Roma Diary
( Extracts from my journal )
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Sometimes life seems to be built upon two distinct foundations. That which seems possible and that which seems impossible. We set out this week to start the process of building a new house for Vjezdan and Bosilka and their four children. Their current situation is unbearable. Their little shack is falling down and will end up killing them if it collapses on them when they are asleep. It is more complex than it seems to build a little house and move a family in. But it is possible.

It is the impossible situations that really wear me down. I am a person that wants resolution, answers, they can be tough solutions but never the less I crave completion. That is where the impossible sets in and is so hard to navigate.

Velamira is about 15 years old. She is not sure exactly how old she is. She has a three month old baby. Her husband who is her uncle is now in prison for three years. Velamira used to live in a wood shed with the baby and uncle/husband but then moved in with her Grandmother/mother in law. The Grandmother/mother in law has now thrown her out and she is homeless. We have agreed that as soon as we can we will build her a little one room house to live in, that is the easy bit. We want Velamira to know Jesus and bring up her baby in a Christian home. That is the impossibility. How one unravels these incestuous complexities sets precedent for the whole community spiritually.

On Wednesday we will visit Shkarije which is the worst village in the north of Croatia. This is the place where a man cut his daughters head off. This is where after a meeting we had there a boy shot and killed his father who was beating his mother at the time. This is where we visited the head man of the village after his wife hung herself because he had taken a teenage woman as his mistress. This is where we took food to a widow whose husband was murdered by a teenage boy because the boy's father had been kidnapped and was being tortured. The widow of three days told us she was glad her husband was dead as he beat her every day. We are going to hold a children's meeting in a home where the man has two wives in the same house. The one wife, who is about 31 years old, has eight children the other wife we do not know how many children she has. It is an impossible situation to unravel.

Conventional wisdom says at this point I am supposed to write something like but friends what is impossible for man is possible for God. (Of course I believe that or we would not be here and I would have a job digging ditches in Idaho and dear Nancy would be health and beauty consultant in Manhattan.) But.....but......dealing with the impossible is not as easy as the 19^th century biographies seem to make it. The need for wisdom is humbling and overwhelming. The need for gentleness is critical. Sometimes Idaho seems to beckon....................but.......but God.

Bob and Nancy Hitching
Trnovecka ulica 2
Varaždin
Croatia 42000
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