I just got back from Bosnia yesterday though! I have friends in Banja Luka, which is about two hours from Zagreb. So I went down there with the senior couple missionaries and celebrated the Serbian Orthodox Christmas, which is January 7th. It was really neat. They are the first converts in Bosnia, and it's a whole family of eight. The five missionaries and I all squished around their teeny table in their kitchen, and the 15 of us shared a hearty homecooked traditional meal. The house wasn't even the size of my family's kitchen--one room for the four girls to share, and another room for Vicky (my age) and her brother Vedran to sleep on the couches. The parents sleep wherever they can find a place at night. Before the ceremony started, I went to the bathroom, and was shocked by their unrealized poverty. The toilet was essentially a hole with running water, the shower was a tiled box and a tank of water with a hose coming out the bottom. A broken car mirror nailed to the wall was their 'vanity.' The door to the bathroom was broken, so a small piece of fabric covered where someone might want to peek in.
Vicky's grandma--Baka Tadić--brought in a gold lamp with burning incense and passed in front of each of our noses so we could take thre hand wafts to our noses--one for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Then the oldest boy, Vedran, said a Serbian Orthodox prayer and we crossed ourselves with three fingers, rather than the Catholic's traditional two.
The women bring in a pie-shaped loaf of bread that's decorated with the cross, and all the men take a hand on it. On the count of three, "Jedan, dva, tri!" they all rip at it and hope that a lucky Marc coin is in their piece. If it is, then they are guaranteed a prosperous year of luck! Vicky's dad, Draško, got the coin and had a good laugh, because he needs it the most.
Despite the language barrier, we had a great time making jumpy conversation out of charades and realizing our singularly common blessing--the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The food was my favorite part! As part of the tradition, each year (if you're able), you raise a pig and then slaughter it three days before Christmas. Meticulously turning it over a fire spit to distribute the juices, then carving, salting and serving it cold is the norm. My favorite dish was 'Capma,' or Sarma. It's pickled cabbage wrapped around rice and čevapi (a stomach-turning but tasty mixture of pork and beef), then boiled in salt and sunflower oil.
Following the dinner, everyone goes out and fires off their AK-47's again--Sidenote: On Christmas Eve morning before the sun comes up, everyone fires off their guns and fireworks, then goes into the wood to cut a Banjak tree branch (essentially a dried-up maple), then they decorate it with tinsel and balloons and gather on Christmas day to burn three of the Serbian-Orthodox congregation's best. Three, obviously representative of the Godhead.
After blowing our eardrums in celebration, the men (I love this culture) do the dishes, and the women rest.
I sat there on Jan. 7th, in Banja Luka, thinking, "I never thought that on January 7th of 2012 I would be sitting in a Serbian Orthodox celebration in Bosnia."
And I hope to have more experiences like that. I surely surely do.
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