We are very sad people right now.

Greetings from Vienna! We type with both enthusiastic hands and moist eyes. This has been such an intense experience, and though all of us are excited to go home, much of us is still in Kosova. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts God blessed us with this month is how much it hurts to go. We've come to love that country, and though we're excited to return to the States, it's a painful thing to leave.

We'll try and upload more pictures and perhaps videos over the next few days. Thanks for following along and praying for us. Many blessings to you.

A series of highly impersonal photographs.

Something like this is in every direction you look. Kosova is basically one huge valley.


This is the view from the apartment the girls live in. We're practically living on a playground. It's like every childhood dream come true.


Gjakova at night.


People jump off the bridge in the summer.


We hear the call to prayer five times a day. It's an absolutely beautiful song that has been used to distance millions of people from God.


We decided to spare Caitlin's mom and not show how close her feet are to the ledge of a massive cliff.


Chillin'.


A Serbian Orthodox church. During the 2004 riots, it was burned down. Now, the police have to guard it, and no one is allowed inside. We had to be escorted into the grounds just to take some pictures.


This is Adem Jashari*, or rather, it's a statue of his head. He's a cultural icon in Kosova. He's one of the major founding members of the Kosova Liberation Army. In March 1998, Serbian forces attacked and killed Jashari and the other KLA fighters in his compound Jashari's entire extended family, including women and children. Serbian forces hoped that killing Jashari would end the KLA, but the death of Jashari and his family is commonly recognized as the singular defining moment where many Kosovar Albanians became fully united.

* This is a very biased article on Jashari and the KLA. In nearly every article about Kosova on Wikipedia, there's a lot of Serbian influence. Read the Wikipedia discussion page on Kosovo War to get an idea about how heated many Serbs and Kosovars are about this.


The rows of memorial graves dedicated to the victims of Prekaz. There were more than fifty members of the Jashari family massacred, leaving behind only one eleven year old girl. The oldest victim was something like sixty-eight, the youngest was seven.


We took a day trip to Skopje, Macedonia. This is a ginormous Orthodox church near the center of the city. We caught the beginning of a wedding as we left.


Here's a view of the ceiling. It's hard not to feel the reverence toward God in something so grand.


Also in Skopje, the birthplace of Mother Teresa. She's perhaps the most universally beloved person in this region. She's Albanian, so in addition to being a humanitarian she's something of a cultural icon.


More soon!

Just a few kids.