After a week of meetings, a van was hired and off we went on a road trip from Sarajevo to Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina. What a beautiful country…
Sarajevo (it was the coldest I’ve been since my years at seminary in Chicago 35 years ago)
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| “Beating swords into ploughshares” – and now beating bullets into pens. |
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| “A very big pope and a very little Jesus” |
The Road to Mostar (it was night-time – and so there are no photos!)
No, wait, we stopped at Slavko’s favourite place for his favourite lamb. I have a photo to prove it. Here are Sanja (Slavko’s wife) and Ruth, from our leadership team, about to enjoy their plate of lamb together.
“Slavko, I know you like lamb a lot – but do you like seafood?”
“Yes, I do – as long as you throw the lamb into the ocean first.”
Mostar (Slavko and Sanja’s home city, famous for its 400 year old Old Bridge)
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| At home in Mostar with Slavko and Sanja. I daren’t say what I said to get this response! |
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| Agreed. However “Didn’t Know” is what annoys me about me. With media fog, bias and self-interest, it is so hard to get knowledge in a timely and accurate way. As Christians looking to express solidarity with brothers and sisters in an information-age, we gotta do better. I am trying to be more attuned to groups like Open Doors. |
Mostar is the city that was damaged the most during the war in the 1990s – and the Old Bridge was destroyed (and only rebuilt in 2004). Here is footage of that sad day when it was destroyed, exactly four years after the Berlin Wall came down.
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| Blagaj, near Mostar, a sacred place for Muslims – with water flooding out from under that rock. |
Mostar to Sarajevo (it was early morning, with all photos taken from a moving car, as we needed to get to church on time in Sarajevo).
nice chatting
Paul
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
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