October 13, 1999
Southern Baptists blanket
Kosovo with 36,000 gifts
___By Jenny Rogers
___SBC International Mission Board
___RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--More than 36,000 blankets--a love gift from Southern Baptists--set sail for Kosovo Sept. 30, said Jean McDaniel, transportation specialist at the International Mission Board.
___The blankets were sealed in 12 40-foot containers and loaded onto the SL Meteor docked in Norfolk, Va., for the three-week trip ahead. From there the ship was to travel to New York, then across the Atlantic to offload in Thessaloniki, Greece.
___A trucking company will carry the blankets across Macedonia and into Pristina, the Yugoslav province's capital, where warehouses are waiting.
___"In my wildest imagination, I couldn't have imagined the response this big in such a short time," McDaniel said. "It's unreal."
___The "Blanket Kosovo With Love" project began in August as the IMB's response to thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees returning to Kosovo and facing a harsh winter climate similar to America's Colorado Rockies.
___"It will start getting cold in October, and those affected by the war face a long winter with little protection from the cold," said Jim Brown, the IMB's human needs consultant.
___As many as 860,000 Kosovar Albanians fled or were expelled from the province of Yugoslavia in the spring. The vast majority returned to find their homes destroyed by Serbs or damaged by NATO bombs.
___The blankets, all new and made of wool, Vellux or with a thermal weave, were each labeled "Zoti ju bekoft," or "God loves you" in Albanian, and "Southern Baptists in America's Love Gift to Kosovo" on brightly colored tags.
___McDaniel was touched by the quality and care put into the blankets.
___"There were baby blankets, children's blankets," she said. "People had crocheted blankets. There were handmade quilts."
___She recalled hearing from a man who said churches literally "cleaned out every blanket" in the stores in his town for the drive.
___Shipments, coordinated by Baptist Men and Woman's Missionary Union leaders in each state, came from all over the country--even flood-ravaged North Carolina.
___"One of the trucks was completely packed," she said. "There were blankets everywhere--even crammed under the seats."
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