Tani Rista (green shirt) helps lead Campus Crusade at the University of Korce.

The refugees languish on dingy foam mattresses in a dank gymnasium. Everything they own rests by their heads. They're among hundreds, perhaps thousands, shoehorned into that gym, eyes vacant from the shock of their experiences. They're among the ones to escape the bombs and the guns and the war crimes and the disease and the starvation. Maybe their loved ones didn't make it—but they're not sure. Worse yet, maybe they are sure. But now that they've beaten the odds, making it to Albania and to that gym, they're sure of this: their next meal. These are the refugees from Kosovo, and loving people await them in the food line beneath one of the backboards.

During the past several months, an estimated 1 million-plus Kosovars fled their homes in Yugoslavia. The world press has described this refugee crisis as the worst human tragedy in Europe since the Holocaust. Some 475,000 of those refugees trekked through the mountains to Albania, an impoverished country of just 3.1 million people.

Even before Albanian government leaders realized they lacked the resources to meet so many needs, the evangelical churches stepped in to help. More than 140 Albanian churches and 70 mission organizations quickly organized a network of people and resources to operate government sites for receiving refugees.

When a Kosovar family stumbled across the Albanian border, a bus carried them to transit centers in cities like Tirana, the capital. There refugees received the aforementioned mattresses and other necessary items, along with three meals a day. Eventually they left the transit center for long-term housing—a private home, an abandoned factory or warehouse, or, more likely, a tent city.

The United Nations helps fund the material items, the Albanian government secures locations, but Albanian Christians—including Campus Crusade for Christ students and staff members—are among the ones greeting and caring for the weary refugees.

These local believers, together with several staff members from other countries, are helping live out the words of Jesus to their Kosovar kinsmen, thus setting the stage for a new wave of evangelism in a spiritually long-oppressed land.

One afternoon at the transit center, Bani Doçi, a second-year Campus Crusade staff member, supervised the food line. He ensured the volunteers ladled out the right amounts of rice and meat kept warm in tall, plastic drums. He also supervised the cutting of bread and cheese—this transit center alone averaged 2,500 loaves of bread and 1,100 pounds of cheese each day.

That day, the lanky, easygoing Bani also played peacemaker. A refugee couple argued about not getting any meat—the supply has run out. Tensions escalated, and a worker threatened the couple, waving his rice ladle for emphasis. Bani physically restrained the worker and asked him to leave. "This is the first time something like this has happened since I've been coming here," he explained during an all-too-brief break from the frenetic pace. "I don't know if that worker is a Christian or not." (Some churches hired helpers to keep up with the refugee influx.)

Bani's day at the transit center was a picnic in the park compared to the experiences of volunteers in Shkoder (near the northern border of Albania) earlier in the crisis. Lida Mjeshtri, also a second-year staff member, brought a group of visiting American missionaries to help at a transit center operated by German and Dutch missionaries. They confronted ankle-deep human excrement and other shockingly unsanitary conditions while cleaning toilets and liberating backed-up sewer lines. "We were looking at each other and saying, 'Can you say cholera?' 'Can you say dysentery?' 'Can you say typhoid?'", recalled one of the Americans.

Lida remembers things a little differently. "I cried so much," the University of Shkoder graduate said softly, gently wiping away wells of tears. "It was so sad to see my people suffer like this. It's difficult to talk about hope in Jesus with them because they can't understand now. They're so traumatized."

Rudi Olldashi can identify with Lida's feelings. Rudi, a soft-spoken woman in her third year as a Campus Crusade staff member, lives in Korce (KOR-chuh), in southeastern Albania. A short drive outside the city takes one to the Qatron refugee camp, run by, among others, the Salvation Army. About 5,000 refugees live in its tents.

This isn't KOA. Tent after tent after tent fills every line of vision. A wire fence separates the grounds from the Morava Mountains looming in the distance. Boys play basketball on a makeshift, wooden hoop with yellow plastic balls. Other children line up for school in front of two larger tents. Still other children circle the kitchen tents, holding green plastic pails and waiting to receive more bread.

When Gani Bunjaku (above,left) told his story of fleeing Kosovo, his wife and daughter wept at the memory.

In tent number 21, section 2A, Rudi visited the Bunjaku family. Rudi and the Bunjakus share a common Albanian Muslim background, as do 70 percent of their countrymen. Over tiny cups of Turkish coffee, the Bunjakus preserved their spirit of hospitality. No small feat, considering that two foam mattresses served as living room, bedroom, dining room and, well, actually, every other room except the bathroom.

Gani Bunjaku, the father, sat with his wife and four of their seven children. Between drags on cigarettes, he told their escape story, though constantly insisting they were trying to forget it. He also talked about reading the Bible every day. The conversation turned to a discussion of the Bible and the Koran, and Jesus' teaching on loving one's enemies. Gani couldn't accept that; he declared, "If the Bible really says to love your enemies, I'll never read the Bible ever again."

Rudi's heart hurt over Gani's spiritual condition. "I can't compromise what I know is the truth, but it's very hard," she said later while walking down the camp driveway, crushed rock crunching underfoot. "I'm concerned about how much they really understand."

How Rudi, Bani, Lida and their 27 fellow Albanian staff members with Campus Crusade reached their own spiritual understanding might be one of the world's best-kept secrets. Indeed, Americans knew virtually nothing about Albania until the Kosovo crisis gave them nightly history lessons from Peter Jennings, CNN or whomever.

To continue the lesson, consider this: The government outlawed public worship in 1967, closing itself to the outside world and banning all churches. Then in 1991, the fall of Communism led to a loosening of restrictions.

That's where Campus Crusade entered the picture. In April 1991, Don Mansfield, a Campus Crusade staff member specializing in pioneering ministries to "closed" countries, attended a meeting of 27 mission organizations desiring to help re-introduce the gospel to Albania. They counted up the number of known believers in Christ in this land of 3.1 million people. How many did they identify?

Sixteen.

By the end of 1991, the JESUS film had premiered at the Palace of Congress in Tirana. Don and his team trained short-term missionary teams to launch campus outreaches while other groups planted churches. Today, Albania contains some 8,000 evangelical, baptized church members. "For 450 years Albanians had Islam forced on them [under Turkish rule during the Ottoman Empire], and for 50 years they had atheism forced on them," said Don while dodging potholes on the dusty streets of Tirana. "So for 500 years they had no freedom to think for themselves about what to believe."

Now that it has that freedom, the Albanian church is squeezing out every drop of opportunity to make Jesus known in word and especially in deed. Campus Crusade represents just one of hundreds of groups helping the refugees through the Albanian Evangelical Alliance, a co-op springing from that first meeting. A selfless setting aside of organizational agendas has set the tone for gospel outreach in Albania, not just during the Kosovo crisis, but right from the beginning.

	Tammy Thiessen (above, left) talked with refugees at the Korce tent city.

Campus Crusade is no exception. "We are focusing on meeting the immediate physical and emotional needs of the refugees as they arrive," said Dan Elliott, who currently leads Campus Crusade in Albania. "Once they're settled and get over the initial trauma," continued the slender Virginian, "there's usually an open door for sharing the gospel. [But] there's a fine line between taking advantage of the situation and helping people in times of trauma when they are made to realize their condition before God."

Bani, the transit-center volunteer, concurred. "I haven't had the chance to share the gospel with the Kosovars yet," he admitted. "We should, but there's a time and a place for everything, and right now the Kosovars need our deeds more than our words. Hopefully this summer we'll be able to share the gospel with them."

He referred to Project AERO (Albanian Evangelical Rural Outreach), an annual emphasis of the Alliance taking the JESUS film to Albanian villages. AERO was to be re-configured this summer for film showings to refugees throughout the country.

Campus Crusade's overall strategy, focusing on the Kosovars' spiritual condition, reflects an outlook beyond the immediate crisis. "I wish I could say the refugees will all go home, but the fact is some won't," says Cori Crawford, an American staff member who helps coordinate the refugee efforts of the Albanian Christian community. "The relief agencies will come and go as they're needed, but we're here for the long haul of reaching the refugees for Christ."

Since the initial reporting for this story, 12 Project AERO teams showed the JESUS film to 3,620 refugees, with 52 indicating decisions to receive Christ. After the end of AERO and with the change in the war situation, Dan Elliott led a team into Kosovo itself for two film showings to about 600 people. At one of the showings about 200 had to be turned away because of space limitations.

Every new political development in the Balkans requires a change in the evangelical response to the refugee crisis. As this article goes to print, tent cities similar to the one described in this article now often serve as transition camps to prepare refugees to return to their homeland. Just as in the refugee camps, Campus Crusade staff members will await them in the capital of Kosovo––a short-term team will launch a campus ministry at the University of Prishtina.