There are questions that we constantly seem to hear. One of them is “why did you choose to go to Bosnia?” It’s a fair question. Why, of all the places in the world, would you choose to make your home in a country as obscure as Bosnia and Herzegovina? I usually say, “well that’s a long story”, or something to that affect.

Sit back, get comfortable — here’s the story of how our family came to live in this remote, beautiful place, halfway around the world from where we began.

New awakening

Like most stories of this nature, there is plenty of background. I am among the oldest of the millennials, having been born in the early 80s, with a faint recollection of events like the fall of the Berlin wall and the advent of email. As I was becoming an adult I can vividly remember the Florida re-count of 2000 and planes flying into the Twin Towers.

My parents became Christians some time before I was born and wanted their children to know and love Jesus Christ. But it wasn’t until I was in college, watching those planes explode that that decision finally became real for me. I couldn’t call myself a Christian just because I had spent plenty of time inside a church building, no more than one could call oneself a car after spending time in a garage.

Student ministry

I was drawn into student ministry first as a student, through the invitation of a friend who had a Bible study meeting in his dorm room. Through getting involved in that group, and then in the wider community of Christians on my campus, I saw my need for God. I decided not only to give my life to him, but to give a whole year of my life (how noble of me) to helping people overseas have a similar experience. I went to Sarajevo, Bosnia, with an organization called “Cru”, a world-wide, interdenominational ministry that operates in nearly 200 countries.

The first experience

My first year was so good I decided to come back for seconds. It was a ground-breaking experience for someone like me. My experience of Christian community and ministry had been fairly limited at that point, and this was something totally new. We walked up to random people on the street and asked them if they cared to talk about God. We distributed winter coats to people. We organized movie nights, seminars, and social events — anything to gather people.

Then I went back home. I thought I’d never come back to Bosnia. I found another job. I got married. This was a chapter of my life that was closed. But eventually that would change.

The comeback

In the winter of 2008, a friend of mine sat down with me and told me he was going to Sarajevo and he wanted me to come. He was going to sort of finish what we had begun several years before. At once I had a yearning I could not explain to go back and once again be in Europe, working on something truly compelling — helping bring a message of peace and hope to people in another culture.

It was hard to come back. It was an uphill climb. There were times when it seemed like we wouldn’t make it back. But in the fall of 2010, we finally made it.

We were back, as a family. It was different. We had different obligations, different expectations, but now finally we were back to finish what we had started several years earlier.

The mission

We’ve been back in Bosnia and Herzegovina permanently since 2010, with a mission of bringing young people together and building a community where all students can belong, believe in God, and become the people they are created to be. In a place where there is so much division, it is refreshing to be able to share a message of hope and redemption.

Thanks for reading. Make use of this site to find out more about our mission, our story, and what we are doing with young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina.