A Ministry of Healing † Hope † Peace for Bosnia and the whole World
This is a ministry of the New Jersey Synod, ELCA, striving to bring peace to Bosnia through the wonderful children of this beautiful country. On this website you'll see much from the past ten years of this ministry, as well as was to get involved with our 2010 IST (International Servant Trip).
The dates for 2010 Bosnia IST are:
June 19 - July 1, 2010
The 2010 Travel Team has begun their preparations! Please keep them in your prayers.
If you have question about this ministry, please contact Jason Reed, the trip coordinator, at jreed@njsynod.org.
Last summer, during the trip, we asked Travel Team members and our Interpreters about their favorite Friendship Camp. Here a video of what they said!
Here is a blog by 3 time Travel Team member extraordinaire Alida Liberman about her experiences in Bosnia and how it has changed who she is.
What is the Bosnia IST? For the last ten years the New Jersey Synod, ELCA has been connected to the children and communities of Bosnia through the Bosnia International Servant Trip (IST). We have had the great honor and joy of bringing and teaching healing, hope and peace to the children of Bosnia, as well as receiving deep healing, lessons in hope and gifts of peace from them.
Each year, over a two-week period in early summer, we host "Friendship Camps" in towns and villages around Bosnia. These Camps offer peace-making, diversity training, music therapy, and lots of fun!
To read more about this ministry, take a look at our story!
To find out how to help, including how to donate money, check out our Home Team!
To meet the group going to Bosnia this year, here's our Travel Team!
To learn more about our work with the children of Bosnia, take a look at our Friendship Camps!
HOME TEAM 2010 Much of the work of the Bosnia IST is done by our Home Team. The Home Team is made up of individuals, families, groups, organizations, congregations and businesses who provide material, financial or prayer support for the trip. The 2010 Home Team Guide is available, along with this year's sewing project pattern - our ever popular Hug Pillows! Please visit our Home Team page for these items.
To find ways to help, please contact our Home Team Captain, Steve Smith.
Financial donation of any size (tax-deductable, of course!) should be sent to: Bosnia IST, New Jersey Synod, 1930 Highway 33, Hamilton Square, NJ 08690. If possible, please include this donation form.
videos See a music slideshow of our trip here! It's kinda large, so it might take a bit to open.
Here is about the ministry made by the ELCA.
Here is a great video made by former Travel Team member Alyssa Phillips, with scenes from our 2006 Bosnia IST.
Here is an award-winning, awful, great, disturbing video about the Bosnian war called "10 Minutes". Warning-this video contains some violence.
photos This is an exceptional ministry! Take a look at some photos from our 2007 servant trip and get a better “feel” for what the Bosnia IST is all about! Photos - Part I Photos - Part II
our partner We're also very grateful for our continued partnership with our dear friends at TWI for the Children, the non-profit that began this work in Bosnia over a decade ago. Please be sure to check out the cool, full website.
Bosnia IST 2008 in brief This summer we had the privilege of serving around 2,500 children at the 17 Friendship Camps (and one picnic) we held throughout the country. We played, sang, danced, and laughed with the children. We shared meals and stories and hopes and dreams and tears with them. We taught and learned about peace and reconciliation together. We shared the love of God with them, and, in turn, found ourselves looking into the face of Jesus.
We visited, served and prayed in churches and mosques, schools and orphanages, homes and restaurants. We walked the grounds of concentration camps, cemeteries, memorial sites, and identification facilities for human remains recovered from mass graves. The increased tensions in the region made this year’s trip particularly important and the joy and community that we shared particularly satisfying.
It was hard work - long hours, taxing physical labor, emotionally draining efforts. It was wonderful work - meeting and living with such beautiful, wounded, generous, loving people. And because of the nature of peace-building in such a broken world; it was messy, challenging and incomplete. In other words, it felt like a truly faithful response by our synod to Jesus’ call to “Feed my lambs” (John 21).
Thank you for your support, partnership and participation in this ministry. It is good, hard work we are called to do together. And we certainly can’t do it without you.
If you have any questions or concerns about this ministry, please don't hesitate to contact the Travel Team Captain, Jason Reed: bosnia@njsynod.org or 609-234-8405.
Thank you so much for your partnership in serving the children of Bosnia. And thanks be to God for this wonderful opportunity to serve and meet the living God in such a beautiful, broken place.
