't not handle the adverse conditions very gracefully (John and I got a lot of practice mediating!!)

One of my most vivid memories from the trip is of crawling into a bed, fully-clothed (there was no heat in this apparently abandoned old building) with an old curtain for a sheet and my towel over the dusty, old pillow I'd found, at 4 am. We had been awake for over 27 hours, driven across Italy, wandered through some ocean side town (without swimsuits for the ocean) for several hours with nothing to do, no money and rapidly dehydrating, eaten only one meal, gotten lost with our bus, given a concert for 40 people in an old movie theatre ,and after arriving at the abandoned old building to sleep, our group came unglued and protested, argued and cried until we were able to hold a group meeting to determine if we would cancel the rest of the trip! That was day four of a 10 day trip! And believe it or not, things went downhill from there! (with the notable exception of our concerts which went remarkably well despite everything -including two amazing performances in St. Lorenzo's Basilica in Milan). If you'd like the blow-by-blow account, let us know and we'll send it to you.

Since recovering from the Italy tour, we have again been busy in the office with a wide variety of things. Sometimes our daily work seems so miscellaneous, that it's difficult to describe what we actually do! It's really different everyday. Overall, we try to keep the Face to Face Inter-religious Service office running and focus on building relationships as a means of peacemaking. If you're interested in some of the specific things that we're working on, let us know.

Other than that, life in Sarajevo is good to us. We'd like to find a new language teacher (there are no courses beyond the most basic level), but aren't having much luck. We've successfully made the Bosnian favorite, pita (very thin layers of dough filled with cheese or potatoes or meat or spinach)! We often meet up with friends on the street and find ourselves needing to go for coffee (how very Bosnian!!). And we're still open to having you as our guests!!!

Hope to hear from all of you!

God's love and peace,

Karin & John

John & Karin Kaufman Wall
Interreligious Service
Splitska 39
71000 Sarajevo
Bosnia-Herzegovina
387 71 207 860 (home)
387 71 442 468 (office)
jandk@bih.net.ba (personal)
ociuoci@bih.net.ba (office)

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