Living in a place as needy as Kosovo, there is so much to do that we sometimes feel that our efforts are like a drop in the ocean. But as Mother Theresa said, “The ocean would be less if that drop were missing.” Six years ago we decided to concentrate our “drop” on a small village in Kosovo—a Serbian enclave of only 600 people where during the war 14 men had been killed in front of their wives and children. Life in this isolated village is still dangerous. Recently two young people were returning to the enclave when their car was sprayed with 30 bullets. Miraculously, they escaped unharmed.
Over the years we have held many inspirational and motivational workshops for the teens and activities for the children. One summer we took the teens to the coast for a 10-day leadership training camp. We aid the village whenever we can. At a book fair, for example, we collected over 100 books for the school library, and last summer we arranged for foreign contractors to donate both the materials and the workers to renovate the school and cultural center.
On a recent visit, the village elder, Zoran, had a special request. He had seen the Lord answer other prayers through us, so now that some of the teen boys would be playing in a football (soccer) league for the first time, he asked if we could try to find football shoes and footballs for their team. After praying with him for those specific needs, we told him that we would see what we could do but that it might take a few days, as it was the weekend.
As we were trying to leave, one of the doors of our van wouldn’t close properly. It took us about 15 minutes to figure out what was wrong, and just as we got it to close we saw a Jeep with Finnish peacekeepers approaching. We have worked with them in the past (they donated new classroom furniture for the renovated school), so I flagged them down to say hello. We talked about the village and its security, and eventually the need for football shoes came up. The peacekeepers suggested that we go to their base’s civilian cooperation office and explain the situation, and they phoned ahead to tell them we were coming.
At the base we were amazed at how quickly the Lord worked things out. The officer in charge authorized a cash allotment for us to buy the soccer shoes, and he personally donated two footballs.
In the nearest larger town, we were shocked at how expensive the shoes were in the first shop we found. After more prayer, going to more shops, and following more leads, we finally located an official Adidas shop where they had all the sizes that were needed. The Lord then touched the heart of the owner to bring the total price down to within the allotted amount. Zoran was thrilled to get genuine Adidas shoes for his young football team, and we were all amazed to see how quickly the Lord had done another small miracle for this poor village.