Paul Jones: he is our leader for the trip and has served Pastor Bernard's church 3 times in the past, so he is by far the most knowledgeable about Capljina. He lives in Woodstock and has one teenage daughter and he works for the corporate office of an Auto Parts store.
John Morgan: John lives in Alpharetta and he works as a manager for a golf course, so he gets to enjoy the outdoors all week long! John is good friends with Paul, and he and his wife adopted a baby girl this year!
Aaron Melton: Aaron lives Woodstock. He works at Philips(really close to our apartment :).) He is dating Sarah
Sarah McClure: Sarah went to FSU and lives in Midtown really close to my old apartment. She sometimes sings and acts and she works at a talent agency
Elizabeth Burgaller (most people call her BJ): She lives in Alpharetta with her husband. They are originally from New Jersey, but moved to Georgia about 5 years ago. She enjoys gardening and is good friends with Nancy.
Nancy Smith: she lives in John's Creek with her husband. She and BJ are good friends. She has children who are in their 20's.
Ryan and Erica Knight: that's us! We live in Dunwoody and Ryan works at Carmax Auto Finance as a risk analyst. I work at Slingshot Product Development Group as an Industrial Designer.
So, a little about Capljina that I got from Wikipedia:
Not much is known about this city but it was founded by Romans in the 5 BC where it got its name from. The name is the same as it was 2000 years ago.
In WWII Ustashe committed atrocities in Čapljina and nearby villages, as mentioned in the Croatian nationalist song Jasenovac i Gradiska stara. Among these was the Prebilovci massacre, in which as many as 4000 people including 600 from Prebilovci may have been killed.
Since World War II it has been an important road and rail transportation link, connecting the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the port of Ploče in Croatia. During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina the city was taken over by the Croatian Defence Council who expelled the non Croat population and set up concentration camps for Bosniaks in Gabela.[1]
During the Summer of 2007 wildfires caused extensive damage
throughout the
rural part of the municipality.
To the right is Capljina's Coat of Arms, along with a map of Capljina's location.
When we go to Bosnia, we will be working with Pastor Bernard and his church. We will meet his family and spend a good bit of time with them along with other church members as we work to revitalize their site, build the bridge, and to get to know the local citizens.
We have our next team meeting this upcoming Wednesday and our retreat is coming up too. Ryan and I are researching Bosnia's culture for the retreat, so we will update you with that once we gather all of that information. I also have a friend from my sorority(Katie) who is currently in Sarejevo with a team who is working to reach college students in the city. I am enjoying reading their team's blog and getting to know a little more about Bosnian culture. We hope to be able to catch up with Katie while we are there, but will not be sure until travel plans are finalized.
Signing off,
Erica
