SERBIA, July 16-24, 2000 (Part 4) Yugoslav Red Cross Will Help Us

Belgrade and Nis Serbia: Tues. July 18, 2000: It was hot in the hotel last night, but I was exhausted and slept well. At breakfast this morning, Slavka Draskovic informed Jim Peters that a bright young girl who was preparing to go to medical school had been one of the victims killed in the recent bombing raids. Family and friends had raised money for a scholarship to help her pay for her education. During the middle of the day, she was crossing a bridge near her town, and the US–NATO plane zeroed in on the bridge and blew it into the water. The girl was killed in the explosion. Most of the US planes flew from ships anchored in the Adriatic Sea, but some B-52 bombers flew nonstop from America to deliver their payloads.

Alexander Cvetanovic accompanied us to our first hospital assessment. Dr. Vesna Bosnjak Petrovic and her assistant, Dr. Dragan Mandovic, run the Institute for Pulmonary Disabilities. More than 50 percent of all Yugoslavians are serious smokers. Incidents of throat cancer, and lung cancer in particular, are rising rapidly in the country. Another 10 percent of all the patients at the hospital have tuberculosis. Dr. Petrovic is a very busy lady. More than seventy institutions are under her jurisdiction throughout Serbia and Montenegro. She literally begged me for asthma medications, inhalers, and oxygen concentrators.

At 2:30 p.m., we were scheduled to visit Yugoslavia’s largest surgical hospital. It was at one time the leading abdominal surgery center in Europe. But now they have no surgical supplies and can’t get spare parts to repair their surgical equipment because of the NATO-imposed trade sanctions. Dr. Miroslav Milicevic, the director of the hospital, was trained in the United States and still lectures all over the world. He was torn with emotion as he showed us around the hospital, because he is watching his hospital deteriorate into a third-rate institution.

At 5:00 p.m., Jim and I walked to the offices of the humanitarian organization of the Serbian Orthodox Church. I was hoping they could help us get our donated supplies safely into Serbia and delivered to the correct hospitals. We met with Dragan M. Makojevic, the director. He was pretty puffed up with organizational importance and assured us that without him, it would be really difficult to accomplish our goals. His plan was for us to send the medical goods to him, and then he would determine which institutions were worthy of receiving them. I tried to be kind as I let him know that we had traveled a great distance to perform needs assessments on the various hospitals and clinics, and we would insist that the goods go to the places we designated. Mr. Makojevic said he couldn’t guarantee that would happen, so I told him that we probably wouldn’t be able to work with his organization even though there would be some mutual advantages for us to do so.

Olga and Alexander Cvetanovic picked up Jim and me at the Moskva hotel at 7:00 p.m. They drove us by more of the destroyed bomb sites around the city, including the now-famous Chinese embassy near the Hyatt hotel. The US planes had targeted the embassy three times and demolished it by sending smart bombs inside to gut it and still leave the structure standing. Supposedly, the United States hit the Chinese embassy by mistake, and when it nearly threw the bilateral trade agreements off course between China and the US, the Clinton administration offered apologies to the Chinese and paid reparations. The Chinese diplomats were still inside the embassy when the explosions occurred, and they were killed. The consensus was that the Chinese had set up electronic devices on the premises capable not only of monitoring the bombs and missiles but also of altering their guidance systems.

At Olga and Alexander’s home, we enjoyed tea and then went to a lovely restaurant on the Danube River for dinner.

Wednesday, July 19

Following breakfast today, Jim Peters and I walked to the offices of the Yugoslavian Red Cross. There we met up with Slavka Draskovic, who had arranged for our meeting. I was hoping that if I couldn’t work with the Serbian Orthodox Church, I could perhaps work with the Red Cross to get our loads into Serbia safely and efficiently deliver the medical goods to the individual hospitals. I don’t want to work directly with the Milošević government. Many places Project C.U.R.E. goes, I try to work with the government to guarantee the success of our shipping. But even though I agreed to meet with the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of health as a stipulation for getting a visa to enter Yugoslavia, I don’t have any desire to work directly with declared war criminals. All I really want to do is deliver some desperately needed medical goods to the hurting people of Yugoslavia. Perhaps the solution will be found in working with the Red Cross in Belgrade.

I was as pleased with my meeting with Dr. Rade Dubajic, secretary general of the Yugoslavian Red Cross, as I was exasperated last night during the meeting with Dragan Makojevic of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Dr. Dubajic is a real gentleman and took a liking to Project C.U.R.E. right away. He was very complimentary of our approach of personally traveling to Belgrade to do the Needs Assessment Studies and setting up meetings with the key players in Serbia.

“That sends the message that you are willing to humbly come in and work with the locals and learn the system and situation rather than just come in on an inflated, do-gooder ego trip,” Dr. Dubajic stated.

Dr. Dubajic offered to work with us and even let us store our medical supplies and equipment in his warehouse, if necessary. He also offered to make his trucks available to Project C.U.R.E. at no cost to deliver the medical goods to the hospitals. He gave us his guarantee that our goods will go exactly where we direct them, and he will ensure complete accountability by providing a distribution record for the goods. He also had Dr. Dragisic and Andrea, the medical coordinator, sit in on our meeting and instructed them to work with Project C.U.R.E. to get all the proper paperwork through to customs and the shipping forwarders.

“Dr. Jackson,” Dr. Dubajic concluded, “I’m really glad you are here. Yugoslavia is in a bad way right now and will continue to be in the near future. We need all the help we can get, and you can count on us for helping Project C.U.R.E. in any way we can.”

To me this was a miracle and another affirmation that I’m on the right track.

We left the meeting and went right down the hall into Dr. Dragisic’s office, where we started working on all the procedures and logistics.

Afterward Jim Peters and I walked back to the hotel and met the driver we had hired to take us to Cuetojevac village, the town of Kragujevac, and then on to the city of Nis (pronounced “Nish”). There was no time for lunch today, but before we left town, we had one more very important stop to make. We drove to the main government offices for the minister of foreign affairs, where we met with Ambassador Slobodan Morchkovic.

The ambassador was far more relaxed and friendly than I had assumed he would be. There’s simply no way to second-guess how a government official will greet you when you’re an American, and the Americans have just blown your ancient city apart and killed your neighbors. Slavka Draskovic was right. Almost everyone I met was surprised or fascinated by my presence in Belgrade. They all had assumed I would hate them and not come to visit, or that I would decide it was just too dangerous for me to be there.

Our meeting with the ambassador went extremely well. We talked about Project C.U.R.E. and our work, and he gave me a copy of the written policies and procedures to follow for shipping in the medical donations. He said he would cooperate fully with us and the Red Cross and assured me that the goods will go where we direct based on our needs assessments. He was in no way “offish” toward me, even though we talked briefly about the bombings throughout the country. He wanted me to know that the door to his office will be open to Project C.U.R.E. in the future.

By 2:15 p.m., Jim and I were on our way out of Belgrade, heading south toward Nis. An hour and a half later, we pulled off the main road onto a side road that led to the farming village of Cuetojevac. The small rural clinic is run by a young, single doctor named Branko Gajic. The clinic receives no government help but does receive some support from a foundation.

Right next to the spotless little clinic was an old, ornate Serbian Orthodox church. The Communists had closed up the church and shot the priests years ago, but in the past few years, the government had granted permission for the quaint edifice to reopen for worship. We were invited to enter the sanctuary, and the bearded priest in his flowing, black robes showed us around.

The priest has taken his mission quite seriously. He opened a Bible school to train the children on the weekends and organized adult Bible studies in the evenings during the week. The villagers who had been forbidden to pursue anything religious during the Communist days are now very eager to learn. Before we left the village, the mayor came to greet us, and the people at the clinic insisted we sit down and have a cheese sandwich and a piece of melon with them before we continued our journey.

Next Week: Total Acceptance in Nis

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Serbia July 16-24, 2000 Part 3 Confusion and Chaos in Belgrade

Belgrade, Serbia: July 16 -17, 2000: Anna Marie has cried only twice when she dropped me off at the airport terminal in Denver. Once was when I went to Baghdad, Iraq, and the other time was today, when she dropped me off on Sunday for the trip to Belgrade.

“When I see you walk through those airport doors, I never know if I’ll ever see you again,” she said. Then she apologized for crying.

I cannot tell you how much the two of us depend upon the travel promises in Psalm 91. At the airport is where the rubber really meets the road. There are no outside pressures making me do what I do with Project C.U.R.E. It truly is a love gift to God. And Anna Marie and I are both totally a part of that gift.

As soon as I determined that I should go to Belgrade, I began reading everything I could get my hands on about the history of the Balkans and how the most recent unrest started. I read newspapers, books, news magazines, and briefing papers. I even asked Jim Peters and the US State Department to give me materials and had Anna Marie glean information from the Internet. I took a lot of the documents with me on the plane for continued reading.

United Airlines flight 296 departed Denver at 10:00 a.m. and flew to Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. After a couple hours’ layover, Jim Peters and I were to have boarded United flight 962 to Munich, Germany. However, the plane scheduled to make the Munich flight was hit by lightning on the incoming flight, so we were delayed an additional four hours while the electrical maintenance people and engineers thoroughly checked out the equipment. I was worried about making the connection to Belgrade in Munich. If Jim and I missed our connection, there were no alternative flights to Yugoslavia.

During and after the US and NATO bombing of Belgrade, all air traffic was halted into Yugoslavia. The flights just resumed, and there are still very few flights scheduled. In fact, when Jim and I were first making our travel plans, we had to consider flying into Budapest, Hungary, and taking a bus from Budapest to Belgrade.

The woman at the United flight desk figured it out for me and said that if our plane could take off by 9:00 p.m., we could still just make the Lufthansa connection in Munich to Belgrade. At 9:15 we were given clearance to depart and left Washington. I knew then that Jim and I would have to run through the terminal in Munich if we were to catch the flight to Belgrade.

Somehow we made the connection, and our luggage was even properly transferred. We arrived in Belgrade around two o’clock in the afternoon, and to my surprise, I wasn’t hassled at passport control or customs for being an American. Olga and Alexander Cvetanovic met us at the airport. Olga is the daughter of one of Jim’s deceased brothers. She has a PhD and a very responsible job. Alexander is an engineer and has designed projects and airports not only throughout Europe but all over the world. He is also head of the engineering department at the university in Belgrade.

I wasn’t prepared for the amount of damage I saw in Belgrade, which was inflicted during the recent bombardment of the downtown area. Their largest and most prominent government buildings were bombed either from the outside in or from the inside out by US smart bombs. At one downtown intersection, all of the large buildings on all four corners had been totally destroyed with precision so as not to impact surrounding buildings.                                             

I began to see that the US and NATO bombing game wasn’t just about destroying billions of dollars’ worth of factories, police stations, army barracks, and infrastructures; it was also about psychologically scaring the pants off the Serbs with the surgical precision of high-tech weapons. All of the sorties were flown no lower than fifteen thousand feet with pinpoint accuracy. Conventional defense systems like antiaircraft guns can’t reach anything above about five thousand feet. The US and NATO were playing serious cat-and-mouse games with the Serbs, and the message was, “Either sign the peace accords, or we’ll shoot the pillow out from under your head in your own bed from an elevation so high, you won’t even know we were there.”

As we crossed the Sava River where it flows into the Danube River, I could see the ruins of lots of bridges that had been blown into the water. The debris was still blocking ships from using the river ports. That sent an unmistakable message to the neighboring countries of Romania and Austria, who are now economically disadvantaged because they’re unable to use the river for shipping. Olga told me that seventy bridges were targeted and destroyed throughout Serbia.                                            

Jim and I checked into the old Moskva hotel, which dates back to the old days of Russian influence and is located right in the heart of historic downtown Belgrade. Over the past two weeks, Belgrade experienced a heat wave, with temperatures setting records of well over one hundred degrees. The weather people are calling for much cooler temperatures during our stay, and when I realized that the old hotel isn’t air-conditioned, I too began calling for cooler temperatures.

As I opened my hotel window, I could hear the chants and loud voices of political protestors just a few blocks away. They were calling for the ouster of President Milošević. I decided that’s one area of the city I won’t visit. Common sense and experience have taught me to stay far away from antigovernment protests or any gatherings that could become unruly. I’m in potentially dangerous surroundings.

Slavka Draskovic, the director of the Serbian Unity Congress, joined Jim, Olga, Alexander, and me for dinner at the hotel. She had helped Jim set up all of our appointments at the hospitals, clinics, and organizations we’ll be visiting during our stay. I asked Slavka about the demonstrations I had heard from my window, and she told me that the Serbian Unity Congress stands in opposition to Milošević’s government, and months ago, members of the congress joined thousands of protestors who were calling for Milošević’s resignation. But now, most people have completely lost heart and hope for any change, and only about fifty to one hundred gather in the square to protest. She said they had all hoped that America and the NATO countries would help them in their opposition, but the Clinton administration only sent bombs and sanctions, which has made all of their lives more miserable, killed a lot of their loved ones, and reduced their incomes to less than fifty dollars per month but left Milošević and his people wealthier and more powerful.

At dinner the three of us went over next week’s schedule of appointments. We’ll be traveling outside Belgrade, as well as performing needs assessments at the major health institutions in the city. It looks like a tough week ahead. As Slavka was leaving, I asked her what kind of reaction I can expect as an American from the people we’ll meet.

“There is no hiding the fact that the people here really hate Clinton and Albright. Clinton has deceived us, and Mrs. Albright used to live right here in this city when her father was the Czechoslovakian ambassador to Belgrade. She knows us and grew up with us, and she is the one who negotiated for bombing us. Most of the common people here are just terribly confused. It doesn’t seem like Washington knows what it’s doing with their foreign policy. Now it will be harder for other countries to ever trust the American government. The common people we meet will be terribly surprised you’re here. You are the first to try to bring help to us. They will appreciate you and like you for that.”

I’ve fallen in love with the old European cities. At night people still put on clean clothes and go to the downtown centers to walk, visit, and stop at the sidewalk cafés to have coffee and maybe some ice cream. They really carry out that tradition in Belgrade. Jim Peters, who is seventy-six years old, wanted to show me some of the history of Belgrade, so before we retired for the night, we spent almost an hour walking. He showed me where his boyhood friends used to live and where he used to work, and the office buildings where his prominent family members used to run their businesses.

When we got to one intersection, Jim stopped and pointed out the old bank building where his father was once an influential officer. Just across the street, he pointed out where he spent his last night in Belgrade in 1944. The Gestapo had already surrounded his house and was going to put Jim and his brother in prison or in front of the firing squad. For every German soldier who was killed, the Gestapo would kill a hundred civilians in retaliation. Jim told me that the Yugoslavians had ambushed and killed seven German soldiers. The next day the Germans rounded up seven hundred civilians, men, women, school children and shot them.

Jim asked a school girlfriend, who was also in the resistance movement, to hide him and his brother at her house overnight. They then slipped out of the house, jumped fences, and ran into the nearby forested hills to escape. After his escape in 1944, Jim wasn’t able to return to Belgrade until just ten years ago.

Next Week: Yugoslav Red Cross Will Help Us

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SERBIA-YUGOSLAVIA July 16-24, 2000 (Part 2) The Jim Peters Connection

Belgrade, Yugoslavia: Sunday July 16, 2000: When I returned from my extensive trip to Iraq last year, I was asked to speak about my experience at the Mount Vernon Country Club near Denver. A man by the name of Jim Peters and his wife waited to talk to me afterward. Jim asked if I had ever been to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. When I told him I hadn’t, he asked to set up an appointment with me to discuss the possibility of such a trip.

When we met at the Project C.U.R.E. office, Jim said, “You’ve been to Baghdad, Iraq, and Havana, Cuba, and other hot spots like Pyongyang, North Korea. Why haven’t you gone to Belgrade?”

“Because Project C.U.R.E. only goes where we’re invited,” I answered.

“Then would you go to Belgrade if you were invited?” Jim inquired.

Part of Project C.U.R.E.’s international success has been because we’ve gone to a lot of political hot spots but have been able to remain nonpolitical. If I had gotten caught up in politics during my trips to Beirut, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, or the West Bank, I would never have been welcomed back to Israel. If I hadn’t been politically neutral in South Korea, I could have forgotten about being effective in North Korea. By staying neutral, I could work successfully with the hurting Hutus as well as the needy Tutsis in Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. If I hadn’t resisted taking sides in Pakistan, India, or Iraq, I would have been dead by now. It’s as simple as that. When I enter a country, I stay focused on the medical needs of the people while being well versed on both sides of the political situation so that I won’t get caught reacting or fumbling. That has admittedly been a risky challenge.

After some long discussions with Jim about the Balkans’ historical problems and the present situation in Yugoslavia, I assured him that I would pursue the possibility of going to Serbia. What I needed was some time alone to pray about it.

Jim is an interesting fellow. He was born and raised in Belgrade and now has a burning desire to go back and help his people after being absent from Yugoslavia since 1944. Germany wreaked havoc on the Balkans during the First World War. Then during World War II, both Germany and Russia unleashed their cruelty on the area. Young Jim Peters (Jacob Petrovic) and his brothers were part of a prominent Belgrade family. They had joined the resistance movement to protect their homeland from the Germans, Italians, and Russians. When Allied pilots from America or Britain would get shot down over Yugoslavia, they would try to get to the pilot first and, through clandestine activities, eventually deliver the pilot back across enemy lines to safety.

Jim and his brother, along with some of their buddies, had been able to save the lives of more than five hundred American and British pilots. But eventually, the Gestapo closed in on them, and Jim and his brother had to flee the country without even saying good-bye to their family. It took them over two years to effect their escape, working their way eventually to Switzerland. From there, two of the American pilots whose lives they had saved sponsored their coming to America, and they arrived in New York in 1947.

The two brothers secured jobs their very first day in America, and through some unusual contacts, they were sponsored to attend Columbia University in New York, and both graduated with MBAs in 1949. Jim’s talents were recognized right away, and he became the international representative for Singer, the sewing-machine company. From there he was able to leapfrog into an international position with RCA, and eventually he worked as senior vice president for Samsonite luggage company, in charge of international business. After fifteen years with Samsonite, Jim retired and then worked as an international consultant for the Mattel toy company. He and his wife subsequently decided to retire in Denver.

Even though Jim wasn’t able to go back to Yugoslavia for many years after his escape, his heart and thoughts were still with his homeland. He kept up on everything taking place in the Balkans over the years. After the death of the Yugoslav dictator Marshal Tito in 1980 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Jim felt that it was safe to return to Belgrade for a visit. While he was there, he determined he would do something to help out his loved ones and his mother country. That dream of helping his people eventually led him to contact Project C.U.R.E.

Jim and I originally decided to make the trip to Yugoslavia in the spring of 2000. But we ran into difficulty. The United States had no diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, so we had to try to get visas through the Yugoslavian embassy in Toronto, Canada. But we were refused visas without personal invitations from the authorities in Belgrade. I wanted to keep a very low profile and just slip into the country, do the Needs Assessment Studies, and slip right back out again. I didn’t want to get involved with Slobodan Milošević’s government officials or with members of the opposition or resistance groups there.

Jim was able to get members of his family in Belgrade to contact the head of a hospital in Belgrade who had some influence and knew how desperately they needed medical goods. The doctor wrote letters of official invitation for us. But before our visas could be issued, the US State Department, along with the International War Crimes Tribunal, announced they were placing a five-million-dollar price tag on the head of Slobodan Milošević. Anyone capturing Milošević or providing information leading to his capture would get the bounty.

That made government officials very nervous about anybody wanting to visit Yugoslavia from the United States. So Jim and I didn’t get our visas. Later, the embassy in Toronto did issue my visa, but it covered dates that had already passed. Jim kept up the phone calls and pressure on the embassy. Finally they wanted to know why James W. Jackson traveled with two US passports and assumed that I must be a spy. Jim Peters patiently explained that the State Department had issued two passports to me because I would always travel with one passport while the other passport was with embassies that were processing my visa requests for future trips. When I returned from a trip I’d trade passports at my office and travel with that one while the office secured visas for my next trip using the other one. Toronto was satisfied with the explanation, and I received my visa in Denver while I was away in Vietnam.

With invitations and visas in hand, Jim and I had to make quick flight arrangements. All the airlines were setting passenger records for flights to and from Europe, so it was quite miraculous that we were able to get any reservations at all on such short notice. As always, my prayer through all the planning has been that I would be willing to go if I’m supposed to go, but I certainly don’t need to go where I shouldn’t go, and I’m totally dependent upon God to reveal to me the subtle difference.

Next Week: Confusion and Chaos in Belgrade

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SERBIA-YUGOSLAVIA July 16-24 2000 (Part 1)

Note to Readers: Recently we were privileged to have HRH Crown Prince Alexander and HRH Crown Princess Katherine of Serbia in our home in Evergreen, Colorado. They have become such dear friends of our family over the years:

“Dear Jim and Anna Marie: Our visit to your home will remain in our memories and when Jim dedicated Psalm 91st it brought tears to my eyes. I have been reading over and over again since that day! I was so moved! You have such big hearts and your faith to God can be seen in your eyes. Your books must continue! You are an example in life and God has Blessed you with a son who is following on your footsteps. You were born to save the world and you started and now it is continuing very successfully by Douglas. I understand Doug’s devotion to his mission to support hospitals and doctors and save as many lives as possible.
Thanks to Project C.U.R.E. and their containers we will significantly help the healthcare system in Serbia, to the benefit of both patients and medical professionals. Project C.U.R.E. has brought to Serbia life saving equipment and supplies to our hospitals and Doctor Jackson has made numerous trips to Serbia supporting our hospitals that are desperate for help. . .”

For the next few blog installments, I want to share the actual daily entries of my Travel Journals from one of my trips to Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbia). This trip took place right in the heat of Serbia trying to eradicate the terrible communist regime of Slobodan Milosevic. I will also be introducing another friend of mine, Jim Peters, throughout these next blogs. (JWJ)

Belgrade, Yugoslavia: Sunday July 16, 2000: Somewhere in my travels, I stumbled across an interesting saying: “Do not keep away from the measure which has no limit, or from the task which has no end.”

I don’t believe Project C.U.R.E. has ever shied away from challenges or assignments just because the assignments seemed difficult or because we didn’t possess all the answers before we started. Most organizations wouldn’t have tried to tackle the precarious assignment to deliver medical aid to North Korea a full ten years before it was popular to even think about going there. But the investment has paid great dividends.

Most organizations wouldn’t have trekked the hill country of Colombia, South America or taken medical supplies and doctors to Bolivia. Those countries are fraught with dangers from clandestine warlords and drug cartels. But the disadvantaged people there needed Project C.U.R.E.’s help. Bloodletting battles between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi didn’t dissuade Project C.U.R.E. from going there to deliver desperately needed help.

Whether it has been Pakistan, India, Zambia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Albania, Kosovo, Cuba, Nigeria, or any other of the world’s flash points of political incorrectness, Project C.U.R.E. has tried to weigh in on the side of taking help and hope to needy people in those areas. It always seems like desperate situations produce desperate need. But today I rejoice in knowing that with God’s help and direction, thousands of lives have been saved in Iraq as a result of Project C.U.R.E.’s willingness to be vulnerable and get personally involved in delivering medical supplies to meet that country’s need. Likewise, only heaven will reveal how many lives have been changed and even saved in northern China, Bolivia, Tanzania, and Senegal, West Africa, where teams of Project C.U.R.E. doctors as well as medical supplies have been sent in to help.

God seems to continually encourage us not to worry if those we help are Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or just rotten, mean sinners. At Project C.U.R.E., we have tried to understand that God’s love extends to every womb-child he ever designed to be conceived, regardless of how their heads have gotten screwed up during their lives. Our piece of the puzzle is to make ourselves available so that God’s love can be made manifest through us in the lives of the needy, no matter where they are living.

I watched with interest as the conflict in the Balkans played out during the 1990s and into the early part of the new century. In my opinion, the Balkans has historically been synonymous with “trouble.” World wars have been ignited in that tinderbox, affecting millions of lives elsewhere. The folks in that part of the world just never seem to get it together. And during my lifetime, I watched Marshal Tito, the hedonist, Communist power-monger, fearlessly fan the flames of ethnic dissension within his own domain and then throw his efforts into helping organize a group of renegade leaders like Muammar Gadhafi, Kim Il-Sung, and others into the organization now known as the “nonaligned Communist countries.” Today no one even takes the time to pass by Tito’s burial plot outside Belgrade at the “flower farm.”

When the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina erupted in the early 1990s, our American newspapers and television reporters explained to us that just as republics like Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan had declared their independence from the defunct Soviet Union, so Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and finally Kosovo were bravely and heroically breaking away from Yugoslavia in their quest for rightful independence. The Clinton administration then explained to us that extremist Serbian nationalists were opposing the efforts of the freedom fighters with ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Hardly anyone in American households understood what was going on in Yugoslavia. But when we saw pictures on TV of burning houses and farms and streams of pitiful refugees hunkered down in farm wagons pulled by horses or antique tractors on their way to refugee camps with no water, food, or shelter, and with freezing weather setting in, we were moved to do something!

Project C.U.R.E. sent a container load of winter coats to Bosnia at the outset of winter in 1991. Later we sent hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical aid to Macedonia, Albania, and Kosovo, where the refugee situation worsened by the day. I personally had the privilege of being invited to the palace of Albania’s president to talk with him for an hour and a half about the needs of Albania and the people of the surrounding areas.

All we were told in Washington was that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was struggling for its existence, and the Serbs, who were fully responsible for the conflict, were going to have to be taught a lesson. Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, essentially declared that if the Serbs were the cause of the breakdown, the United States was determined to move forward with the NATO decision to carry out air strikes.

The ethnic Albanians signed the NATO proposal, since it basically gave them pretty much what they wanted. The Serbs continued to reject the ethnic Albanians’ idea that Kosovo could declare independence from Yugoslavia when such a large portion of the Kosovo republic consisted of Serbs who wanted to remain united with Serbia and Montenegro in the Yugoslavian Federation.

Yugoslavia most adamantly opposed this article of the proposal:
NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.

When the Yugoslavian Federation refused to inscribe their signatures on the proposed accord, Secretary of State Albright and NATO made good on their threat of air strikes. US aircraft began bombing Serbia on March 24, 1999, and continued through June 10, 1999. I have heard that during those seventy-eight days of continual air strikes over the Serb republic of Yugoslavia, 1,100 aircraft dropped more than 25,500 tons of explosives on Serbian territory over the course of 25,200 sorties or missions.

The total force of the destructive explosives was more than ten times greater than the force of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Many innocent civilians were killed, as well as military personnel, as a consequence of the bombings, tens of thousands of people were injured, and billions of dollars’ worth of property was destroyed. The estimated cost of destroyed factories, businesses, and manufacturing plants totaled over $100 billion in just seventy-eight days of air strikes. Highways, all communications installations, railways, airports, and bus and railway stations were destroyed, as well as seventy federal bridges. Never had there been such collateral damage inflicted in such a short time without war ever being declared on a sovereign nation or the US Congress even approving of the action. It was strictly a unilateral decision by the Clinton administration.

At home our TVs and newspapers assured us that the NATO action was for moral purposes, not based on narrow national interests. The New York Times published an op-ed that declared, “This was the first military conflict since the end of the Cold War fought primarily for humanitarian purposes.”

Mort Zuckerman, the chief editor of U.S. News and World Report, said, “We fought not for territory, but for values and moral principles.” Even President Clinton went on television and explained how great a victory we had just achieved against a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing.

In March of 1999, the United States closed its embassy in Belgrade and withdrew all diplomatic support personnel. Travel restrictions and warnings were issued to the public. Within the year, the International War Crimes Tribunal charged Slobodan Milošević, along with thirty other Serbian military leaders, with crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva convention, and violations of the laws or customs of war.

A huge wave of anti-NATO and especially anti-American feeling swept over Yugoslavia and neighboring countries. People on the streets of Belgrade were asking whether any sovereign state would be safe from an American political administration attacking and killing innocent civilians and targeting nonmilitary installations and hospitals without ever first declaring war or ever receiving congressional approval. The Americans arrogantly carried out the bombing, but they couldn’t fix what they destroyed or replace the limbs or human lives lost or restore the quality of life of those innocent bystanders in the city of Belgrade alone. And they did it with such smug hypocrisy and claims of morality.

That’s the setting in which Project C.U.R.E. has been asked to perform needs assessments. I’ve been asked to travel directly into the smoking ruins of Belgrade and evaluate the possibility of supplying medical goods to hospitals and clinics that have, because of the extent of the conflict, depleted their resources.

Project C.U.R.E. has never claimed to be a disaster-relief agency; we usually leave that up to other organizations. But we have become known all over the world as being extremely effective in coming alongside medical institutions and partnering with them during their time of need. However, in the face of extreme risk, when is it wise and when is it foolish to walk up to a smoking gun? And where does our earlier admonition fit in -- “Do not keep away from the measure which has no limit, or from the task which has no end”?

Next Week: The Jim Peters Connection

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GENTLY SHAKE YOUR WORLD

It was Gandhi who admonished his generation saying, “In a gentle way you can shake your world.” Gandhi certainly shook his world during his lifetime. While traveling throughout this world, I have met my share of passionate people who have likewise shaken their world in gentle ways.

One of my dearest international friends was Daniel Kalnin. He was born in the mysterious country of Burma, present-day Myanmar. The British had colonized Burma, which is bordered by China, India, Thailand, and a bit of Laos. Burma had become a strategic defense post for the Brits during World War II. But in 1948, Great Britain decided to pull out of Burma and sail home. The vacuum created by the lack of leadership and stability threw Burma into political, economic, and cultural turmoil. They had grown to depend on the British rule of law, available health-care, and the advantage of international trading. Power struggles, tribal wars, and a lot of bloodshed became the rule.

Daniel realized that if he were to see any of his dreams come true, he would have to leave Burma. When he was eighteen years old, he slipped across the Thailand border and became a fugitive. Eventually, some Americans rescued Daniel and brought him to America, where he was educated and where he met his Canadian wife, Beverly. Upon graduation, the two of them determined to return to Thailand and work with the hill-tribe people who lived on the border of Thailand and northern Burma.

In Thailand, with the blessing of the king, Daniel constructed a small housing development. He tested twenty-seven water sources to find an uncontaminated water supply for the village. None could be used. But high in the mountains he discovered a spring of pure water and built a water system of cisterns and pipelines to serve the people. One of the criteria for families to move into his development was to stop cultivating poppies for opium resale, take ownership of some of his land, and start growing a cash crop of coffee. Daniel returned briefly to the US and raised money to buy coffee plants. While here, he set up distribution outlets to market the new Hill Tribe Coffee brand in America. The villagers discovered they could make more money with coffee crops than with poppies. Because of the new water system, the villagers became dramatically healthier.

I traveled with Daniel on motorbikes over the steep trails of the lower Himalayas along the border of Burma to a bustling town in his new development of Bayasai. Daniel showed me the large brown church the people had built with a large red cross painted on the front. It was the only place in the insurgency area where the people from five different tribes were living together peacefully.

In the commercial city of Chiang Mai, Thailand, Daniel and Beverly had also built the House of Blessing. When I first visited the Kalnin’s home in Chiang Mai, there were forty-seven throwaway girls between the ages of ten and twelve who had been taken from slavery and prostitution and were being housed, loved, and educated in that home. And yet for thirty years, Daniel had been estranged from his family and beloved homeland of Burma. Eventually, Project C.U.R.E. was privileged to join Daniel in returning to Burma and seeing his dreams come true in establishing the highly effective Barefoot Doctors organization that has saved literally thousands of the lives of the hill-tribe villagers and citizens of Thailand and Burma.

My dear friend Daniel has since died, and I am still grieving the loss. I originally wrote this story to honor Daniel, his family, and his never ending life’s work. Today I salute him as a true champion, because in a gentle way, Daniel shook his world!

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THE POWER OF STORY

I realize looking back that so much of my destiny lay in a handful of stories, a few that were personal and others I found in books.

My parents taught me that doing well in business and doing good deeds in the world should be inseparable. They instilled in me an entrepreneurial spirit that looked forward to philanthropic ends. I was taught how to create wealth in order to practice virtue.

I loved the evenings at our house as my mother, Josie Jackson, created a soothing atmosphere that eventually lulled us to sleep. After dinner and once all of our chores were finished, my mom would relax for half an hour by sitting down at the piano and playing her favorite songs. My mother was a dedicated school teacher. When she was twelve years old, her church’s regular piano player died suddenly, so Mom started playing the piano for church services.

In the evenings when Mom’s piano playing stopped, we kids all headed for the sofa. We curled up around her, and she read to us. Our home was full of books, and usually we got to choose the evening stories. It was in that setting that I first began to hear about young boys who had overcome incredible obstacles to become great successes.

I learned about the adventures of Andy Carnegie, the little Highlander boy who had come to America from Scotland when he was thirteen years old. I had nearly memorized the stories of Henry Ford, Cecil Rhodes, and William Carey, but something made my heart pound when I listened to Mom read about John D. Rockefeller and Dwight L. Moody.

During my teen years, I read books like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, the book Hill wrote with W. Clement Stone, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, and Stone’s book The Success System That Never Fails.

The power of the stories my mom read to me changed my life for good. By the time a child is three years old, there is a readiness level to mentally and emotionally reach out to the outside world to find pegs on which to hang feelings, dreams, and fantasies.

Those pegs have a way of later becoming the linchpins of life. I’m so glad my mom took the time to read enduring stories to me.

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WEALTH ROOMS

Snuggled up against the western borders of old Burma (now Myanmar) in the rugged front range of the majestic Himalayas, just south of the Bhutan and only a few miles from China, lay three orphaned substates of India. Because they are nearly cut off from the rest of India by Bangladesh, the territories of Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland are characterized by dangerous insurgency and wild independence. I traveled there to assess some needy hospitals and clinics.

While I was in the city of Kohima, Nagaland, my host took me to a village near his birthplace. Before the missionaries had come to the area, the residents had been ferocious headhunters. The sturdy ceremonial, wooden gates of the village had been carved and painted with scenes of warriors carrying the heads of their tribal enemies as trophies. No longer do they hunt down their neighbors, however. Now, heads of bear, deer, straight-horned bucks, monkeys, and wild boars are displayed on the roofs, porches, and outside walls of the homes.

Just inside the door of each village dwelling was a special room that immediately revealed the earthly wealth of the owner. Woven reed baskets nearly six feet tall were filled with rice, maize, and other grains. Ears of corn were draped over the rafters, and cuts of meat were hung from racks to dry.

My doctor friend interpreted as I talked with an old village resident who told me that the entry areas were called wealth rooms. “It is good to be considered wealthy because it lets everyone know that you are not lazy but are very productive. You care about life. But the wealth rooms serve an even greater purpose,” he told me.

“Later in life, when a man becomes rich and his room is very full, he invites all the other village people to his house for a giveaway party. All his friends and neighbors come and honor him because he had worked very hard, had been a good hunter, and had lived wisely. At the end of the party, the host goes to his wealth room, takes the contents and divides them up among the other inhabitants of the village. In return, the villagers confer on the man and his family great honor and influence, guarantee him a legacy of greatness and respect, and vow to take care of him as long as he lives.”

I had never before heard of wealth rooms and giveaway parties. What a great way to move from success to significance! But I quickly agreed that the concept had certainly been established in heavenly wisdom. It had been both refreshing and confirming to realize that way back in ancient Mongol history, some folks had it figured correctly:

Your greatness is always determined by what you give away from your wealth room while you are still alive.

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PERFECT PEOPLE

In Colombia, South America, 1997 was a year of lawlessness and murder. The drug cartels ran unchecked not only in the cities but also in the rural mountain districts. No one was safe and the frightened victims from the countryside would try to escape the violence and guerrilla warfare by rushing to the cities to find food, protection, and perhaps work. Invasion cities were built overnight out of junk and trash on land where folks had no permission to squat. Single mothers with a half-dozen homeless kids hunkered down under cardboard or a piece of sheet metal to keep out of the rain or scorching sun. Once there, they were slapped with the cruel reality that there was no food, no protection, and no work. There were thirty-two such invasion cities in Monteria.

Barrios were a little different. The city would give the poor dwellers permission to build on the land or would sell the land outright to the people for a small price. The shelters in the barrios were constructed out of gathered stones or concrete blocks. But the characteristic level of abject poverty was the same—no jobs, no money, no hope!

I went into several of the squalid huts. Because of the recent heavy rains, the floors of the invasion-city units were soggy mud holes. The sewage ran down the center of the makeshift roads or behind the huts. As little babies crawled along the floors and through the mud, I watched with amazement and wondered why far more of them did not die from lung congestion and parasites. My feeble coping skills acquired over the years totally failed me when a pair of haunting, hungry eyes locked in on mine with a panicked plea: “Please help me; I have no hope of getting out of here!”

Then, like a burst of warm Colorado sunshine, I experienced a bit of the Divine. In front of me was a small, whitewashed building that was being used as a school. Alita was only fifteen years old; she was the teacher. Over the years she had walked out of the barrio every day to attend a small Catholic school in the city. “I knew I wanted to do something for these children in the invasion cities and barrios,” she told me.

Alita had gone through the tenth grade but had given up her opportunity to enter the eleventh grade in order to start teaching the children of her neighborhood how to read and write. She had never received any teacher training but simply taught as she had been taught.

She could only teach the children a half day because she had ninety students—forty-five in the morning and forty-five in the afternoon. The prior week another fifteen children came, but she simply could not handle them and had to turn them away. “I was able to bring some bananas today to my school to feed some of my students who have been going hungry. I did not eat today, but that is just fine,” she told me.

I looked around her little whitewashed school building with pictures and artwork fixed to the outside walls, and I stopped and thanked God for Alita.

The work of the world does not wait to be done by the perfect or pretty people. God’s work is accomplished by people of great compassion who will pour out their own lives so that others are better off!

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SEEKING TRUTH

Many old, salty sea captains have managed to sail their ships back to the safety of harbor lights with nothing more than a magnetized sewing needle balanced on a cork, floating in a cup of water. That was the only compass they needed to get back to the comforts of home and hearth. And while it is touted that a compass never lies, it can deceive you. The direction of north that your compass gives you just might be wrong. Compasses point toward the magnetic north pole, located near Ellesmere Island in north Canada. But true north is not there. It is over seventy miles away. Depending on where in the world you are located, the difference between where your compass is pointing and where you are in relation to true north can be considerable.

When I was just a kid, I learned that it was possible to take even the finest compass and make it tell you that north was anywhere you wanted it to be. All you needed was a cheap refrigerator magnet close by, and you could perform miracles. No longer would the needle of the compass point to earth’s magnetic north, but it would point to wherever the refrigerator magnet was placed in close proximity. Of course, the accuracy and utility of the compass was completely spoiled. No longer would it perform the function for which it was designed. No salty sea captain would set his cup of water, cork, and magnetized sewing needle on top of a refrigerator magnet and expect to sail safely home.

Through the years I have been concerned about how easy it is for folks to employ their handy refrigerator magnet to situations of life and truth. It doesn’t take much for someone to slip his refrigerator magnet onto the table and proclaim that north is precisely where he says it is. I have become increasingly bothered with the proliferation of relative truth and the difficulty of determining “true north.” While growing up, I used to wonder why glib politicians were referred to as having magnetic personalities. Today, I think I better understand. With their handy little refrigerator magnet, they can change the compass direction of north two, three, or four times in a day—or even within a debate. But where precisely is true north?

I was traveling in the Bulgarian city of Haskovo, performing a medical Needs Assessment Study for Project C.U.R.E., and I struck up a conversation with one of the health officials, a former officer of the Soviet Union. We began talking about what it had been like to live in the country prior to the collapse of the Soviet regime. “Everything was relative,” he said. “You never knew just what to expect as ‘truth.’ You could only depend on what you were told at the moment and you were expected to respond accordingly. Everything was relative with no unattached or independent ‘absolutes.’”

Then he related a story to explain his point. “There was a certain clock shop on the main street of our town. The man who operated the shop had a good reputation in the community. He was conscientious and kind and knew a lot about clocks. On the back wall of his shop, he had on display a large and beautifully hand-carved clock with an expensive and precise set of works inside. It was, indeed, a masterpiece and kept very accurate time. The clock man loved the clock and was very proud of it.”

My new friend went on to tell me, “Everyday an important-looking man walked by the clock shop. He would stop momentarily and study the clock on the back wall. He would then pull out his own pocket watch that was attached to his jacket by a handsome chain. He would reset his pocket watch, place it back in his jacket, and hurriedly walk away. One day the clock man stepped out of his store and stopped the man as he reset his pocket watch. ‘Do you admire the clock on my wall? I see you stop every day and look at it before you walk on.’

‘Yes,’ the man said, ‘I love your clock, and I know that it is very accurate. I have a very important job. I work at the large factory by the river, and I am in charge of blowing the whistle precisely at eight o’clock. I check the time on your clock every day so that I will know exactly when to blow the whistle.’

The clock man gasped. His mouth fell open as he stumbled with his words. ‘You are the man who blows the whistle each morning? But I set my clock each day by your whistle!’”

Here's the advice that I would offer to myself and all my friends. Don’t get caught up in depending upon relative truth, but diligently seek, as if for the finest treasure, truth that is unattached, loosened from, and non-manipulated by the agendas of this world.

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HELPING THE UNHEALTHY

In a rural village outside Salem, India, Dr. Siddharthan tried to persuade Shanthi that he could successfully perform the needed eye surgery on her young son and make him see for the first time in his life. “I will send Samuel Stevens to the village and pick up you and your son. He will bring you to the eye hospital. Everything will be fine. Can you imagine how happy your son will be when he sees his mother for the first time? And the whole village will rejoice when they see the great miracle.”

“No,” said Shanthi softly as she lowered her head and stared at the ground. “I want my son to see, but the people of my village will not hear of any such thing. They have warned me that if you put a new eye into my son’s head, he will be forever cursed, I will be cursed, and my other children will be cursed.” Shanthi began to shake with fear. “My villagers demand that they like my son just as he is—blind. They want to take care of him all of his life. When he needs them to help him walk or eat, it makes them feel very good and important. They want him to depend on them forever. They will not allow me to bring my son to your hospital.”

Samuel Stevens and Dr. Siddharthan decided, however, that the day before the surgery, Samuel would drive to the village and try to persuade Shanthi to allow the surgery to take place on her son. I was invited to go with Samuel and meet Shanthi and the villagers. When we met with Shanthi, she began to cry openly. The previous night she had a dream. She saw a man come and take her son away, and later he brought him back to the village, and he could see! She had never seen Samuel before, but he was the exact man who had come in her dream for her son. “I do not need to come with you,” she said. “I know that when I see my son again, he will see perfectly!”  

And indeed, when he returned to the village, he could see perfectly. Oh, what a day of celebration!

On my airplane ride back from Salem and Coimbatore to Madras, India, I began to search my own heart. “Are there people or situations in my life in which I am encouraging unhealthy dependencies?” The villagers wanted Shanthi’s son to stay blind because it made them feel good and needed. What a tragedy that would have been.

Who or what in my life do I need to relinquish for someone else to become healthy?  

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