Now that I know there are people are reading this blog it makes more sense to keep going.
So far I have explained my original reasons, idiosyncratic though they may seem, for caring about Serbia and the people there.
The problem in 1999, though, was how to communicate this to the Serbs themselves! How could I say “There are good things awaiting you!” in the middle of a depressing dispiriting military defeat without being written off as completely crazy, -or worse still- getting exploited by extremist opinion to underpin some chauvinist position. I found no real solution to this.
In any case, if God has good things in store for the Serbs, why tell me, a Brit living in a completely different part of Europe and having no previous special interest in Serbia? The Serbs need to know it, not me!
So for the most part I simply kept quiet, tried finding out a bit on the internet, perked up when Serbia came on the news, prayed occasionally, and got on with my already busy life.
However, if I met someone who might know something about Serbia, I asked them about it. One person had been taken round Belgrade and been shown various NATO targets. “I sensed a deep resentment in the people who showed me” he said.
But the most useful comment was made more recently: “Your vision ties in with what others have said. Go to Serbia! Talk to people there; hear what they have to say; put some 3-D into your 2-D vision!”
Spurred on by this I began looking into things again, and though I still have not found a chance to visit Serbia, but at least tried visiting by proxy: reading books, following the comments made on various web-sites, and trying to get a picture of Serbian moods, concerns, fears, hopes and aspirations.
B92 s web-page in English (http://www.b92.net/eng) where there are some who even blog in English, has been a particularly useful starting-point. There are also a number of other web-pages in English, for example (www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/) and many others. My vision is not exactly 3-D yet, but thanks to internet it is less 2-D than it was.
It also introduced me to blogging, (still in its infancy 7 years ago) and solved the other problem: how I can tell Serbs the good news:
“God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for you!”
So far I have explained my original reasons, idiosyncratic though they may seem, for caring about Serbia and the people there.
The problem in 1999, though, was how to communicate this to the Serbs themselves! How could I say “There are good things awaiting you!” in the middle of a depressing dispiriting military defeat without being written off as completely crazy, -or worse still- getting exploited by extremist opinion to underpin some chauvinist position. I found no real solution to this.
In any case, if God has good things in store for the Serbs, why tell me, a Brit living in a completely different part of Europe and having no previous special interest in Serbia? The Serbs need to know it, not me!
So for the most part I simply kept quiet, tried finding out a bit on the internet, perked up when Serbia came on the news, prayed occasionally, and got on with my already busy life.
However, if I met someone who might know something about Serbia, I asked them about it. One person had been taken round Belgrade and been shown various NATO targets. “I sensed a deep resentment in the people who showed me” he said.
But the most useful comment was made more recently: “Your vision ties in with what others have said. Go to Serbia! Talk to people there; hear what they have to say; put some 3-D into your 2-D vision!”
Spurred on by this I began looking into things again, and though I still have not found a chance to visit Serbia, but at least tried visiting by proxy: reading books, following the comments made on various web-sites, and trying to get a picture of Serbian moods, concerns, fears, hopes and aspirations.
B92 s web-page in English (http://www.b92.net/eng) where there are some who even blog in English, has been a particularly useful starting-point. There are also a number of other web-pages in English, for example (www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/) and many others. My vision is not exactly 3-D yet, but thanks to internet it is less 2-D than it was.
It also introduced me to blogging, (still in its infancy 7 years ago) and solved the other problem: how I can tell Serbs the good news:
“God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for you!”
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