Don’t Get Ready – Be Ready!
As Alan Cutting, International Partnerships and Teams Manager with Samaritan’s Purse International, and member of Earl Soham Baptist Church, makes plans to send five Operation Christmas Child distribution teams out to Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Southern Africa this winter, he reflects on his experiences with a similar team in Serbia last Christmas
“We have been here five years, but we are still at the beginning.” laments Djuric Zvezdan (PHd, Economics) speaking with conviction and with eloquence as he introduces us to his community.
We are at Leshtane, a dingy and informal Kosovan refugee camp on the southern edges of Belgrade. Craggy old ladies with their arms folded stand listening to Djuric, their black skirts being tugged by the grubby hands of their wide eyed grand children while they eagerly await their shoeboxes. Each family lives in a 4m x 3m room. Toilet and washing facilities are shared with 10 families. “We have no hope of going home, but we are without plan in this community. After five years we still only talk about survival.” says Djuric ruefully. “Welcome to life in the 19th century.”
“Don’t get ready – be ready” we’ve been told in the pre-trip training manual. And so once more (as with each of our eight visits) we all individually fight off the emotional exhaustion, embrace the enormous privilege of just being here, take a deep breath, make an inner decision to stay sensitive but upbeat, and give ourselves away with joy once more, in order to ensure that our shoeboxes and simple presentation can bring a little temporary laughter and colour to the bland existence of these innocent victims of politics and war.
Leshtane was just one of eight extraordinary visits the UK distribution team made to give out shoeboxes to children in Serbia, in three life forming days. The first is straight from the airport – to the seemingly deserted little town of Beocin – how still we see thee lie!
Here the final few ochre leaves cling to the trees, and the subtle architectural colours of the Balkans lend themselves naturally to the dusk of the misty autumn day, but the whole town is covered by a light dusting of the gastric grey white fallout of the local cement factory. We turn a corner and there, crowding round a small van, are at least 400 Roma. Let the open air distribution begin! Boy 10-14! Girl 2-4! Happy Christmas! Girl 5-9! God bless you! Somehow in the excitement, just enough order prevails, and miraculously, it seems to us, the little truck yields enough boxes to supply a gift for every child who presses forward.
Next day we’re in Belgrade, where the shocking bomb damage, now more than five years old, hangs ugly and un-repaired as a gross reminder of the world’s hatred and of Serbia’s subsequent economic dilemmas.
First it’s a kindergarten for Roma children in the suburb of Zemun. Then it’s on to a school for children marginalised and way behind in their education due to the gnawing disruptions of political conflict and poverty. Next it’s Belgrade General Hospital – the Children’s Neurological and Cardiology Ward. Here some of the children have a presentation for us. A curvy teenage girl dances to some recorded music. A tiny boy reads a poem. He can’t read, we are told, but has learned it off by heart and recites it while looking at the paper in front of him! Hugs, shoeboxes, tears, photos, singing, laughter, blessings exchanged, and we’re off once more. The Belgrade day ended at Leshtane.
Another day. Another town. We’re up in Novi Sad for our final day. At the 900-pupil Milan Petrovic School we are showered with presents made by the children themselves. “This is not a present for a present,” the principle tells us. “This is just to say we love you.”
At the Veternik Disabled Children and Youth Home (some of the “youths” are well into their thirties, but with a mental age of much less, are equally delighted with their shoeboxes) the children perform a play for us. Going round from room to room of this vocational orphanage, I come across an excited room full of young people with cerebral palsy. With their limited mobility, they need some help opening their boxes. As I fully enter the room, I realise that one girl has been wheeled in her chair to a position out of sight, tucked right behind the open door. Her blank and passive stare leaves me unsure as to whether she actually has any sight or any hearing. Praying that I will not cause her injury or offence, I carefully I take her hand, and gently talk to her. I explain that I am going to help her feel through the gifts in the shoebox in front of her. I cut open the lid of the box, and praise God that among its delights are the most tactile of items, a fluffy purse and a fluffy pencil case. As she caresses these items, a flicker of a smile crosses her face. Just a flicker, but in this environment, a flicker is very special to me. Then we are off again. The children of another orphanage are waiting.
All this in 72 hours in country. Somehow the team also manage to eat, sleep, have three team times, visit two homes, and go to church (where fifteen people responded to the gospel after the team’s pastor preached). “What will you tell your family when you get home?” I ask one team member. “That this was the most amazing three days of my life,” she replies.
Alan Cutting, December 2004