{"id":3560,"date":"2019-10-02T13:30:07","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T13:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/sitenews\/2019\/10\/02\/invasion-of-love-reconciles-divided-community\/"},"modified":"2019-10-02T13:30:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T13:30:07","slug":"invasion-of-love-reconciles-divided-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/invasion-of-love-reconciles-divided-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Invasion of love reconciles divided community"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 October 2019 | Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina [Bo\u017eidar Mihajlovi\u0107\/ted<\/em>NEWS]  <\/p>\n

War separates \u2013 often for years even when the conflict is over and \u2018peace\u2019 is restored. Distrust, hurt and pain have to be overcome. Adventist youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) see themselves as part of that bridge building process. <\/p>\n

\"Invasion<\/a><\/p>\n

Joining together from across the country, Adventist volunteers were joined by their willing friends to spend five days in Jajce, a town divided on strict ethnic lines since the Balkan conflict. While civil authorities work at reconciliation projects, more is needed. For this reason, a church plant in the otherwise un-entered town is building a grassroots initiative with the help of the youth.<\/p>\n

\"invasion<\/a>Entitled, \u2018Invasion of love\u2019, the project is based on a \u2018contact hypothesis\u2019, a theory which states that people are more inclined to bridge their differences if they are working towards a common goal.<\/p>\n

For the second year running, the first week of August saw 25 volunteers offer free car washes, paint park benches, clean up areas of the town, and give away free ice-cream and flowers. On the health front, they offered citizens free blood pressure and blood sugar level testing. In addition, they visited with the police, with NGOs working with special needs groups and, on the final day, organised a peace walk.<\/p>\n

\"Invasion<\/a>\u201cWe made a great impact in the city and an even greater impact on the participating volunteers,\u201d states Bo\u017eidar Mihajlovi\u0107, President of the BiH Conference. <\/p>\n

Partial funding for the project came from the Trans-European Division (TED) Mission board. \u201cI am so excited to see young people working together to make a real difference in their community,\u201d states Daniel Duda, who oversees the work of the board. <\/p>\n

\"invasion<\/a>Part of the rationale for TED support is in seeing the value of Adventist and other youth working together towards a positive community goal, to encourage citizens of Jajce to be proud of their town and community, to build self-esteem, and to assist in a process of reconciliation.<\/p>\n

Jajce is located in Central BiH with a population of around 30,000 inhabitants. They look forward to a return visit from the youth next year, and to a continued process of growing together.<\/p>\n

To see more photos or to find out more about the work of Adventist church in Bosnia and Herzegovina, visit their Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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ted<\/em>NEWS Staff: Victor Hulbert, editor; Deana Stojkovi\u0107, associate editor
119 St Peter’s Street, St Albans, Herts, AL1 3EY, England
E-mail: tednews@ted.adventist.org<\/a>
Website: www.ted.adventist.org
ted<\/em>NEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division. Readers are free to republish or share this article with appropriate credit including an active hyperlink to the original article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 October 2019 | Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina [Bo\u017eidar Mihajlovi\u0107\/ted<\/em>NEWS]  <\/p>\n

War separates \u2013 often for years even when the conflict is over and \u2018peace\u2019 is restored. Distrust, hurt and pain have to be overcome. Adventist youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) see themselves as part of that bridge building process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1592,7,1577],"tags":[199,201,200,196,198,197],"class_list":["post-3560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bosnia-herzegovina-montenegro-north-macedonia-serbia","category-news","category-organisational-updates","tag-acts-of-kindness","tag-bih","tag-bosnia-and-herzagovina","tag-invasion","tag-jajce","tag-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}