ESL, Count of Montenegro, & Boy Injured in River

Advertising for Fall English Course
We're just about one week away from the kick-off of Qendra Qiriazi's fall programs. Next Tue. evening our English language (ESL) class for beginners will meet for the first time in the semester. Lacey is spearheading the course, and has put in long hours recently compiling the curriculum and creating marketing material. Practically, ESL is a gateway that brings young folks from all over town into relationship with the Qendra Qiriazi staff and students and into familiarity with servant leadership, the core of our vision. And English also happens to be a vital professional skill, that we happen to know very well! Below are the two posters we made and hung, with help from students, around town.

The Count of Montenegro
On Wed.-Fri. of last week we visited Kosovo's three-year-old neighbor to the West, Montenegro. Our current status in Kosovo is something like "non-resident alien" which means that after 90 consecutive days we need to exit and re-enter the country. Much of the trip was experimental, and we came away wiser, glad to be in Kosovo, but still glad we went!

We took a bus from the Peja station and transferred in Podgorica. Even though the journey was only 70 miles, it took us nearly 7 hours of twisting through the rocky mountainous terrain. Ugh. Thankfully the buses had AC and the roads were reasonably smooth.

In our destination city of Budva, we stayed with a local Montenegrin-Serbian lady that we met at the bus station there. (It's common for locals in Adriatic tourist towns to offer tourists a sort of "bed & breakfast" at cheap prices, and we wanted to try it out!) Lubica was a nice lady who spoke a lot of broken English. For no extra charge at "check in," she read both of our fortunes from our passport numbers... both of us are very lucky. She told us "Saturn is my boss" and we answered that, "God is our boss, and we read his thoughts in the Bible, not in the stars."

Budva is pretty enough to have a calendar made about it, but our trip was nearly ruined by the crush of hedonistic tourists. The highlight of the trip was getting 6 lbs. of fresh figs - Lacey's favorite - and getting her first haircut since moving here! There was also a great beach with rock formations to climb on, sand for laying out and cold, blue-green water for cooling off.



(L) Picture borrowed from: Flickr.com/photos/shrubin . (R) Sunrise over inland Montenegro on the return trip.

Boy in the River with Bleeding Foot
An odd thing happened Sat. afternoon that touched our hearts and seemed to bear spiritual meaning. A small crowd of kids on the bridge (pictured) was pointing and yelling toward the water at a little kid who had cut his foot. As the boy cried and his blood colored the rocks, several adults and kids yelled how he should walk toward the banks so they could help him. Within moments though, most of them would throw up their hands and curse the boy for stupidity because he just kept crying, "It hurts, it hurts!"

The crowd wavered between scorn and pity. I (Landon) stood there facing an ultimatum between the ice cream in my hand and the boy bleeding in the water. Before long, another boy climbed down to help him through the water and over the gravel to the bank, where I lifted him out. I then climbed down to get the the clothes he had left behind, but by the time I was up, the the police had taken him to the hospital. I had to leave them with some homeless Roma guys who seemed to know the boy (possibly a consequence of my lingering too long over the ice cream).

It was a picture of how stuck we can get ourselves in life and of the need for a gracious rescuer. It also reinforced in our minds that the most important event in our day might not be on on our calendars ahead of time!