NGU goes on mission: Spreading the gospel in Kosovo
Photo courtesy of Besart Ademi on Unsplash
C.J. Eldridge, News and Features Editor
Over spring break, NGU students and staff headed overseas to the European country of Kosovo, impacting lives through their week-long mission trip.
Kosovo is 90% Muslim with a population skewing younger in age. In the 1990s, Serbia attempted to take over the country, believing it to be theirs, leading to the death of many Kosovars in an attempt to ethnically cleanse the nation.
It is a war torn place. Britannica provides an article that goes into the conflict’s history here.
NGU student Esperanza Williams was one of around 15 students who traveled to Kosovo. They visited three cities while there: Prishtina, Prizren and Peja. They spent their down time at the Museum Hotel in Prishtina.
Williams said, “It’s such a tiny country that I wasn’t expecting to see it on the list . . . Something inside of me was just like, ‘I need to go.’”
She explained that many Kosovars are nominal Muslims, meaning they don’t always go to mosque or fervently practice their beliefs. Many of them were open to the idea of other faiths and exploring the realm of other possibilities since it was the month of Ramadan.
“Being in that context, a lot of them are actually very open about any faith,” she said. “They’re like, ‘okay, if you believe in that, that’s cool.’”
The team worked with youth, teaching English classes at the Grimea Center. It’s a place where children can go to learn English and access books and games. It was built by two Christian missionaries who felt called to leave their lives in America and move everything to Kosovo.
While working at the center, Williams encountered a group of younger girls discussing how their parents fled the Kosovo War, leading her to realize just how much of a grasp the incident still has on the people.
They also participated in two youth group services, helped a church out by painting a fence and doing roof work and partook in prayer walks.
Due to groups like ISIS using spiritual conversations as a way to recruit members, the Kosovo government has outlawed such activities, so sharing the gospel openly in public is illegal.
Williams said, “A lot of what work looks like there is just relationships and trying to build connections.”
They could then invite the people of Kosovo to church services through those relationships.
During one of their prayer walks, the call to prayer went off around the city. Similarly to how there’s a church on every corner in Greenville, there’s a mosque on every corner in Kosovo. Each of them have loudspeakers hooked up. That call to prayer would go off five times a day and ring throughout the city.
“It’s kind of echoing throughout the city. It’s honestly an ominous, dark feeling,” Williams said.
For those willing to go out of their comfort zone and into unknown territory to spread the gospel, Williams had some advice; it isn’t a question of whether you should or shouldn’t go on missions, but when and how because we are all called to go.
She said, “If you understand why you’re alive, I think things like this are a no brainer, because it’s like, one, I’m here literally to love God and be loved by God and make His name known among the nations and my neighbors.”
