“Please don’t shoot the children!” was the cry of Jeton’s mother the day the machine-gun wielding men entered their home. They had come to doors of thousands of homes in Kosovo, seeking to shoot each and every man in the village. Jeton’s father was hiding in the house but upon hearing his wife’s pleas he came out of hiding…to his death. Jeton was 15. He, his mother and siblings were forced to walk for a week to find refuge in Albania. It took the family four years to locate the body of Jeton’s father in a mass grave.
That was in 1999, the year that Serbian forces tried to eradicate ethnic Albanians from the land that is known as Kosovo. Thirteen thousand were killed and close to 1.5 million people were displaced by the conflict. What may be little known about this piece of history, though, is that American missionaries were largely responsible for rebuilding Kosovo. Jeton was deeply touched by the missionaries of Samaritan’s Purse who rebuilt his family’s home. He could not resist this love of Christ and after coming to faith, he grappled with the fact that he needed to forgive his father’s killers. Only the Holy Spirit made this possible, he recounts. Jeton now pastors a growing church in Kosovo.
Today, the darkness of those days continues to hang over this Muslim- majority country; fear and distrust are part of the cultural fabric. “We thought you were going to kill us,” Muslim neighbors told believers in the neighborhood of Victory Church Kosova when the church began. But the love that the church has shown has attracted curious seekers who have met Jesus Christ. When that happens, entire families, entire communities are changed.
The Church in Kosovo and Albania has been in existence less than 20 years
and 75% of the population is under 35. There are few Christian resources. Unemployment is rampant; it’s not uncommon for nearly all of a congregation to be unemployed, so pastors like Jeton survive on what little is given to them. It’s a life of extreme faith.