It was a year long job assignment

in Bosnia for Paula and Ray Kreiner, but in many ways it was life-changing.

When it ended, they became

surrogate parents to four young people, bringing them to the United States

to complete their education. They are among only about 35 Bosnians who

have had this opportunity.

Ray Kreiner went to Sarajevo

in October 1998 as director of resource management for MPRI, Military

Personal Resources Inc., an American company based in Alexandria, Va.

The company is contracted to train and equip the Federation military of

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

His wife joined him on the

first day of 1999 and remained there until March, returning again in June

and staying until the end of Kreiner's tour that September. For both,

it was what Paula Kreiner called "an eye-opening experience,"

a time during which she learned a little of the all-consuming job it can

be simply to maintain a home and craft nutritious meals from limited and

frequently unfamiliar foods; to make friends with people whose homes have

been destroyed in repeated battles among religious and ethnic groups;

to deal with impassable streets and intermittent household utility services.

What does a master gardener

from Peachtree City, Ga., know about avoiding land mines and ignoring

machine gun-toting security patrols in the streets and shops? The breakup

of Yugoslavian states, deep-rooted ethnic conflicts and the hopelessness

of the economy combined to inflict a near-lethal blow to a culture that

is struggling to survive in a new millennium.

People of conscience and good

will find themselves stirred to try to help in some way. But what to do?

To a middle-class American, everything about Bosnia is like "a soup

sandwich," Paula Kreiner said. "You think you've got an answer

and it slides through your fingers."

Ethnic conflicts run deep.

"The situation will flare up again and again in our generation,"

Kreiner said. "They have no economy at all and the laws allow no

recourse through the courts. If you've invested, the money is gone, and

there's no hope of getting it out of there.

"Not that our way is perfect"

she hastens to avoid appearing to be an American who believes the American

way is the only way "but if we could take their brightest and give

them a chance to see how things can be handled, with their background,

maybe they could see how to correct their problems."

Sending their children abroad

to study is prohibitively expensive in a country where the average monthly

income is less than $300 a month and the cost of living astronomical.

Kreiner remembers a price tag of more than $40 U.S. for a muffin pan,

and is keenly aware that even if they could enlist financial aid to bring

the students here, their leaving home would prove a considerable cost

to their families. Their jobs as interpreters helped support their families.

The Kreiners' son married recently

and "doesn't need us now," so they decided to "adopt"

five Bosnian young people and bring them to the United States to complete

their educations. "We realized that in this situation, the only hope

for long-term help is to try to get the best out of Bosnia into the United

States, [farther away] than just to Europe," Paula Kreiner says.

And they did it. Although one

of the five had to return home, four young people, 24 to 30 years of age,

have come to the States and started college in Louisiana.

"We tried anything we

could think of to get finances that would have enabled us to have them

here in Georgia," Kreiner said, but success came when they located

an anonymous benefactress who arranged for their room and board, tuition

and books, at the University of Louisiana in Monroe, her hometown. "Monroe

is the home of Delta Air Lines," Kreiner said, "and the money

is there."

Retired Brig. Gen. Herb Lloyd,

currently in Nigeria, was program training manager for MRPI, and responsible

for approximately 40 interpreter-translators in BiH, including the youths

now in America. He helped coordinate their scholarships.

Although at first the Kreiners

expected that the woman's largesse would take the students all the way

to completion of their degrees, that is now in doubt. Nonetheless, the

Kreiners are adamant that they will find a way to secure that goal, preferably

in Monroe, a small, quiet town that seems better suited to foreign students

than a frenetic metropolis like Atlanta.

The foursome two women and

two men spent the holidays in Peachtree City with the Kreiners, who introduced

them to friends at an open house earlier in December. Kreiner stressed

that she is "not seeking publicity or donations for these young people

nor for their homeland, but just awareness."

"They are absolutely delightful,

and each has a different story," she said. Three are Croatian Catholics,

she said, and the fourth, tall brunette Amira Ceric, 24, is ethnic Montenegrin,

a Muslim she was Ray Kreiner's interpreter during his time in Bosnia.

Her father is a retired clothing manufacturer and her mother once worked

in the courts.

Ceric is majoring in computer

science.

Zdravko Markov, the only boy

in a family of four sisters, is 27. His mother is retired and his father

now in forestry. Like all of the students, his education at home was interrupted

more credits to graduate in BiH, but is now only a freshman.

Ivona Jukic, 29, and her sister

were in England when fighting broke out at home. They were spared much

of the dangers, but during their absence, her father, now retired, and

her mom, a technician, had to move to a different state. The attractive

blonde is a prelaw major whose goal is a practice in international law.

And Eugen Knezovic, 27, is

the son of two teachers. His mom, he said, teaches first through fourth

grades, but his dad, who once taught fifth through eighth, is now a city

administrator.

"Gene," as he is

now known, is a finance major who has been bucking the system since he

was about 4 years old. His good grounding in English stems from the choice

he made when he first started school, rejecting the study of Russian in

the face of government disapproval.

While all of them said they

had some idea of what to expect in America, based on television images,

they were struck by the quality of life here. Kreiner said the attitude

of the American people has been the most overwhelming thing: their generosity,

kindness and friendliness, far beyond anything the Bosnians could imagine.

The country's size, geographically

and otherwise, amazes them. "Everything's huge," said one. "The

stores, even the meals are huge; television has too many channels."

The Kreiners took them to Atlanta

where Knezovic saw his first real skyscraper. They've enjoyed shopping

at an outlet mall and trying new foods. Ice cream is a favorite, but they

didn't care for sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving, and Mexican food has a

spice that is not to Jukic's liking.

And while they all admitted

a slight homesickness because of the season Christmas for three of them,

Ramadan for Ceric, who is having a hard time fasting in America they know

their holiday here was much more lavish than that of their families.

Asked how their parents are

coping without the income they had represented all worked directly or

indirectly as interpreters for MRPI Jukic answered instantaneously: "They

are magicians. They can make something out of nothing."

Everyone laughed, but Paula

Kreiner backed up her statement with an example of how several "jobs"

can be generated out of something so mundane as the delivery of a load

of sand for a building project: First a truck-driver has to be found,

and then the sand is dumped in the street two blocks from the project,

where someone else mixes it with mortar. Moving it to the building site,

of course, requires several more entrepreneurs with wheelbarrows and shovels.

Ray Kreiner said the breakup

of Yugoslavia set Serb against Muslim, and since the war, the Serbs have

become the target for the others.

"The commander of a military

unit might be Bosniac, the deputy Croatian," Kreiner said. "It's

leadership by consensus that is nonexistent. Everything has deteriorated.

To try to get laws passed to encourage development is impossible. At one

time more than half the entire economy was aid, and it may be more now."

Markov and Knezovic merely

laughed at the mention of parliament. BiH actually has three presidents

Bosniac, Croatian, and Serb who rotate power every eight months. Everywhere

organization is required, chaos reigns.

But although the young people

joked about conditions in their homeland, they turned serious, as Jukic

said firmly, "We are determined to go back and set things right."