Ambassador thankful for Church's humanitarian work
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Once a Kosovo refugee, Avni Spahiu is now an ambassador to the United States from that nation who on Nov. 16, expressed his gratitude to a General Authority for the humanitarian service given by the Church during the dark days of a decade ago.
The expression came on Nov. 16, while the ambassador was a guest lecturer at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
Ross "Rusty" Butler, UVU international vice president, who hosted Mr. Spahiu's visit, related the story.
"In the 1990s," he wrote in an e-mail, "a journalist and publisher of an underground newspaper in Kosovo, Avni Spahiu, became a refugee because of the ethnic cleansing by Yugoslav troops that ultimately displaced, by UN count, over 1 million Kosovo Albanians.
"NATO air and ground forces engaged the Milosevic troops in a furious war until the Yugoslav dictator capitulated in June 1999. Tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians were killed, and mass graves revealed nearly 2,000 bodies.
"The human suffering was staggering, and many humanitarian organizations stepped in. One of the most prominent was the LDS Humanitarian Services, which in 1999 put out a call for quilts to help the refugees as winter approached."
Hundreds of thousands of quilts came from far-flung locales as a result. Mr. Spahiu was one of the recipients of the LDS effort. In 2008, he would become the first ambassador to the United States from Kosovo, the newest nation in the world.
He lectured at the university Nov. 14-17, his first visit to Utah. While in Utah, he visited Church headquarters and met Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve, who two months earlier had dedicated Kosovo for the preaching of the gospel.
"On behalf of the people of Kosovo, Ambassador Spahiu sincerely thanked Elder Nelson for the generosity Church members had shown him and his people," the university administrator wrote.
"Shortly thereafter, during a visit to the LDS Humanitarian Center, the ambassador and his daughter VJosa were presented with another quilt, thus completing the circle."
