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On fire!

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This Italian team is on fire - literally! This is Alessia during the performance of the second evening in central Gjakova. As she whirled the flaming torches around her body, one of them caught her T-shirt and it started to burn. You can just see it starting to catch fire on her right side. Only she didn't know it! As she was facing forward none of her team did either, so I rushed forward from inside the crowd to warn her. She quickly withdrew and was doused. Fortunately she wasn't burnt, but her shirt had a hole in it. Phew. The performance continued seemlessly. This is Alessia the next day, talking to 50 children about God's love. She has a very personal reason for doing so. By the time she was 15, her life was a mess. She was trying so hard to find acceptance through relationships and body image, that she became anorexic and began a three year relationship. By the time she was 18 she had become suicidal, trapped in a relationship that wasn't working and trapped...
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JD

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There have been a few people who have had a particularly profound and positive effect on my life. My father, David Russell (formative years teacher) and John Davis are three that immediately come to mind. Earlier this week I mentioned JD in passing in my blog entitled 'Food poisoning', which elicited a response from my old mate Greg to tell me the news that JD had passed into glory just a few weeks before. JD was our missions lecturer at Moorlands College in the early '90's. This is my tribute to him. (The photo was on the front cover of his thanksgiving service.) I first met JD when Jan and I were interviewed at Moorlands in early 1991. I remember that interview with a good degree of embarrassment. When asked what sphere of Christian ministry I thought I might be called into, I replied with something like, 'I feel called to serve in this country not overseas - the real need is here, no offence intended Mr Davis.' JD just smiled and the interview continued....
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Beauty and the Beast

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The title is not a comment on any of those pictured! Over the last couple of days we've ventured outside Gjakova and experienced both the beauty of Kosova and its beastly past. This striking museum is at the centre of the Kosovan identity. It's in the small and seemingly insignificant village of Prekaz in the north west of this new country. It was home to Adem Jashari and his extended family of almost 60 people. With the exception of a ten year old girl, Besarta Jashari, they were all slaughtered in their homes, 5-7 March 1998. This is Adem's home, preserved in its bullet-ridden, mortar-holed and dilapidated state after the attack. Adem was a commander in, and one of the founders of, the Kosovan Liberation Army. The objective of the Yugolslav army and Serbian police was to find him and wipe out his family as a warning to other KLA fighters to stop their armed insurrection. It took 5,000 armed police and army personnel for their 'successful' operati...
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