Refreshing. Green. Not Humid. Summer. Fa Doras. Cute old men. Bicycles. Beautiful architecture. Full of character. Cute gates everywhere with geometrical patterns.
These were my first impressions of Albania & what GREAT first impressions they were. 🙂
(This is the lake the city of Pogradec is on, so we get to enjoy this beautiful gift of a view every day!)
I’m excited for this month & all the Lord has in store. We get to work alongside Claus & Marie Hoffman. They partner with Christ for the Nations in running a Bible school, discipleship program, church, missions training and community outreach.
We also get the opportunity to work alongside the 8 interns from the Bible school. We are pretty much one big happy family! We sleep in the same building as the interns, eat every meal together, wash dishes together, clean together, brush our teeth together (jk jk).
God is so good! He placed us exactly where a couple of our teammates could use their degrees to reach the community here in a very practical way.
Several of the staff & interns at the Bible school are in need of physical therapy. There are only two physical therapists in all of Albania!!!!! Keeley went to school for PT so she has been able to help. She absolutely LOVES it and these women cant stop talking about how much better they feel after only a week of treatment!
Also one of my other teammates,Joanna, has a degree in English and is a certified ESL teacher. So she has been able to teach English to many of the interns and staff who have been wanting to learn English. 🙂
Monday-Thursday mornings are filled with PT, English & the rest of us doing different odd jobs around the school. Whether that’s weeding, painting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning, cooking, or washing windows.
In the afternoons, our team is normally split into two groups because there is not enough room for us all to go to the same place. So half of us go to a nearby village to teach Bible stories, share testimonies, and play games with children and youth. Half of us go to the church here in town to pray with the local believers. Other afternoons half of us will attend a women’s Bible study here in town or lead a youth Bible study. We also have some of us go back to the village another day to lead a women’s Bible study there. So this month has involved a lot of teaching, preaching, and sharing of what Jesus has been doing in our lives.
SOOOOOO THANKFUL!!!! We are living at the Bible School so that means BEDS!!!!!!!!!! (Literally an answer to prayer, I’m thankful for sleeping pads but its amazing how much older you feel after sleeping on them for 5 months straight 🙂 )
Here are some brief facts on Albania:
– It was a communist nation until 1991 & can be compared to North Korea in extremism
– For 25 years any kind of religion was outlawed during the communist rule.
– Tolerance developed as a result of the atheistic state to the result that if a Muslim child becomes Christian the family will not totally disown them as is custom in other nations.
– The Germans controlled the nation during World War II BUT Albania was the only country that refused to surrender their Jews; the Jews were hidden in the mountainous regions, and some Jews from Macedonia even fled to Albania to seek refuge!
– The people here are soooo hospitable and loyal to one another.
– Cleanliness is SUPER important to this culture, which we have enjoyed because cleanliness was sometimes lacking in Asia.
– Married women have a choice of wearing their wedding ring on their left OR right hand.
Please join me in praying for these things specifically this month:
*Our hosts Claus & Marie have a home in Oklahoma that they still haven’t sold. (Its been six years since they left the States) They have been able to rent it out up until now but they just lost their renters and really need to sell it now. Please pray that the Lord will bring a buyer by the end of the month.
*Encouragement and healing over the PT patients.
*Provision for us to be able to find the equipment they need to be able to continue their therapy after Keeley leaves.
*Our team will continue to be present & investing in the life’s of the locals on a daily basis. May we love the interns and staff well of the Bible college, serving alongside them with joy even in the seemingly mundane tasks of washing dishes every day.
Thank you for all of your prayers and for continuing to read my blogs! 🙂 I know that I would not have made it this far without yalls support & the daily strength of Jesus! God is continuing to do amazing things in me as well as around me. 🙂
