SHOULDER TO SHOULDER #22 ---- 6/15, 1998
Posted by: root <root@...>
Standing Shoulder To Shoulder With Fellow Soldiers
As We "Fight the Good Fight"
TITLE: "Little Things Mean A Lot"
INTRODUCTORY:
Again, I greet you, my friend, from the incredibly beautiful but
tragically torn country of Croatia on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Jo
Ann and I are concluding our fifth trip, a 15-day ministry at LCI
Ministries' Life Center in the resort town of Crikvenica. Even after
five trips, I had no idea the long history of "big name" vacationers this
region has known. Some of the world's kings, dictators, and prime
ministers have basked within miles, and even yards of where we have slept
and worked.
Yet, just a few miles away, it is a very different scene ---- houses in
rubble, vast fields with no crops but possible land mines and unexploded
mortar shells, complete villages of undamaged homes totally uninhabited
because the owners are afraid to return for fear of reprisals.
It is hard to believe we are leaving in just a few hours to begin our
four day journey home ---- First Monday afternoon to the capital city of
Slovenisa, Ljubljana, where we will spend the night and then leave
Tuesday morning on an all-day train ride through the high Austrian Alps
to Munich with a few hour stopover in Salzburg on the way.
While in Ljubljana, I will be meeting with a Life Center supporter from
England, an English pastor and his wife, and also a Slovenian pastor from
Kober concerning possible future ministry in that country. PLEASE BE IN
PRAYER CONCERNING THIS CRUCIAL MEETING.
After a day of sight seeing in Munich for the team on Wednesday, we leave
mid morning on Thursday to fly direct to Chicago and then on to either
St. Louis or Kansas City. Jo Ann and I will spend Thusday night in
Kansas City, run some errands Friday and then probably head home Friday
evening.
That means we now welcome your letters again, and look forward to hearing
from many of you.
I know many have prayed, and we are so grateful. Already our minds are
filled with so many memories we will never be able to tell them all.
Thanks for lifting us up.
LITTLE THINGS:
Frankly, I aready know I will be unable to adequately articulate what is
in my heart about "little things". First, because I'm not even sure yet
all that I feel or think myself. Second, because it is, ironically,
such a "big" subject.
So ---- let me just plunge in and see where it takes us.
#1. It was a little thing ---- a not-too--big project at the Hope Center
building in the little town of Fuzine' about 20 miles from the Life
Center. Nathan and I were to lay some flooring in a 70-foot
long"storage" floor constructed between the 2nd and 3rd floors last
Tuesday. Because there was less than five feet of clearance, most of our
work was done on our knees. We were finishing up by extending some floor
joists around where the service door to that area was to be installed.
The pieces of 2X4 were short, but very hard. Croatia has no soft woods
like our yellow pine; they use the "real stuff" ---- just a bit harder
than oak and hickory. It had been donated by some equally hard "Brits"
and "Scots" the year before when we were here on an earlier trip. Our
team that year had unloaded thesame lumber from the "lorrie".
At home I can drive a 20# nail in about four or five swings of my hammer.
Here it took more ---- more power and more strokes. The combination led
to a painful memory.
On about the fifth swing, my hammer ricoched off the nail head at post
driver thrust, directly onto another nail ---- the one on my ring finger.
My yell was exceeded only by my pain. I cannot remember a time ever
when I experienced such agony. When I finally opened my eyes, I fully
expected to see my finger tip literally squashed and split, with blood
everywhere.
Though that was not to be the case, I did inflict myself with a
debilitating injury that does not allow me to carry anything, has
resulted in a heavily bandaged and splinted finger, swelling throughout
the finger even though only the tip was hit, a thoroughly black finger
down to the second joint, the loss of a finger nail in the near future,
and the possibility of a fracture at the tip.
Little Things Mean A Lot!
Now you know why there will probably be more than the normal
typographical errors. (Did YOU ever try to use two different typing
methods, one for each hand, at the same time?)
#2. It was a little thing ---- a phone call to report an alleged
accident between Plitvicki and a neighboring town. When it was over,
three Croatian police officers lay dead, ages 35, 27 and 22, killed by
Serb extremists who had set the ambush ---- and the war in Croatia had
begun. From there it spread to Slovenia and then to Bosnia.
As you drive along the highways and roads, the scars on the buildings are
still there ---- if the building still stands. Walls blown in, windows
and doors gone, roofs burned or missing, inhabited buildings still
exhbiting bullet holes from automatic weapon fire.
Nine years later, hundreds of thousands are dead, wounded, or missing.
Four nations are either in shambles (as is Bosnia) or are trying to
rebuild. Troops from numerous countries including the United States find
young men and women risking their lives on foreign soil to help sustain
and preserve the beginnings of a fragile democracy.
And, on many fronts the fighting continues ---- with words, deception,
manipulation, fear, unforgiveness, bitterness, hatred, hopelessness ----
suicide.
When you get close enough to meet the people and talk with them, you can
see, deep in their weary eyes, the fear, pain, and continuing
aprehension. Though the war by and large is gone from the headlines of
the western press, it remains in the memories of a once pastoral people.
My friend, the war is not over, and the suffering is only intensifying.
In the name of Jesus, WE are needed ---- you and I.
Little things mean a lot.
#3. It was a little thing ---- the offer of Turkish coffee, juice, and
cookies. The men were all old, so were many of the women. Other younger
women had perhaps a dozen children, some of them born there and never
having lived in a real house to call their own. There were no younger
men to be seen. Were they at work ---- or dead?
As I sat under the shattered roof of a giant carport at that refugee camp
in Fuzine', my finger throbbing from that hammer strike, the gesture
overwhelmed me. These people have absolutely nothing, have not had a
house of their own to live in for at least five years and perhaps as many
as eight, live with the memories of husbands, sons, and fathers who never
came home from the war, and yet, when we stop by to visit and give them
little gift packages, they offer us some of the most costly possessions
they have ---- coffee and cookies.
Then I learned more. They came from a village in Bosnia that was known
everywhere for its hospitality. I remembered David Manuel mentioning
such a village in his noted book *Bosnia -- Hope In The Ashes*. If you
ever visited that place, you could literally stop at any home in that
village and be offered a cup of coffee, a drink of juice (or something
stronger), a meal ---- even a bed to sleep in ---- for as many days as
needed or desired ---- without exception, conditions, or time limit.
I wondered if such hospitality really still existed on such a scale among
Christians as it did with these Bosnian muslims. I especially wondered
about the Christians in America ---- we are so very comfortable. I'm
sure we would have offered coffee or cookies, but what about a bed? What
about long-term commitments?
Little Things Mean A lot.
#4. It was a little thing ---- they weren't even expecting us. They
didn't even know we were in the country. What would you do if a mini-bus
full of people stopped unexpectedly in front of your little house?
We met Drago and Marina on our very first visit to Croatia. Though our
stay was only a week, they were two of 36 who came to Christ that week.
When we left that 1995 February say, we promised to return. They doubted
us.
We returned ---- it was June, 1996. The Life Center staff knew where
they lived, so we set out to find them.
We did ---- they were shocked. We all cried ---- even macho Bosnian
Drago.
Their story is fascinating. Drago was a Bosnian Catholic ---- an
electrician. Marina was a Muslim. They had two children. They were
happy. They had good neighbors who were friends ---- Croat, Serb,
Muslim, Bosnians ---- and did things together. They trusted each other.
Then the war began. They lived in Kakanja, about 30 miles northwest of
Sarajevo.
Within days their neighbors were enemies. But, who was an enemy to whom?
He's a Bosnian, she a Muslim. How do you choose? Who do you support?
For whom do you fight if called upon?
It was so bad that Drago was afraid to leave Marina at home when he went
to work.
Finally they decided to leave. They ended up in a refugee camp with
several thousand inhabitants, many from their same town. That's where
they lived when we first met.
However, when we returned that second year, they were living down where
they now live.
What had happened?
The Croatian government had to reactivate the military base being used as
a refugee camp for the new I-FOR troops from Germany. Drago, Marina, and
others were given a few hours notice to pack their belongings (what few
hey had didn't take but less than an hour) and board a bus. Hours later
the bus stopped in the middle of the road; the driver told everyone to
get out ---- there were empty houses they could find in the area to move
into.
Drago and Marina searched and found one not too badly damaged. It was
boarded up byt filled with debris and water.
Marina cried.
Drago scavenged through other buildings until he found some basic
furniture and some dishes and cooking utensils. Then he set about trying
to repair the house to make it livable.
Yesterday when we surprised them again, they were in the same house.
When Jo Ann and I got off the bus, Marina cried again ---- So did we ----
and Drago.
When they offered to butcher their prized pig and prepare a meal for the
20 of us, we were so humbled. Because our visit was to be less than an
hour, we settled for Turkish coffee, juice, and cookies ---- the best we
had ever had!
Then we were on our way ---- promising to return again.
Little things mean a lot.
#5. It was a little thing ---- the gesture our guide Zoran made
yesterday whenhe took us to Plitvica Lakes National Park in the area
where the above episode took place, along with the murder of the police
officers.
Even though we paid him to be our guide, he was not obligated to do this.
Zoran had been stationed at a small airfield nearby as part of a
helicopter reconnisance crew. Our driver had been stationed just a mile
east as part of the Croatian 8th Brigade. We had told Zoran we wanted
our team to see some of the damage and the marks of war in order to more
fully understand just how important our ministry had been to those new
found friends from Vukovar we had come to know and love last week.
Suddenly they began talking excitedly to each other. The driver slammed
on the brakes, turned the bus around in the middle of the highway, and
sped back to a spot where the highway was intersected by a tiny dirt road
leading into nowhere. As the breush and weeds closed in tighter and
tighter on the bus, I wondered what unspent weapons of war might be lying
hidden in the brush just feet away.
We passed a large three story building ---- it had been a beautiful place
---- until the war came and a Serbian tank had blown a hole in one end
big enough to drive my Taurus through. I wondered about the family that
had lived there at one time.
When we drove past the house and parked down the road, our guide told us
clearly ---- "Do NOT get off the road!" I wondered more about the
unspent land mines and rockets that may or may not be there.
I was told that when the war began the family who lived there had left
and the 8th Brigade used it as headquarters. Then I wondered about the
men who had been there when the cannon shot exploded through that wall
upon them.
We had been taken there because Zoron wanted us to see what real life did
during the war. Our driver wanted us to see the tanks that had done the
damage ---- and that he and some fellow soldiers had risked their lives
to stop, destroy and burn. Then I wondered about the Serbian sons,
husbands, and fathers who had been in the tanks.
As we walked into the building and up the stairs piled with dirt, gravel
and pieces od wall, we came to the second floor ---- or at least where it
had once been. Standing there I saw the beautiful wrought iron bannister
lying there in a twisted mass. Then I saw them on the floor ---- round
after round of spent shell casings from automatic weapon fire. Team
members weregathering them up as quickly as possible. As they talked
excitedly about their find, the talk subsided, and there was silence.
I looked at the four casings in my hand ---- and was silent, too.
Little things mean a lot.
#6. It was a little thing ---- compared to most mobile weapons of war.
Just a Serbian light weight personnel carrier and support vehicle with
room enough for sight or ten men crammed inside with barely enough room
to sit upright ---- and a 50 calibre machine gun on top.
We had spotted it about 20 mintes later on another road as we we went to
see another village destroyed by hatred. It was hidden in weeds waist
high, hard to see. Xoron jumped out and ran to the burned out and rusted
vehicle. Inside were more spent shell casings, some larger ones, and the
metal bandalera belts for feeding thos bullets into high performance
machine guns that spat out 10,000 rounds a minute ---- so fast that gun
barrels would sometimes melt.
Suddenly Zoron yelled at me: "Bob, here! I have somwthing for you!" The
accelerator pedal of the vehicle clattered before my feet. I didn't pick
it up. I just looked at it ---- and wondered ---- what was the guy like
who drive this little coffin with the giant diesel engine? What was his
family like? Did he survive? Did they ever know how he died, if he did?
Did he hace children? Or a little sister? Did he know Christ as his
Saviour? Was he a believer forced into hellish deeds?
The accelerator pedal is still lying there.
Yet, I am taking it home with me. Though not very large, my mind will
see it for a long time.
Little things mean a lot.
My Friend, everything I have told you is absolutely true, and happened
to me within the past two weeks.
I could tell you more ---- much more.
However, let me instead ask you:
Do you notice the little things?
What do they mean to you?
God specializes in little things ---- axe heads, grains of mustard seed,
widows' mites, little boys' lunches, . . .
They mean a lot to God.
Do they to you?
Your wife's hand that needs a squeeze, your son's searching eyes that
need your presence at his ball game, your own body that needs a nap, your
little congregation that needs to know just how important they really are
to God ---- and to you.
Little things mean a lot ---- don't they.
In Christ's Great Bond of Love,
Bob Tolliver
Copyright June, 1998. All rights reserveds.
Life Unlimited Ministries
Route 1, Box 87AB, Collins, MO 64738
Ph: 417-275-4854. Fax: 417-275-4855
E-mail: [email protected]