Dear family and friends,
I have only been in Padina for a little over a week, but I have quickly fallen in love with this quiet little community and its wonderful and warm people. Although I enjoy working with the children, I absolutely love my adult class. They are so eager to learn and always come to class with a positive attitude.
A few nights ago, after hearing a siren off in the distance, my hosts (the local pastor and his wife) were woken by a phone call around 1:30 in the morning. The barn of two of my students (a couple) was on fire. Fortunately, they were able to save some of their animals, but the barn was completely destroyed along with other materials that were to be used to repair their house.
The couple and their two young children are currently living with his parents. They had recently purchased an old house so they could finally have their own home. Because the house is so old, it needs a new roof before the family could move in. I don’t mean they just need to put on new shingles. The entire roof, including the roof trusses, needed to be replaced. Although they were not living in the house yet, the barn had already become an important part of their lives.
The bad economic times have not only affected the US – they have hit Padina as well. This is an agricultural community so their main income is from farming. Although he is able to help his father with the corn fields, he has not been able to find consistent work for about a year. Many people in this area go into Belgrade a few times a week to find extra work. The women try to find jobs cleaning houses while the men look for construction work. There are three main reasons this fire was so devastating.
First, barns are used to store food for both animals and humans. Almost every house in Padina has a barn and an area for storing corn. All of the food that they had saved in the barn was destroyed (mainly potatoes, corn, and feed). The people in this community save all of their corn husks from the corn they eat and the husks from the feed corn. They use the corn husks to fuel their small fire places in the winter (there are not many trees around here to get wood). In addition to the food, they also lost most of the husks/fuel they had stored to heat their home.
Second, because the family has had such a difficult time finding work, they decided to breed rabbits and chickens to sell for meat. They were even planning on trying to sell the meat as far away as Belgrade. They were able to save most of the rabbits, but the rest of the rabbits and chickens, their source of income, were killed in the fire. They were able to move the surviving animals to a family member’s house, but they will eventually need to rebuild a place to keep the animals.
Finally, as mentioned before, their “new” old house needs a new roof. They were buying supplies like wooden beams to rebuild the roof as they earned the money. All of these beams were stored in the barn so they also lost all the new building materials (including windows and doors) that they bought for the house. So now, without a barn for the animals and food and materials to fix the house, they must wait even longer to move into their house. They were already struggling financially before the fire, so now things are even worse.
To rebuild the barn, fix the house/roof, replace the animals, and to do other repairs, they family would need approximately $1,400 USD. For comparison, it would cost $2,000 USD for Tom and I to have new shingles put on our small roof. To us, its nothing to spend $1,400 on our home, but for a struggling family in rural Serbia, it’s just about impossible.
These two people are really wonderful people and I am so lucky to have them in my English class. I have been so blessed in life that I have never had to struggle financially. I couldn’t image what they must be going through. I also couldn’t imagine sitting back and doing nothing when I know I have the ability to help them. Mother Teresa once said, "If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." I know it is impossible to help out every single person that is going through a difficult time, but this could be our chance to help that one person (or family) anyway. Most people fundraise for their service trips abroad. They ask for money for everything from their plane ticket to their living costs abroad. I decided to fund this trip entirely by myself because I didn’t want to ask any of you for money. Now that this family has lost their barn in the fire, I feel it is appropriate to ask you for your help in the form of donations for the family. They would only need $1,400 USD to repair the damage. And I hope between all my blog readers and your friends and family we can raise the money to help this family. If you would like to make a contribution, please contact me at jnc5000@gmail.com. Please pass this on to family and friends.
Thank you for reading this post. Please keep their family in your prayers.
On a side note, the police have not determined the cause of the fire. It may have been a spark from a neighbor’s chimney, but they don’t know. Another possibility is that someone, while attempting to steal some rabbits, dropped a cigarette/cigar in the hay. (They family said they noticed a few things missing from the barn in the past).
No comments:
Post a Comment