Bosnian Bulletin #31
June 14, 2002
Greetings Friends and Family, We are in our last 48 hours in Bosnia and wanted to send a final note from here. These last few weeks have been full of passing information on to Keziah, our MCC replacement and saying our good-byes to the people and places we have come to love.
Our last concert with Pontanima was held on Sunday evening. The church was packed full as always, and in the opening announcements they explained that John and I are leaving after four years in Bosnia and dedicated the concert in part to us. Afterwards there was a reception in the monastery and our colleagues had prepared a speech for us and we, in turn, had a chance to make our speeches to them. It was a very emotional and important moment for us.
Tonight is our farewell party with all of our friends and colleagues. It will give us a chance to say good-bye to many people at once and also to relax and celebrate four wonderful years. No doubt, we will sing Bosnian songs until the wee morning hours!!
We depart from Sarajevo on Sunday, June 16 at 3:30 p.m. A number of our closest friends will be there to see us off. From Sarajevo we will fly to Switzerland to check in at the MCC Europe office (instead of going to Akron) for a couple of days and then fly on to the States. We'll arrive in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at 9:49 p.m. on Wednesday, June 19. We will have a couple of weeks to visit friends and family in South Dakota and attend the wedding of my cousin, Tanya Ortman and Ky Stolzfus and one week later to travel to Kansas City to participate in the wedding of my brother, Kenton & Holly Streff! It will be a good chance to see a lot of people we haven't seen for a long time.
We plan to move to Kansas on the 5th or 6th of July in time to celebrate our 7th anniversary on the 7th! We will be staying in Wes & Deb Bergen's basement through the summer and hope to have a house by the end of summer to move into. Both of us will start work in mid-July.
Please change our e-mail address in your address books to johnkarinkw@yahoo.com. As of tomorrow we will NOT use our jandk@bih.net.ba address.
Finally, we just want to say Thank You for all of the e-mails, letters, thoughts and prayers that you have sent during our four years in Bosnia. It has been an amazing experience. We look forward to reconnecting with all of you and learning about what has happened in your lives in the past four years. Likewise, with time, we hope to share with you about our experiences here in Bosnia. Again, we thank all of you for your support during our MCC term and hope to see you soon.
With love from Sarajevo,
Karin & John
