Hello from KOSOVO!
Here’s a general list of fun facts about our month. We are blazing through month FOUR of the Race! Can you believe it??
-Last month, we had new teams that we lived and did ministry with. This month, we’re back to our original teams that we did months 1 and 2 with.
-Yesterday we celebrated 100 DAYS since we left home. CRAZY.
-Every day the temperature rests at a balmy 40 degrees (not Celsius).
-We are living on some old pull out couches in the back of the church we’re working with. This means ministry never really stops because there’s always someone around.
-Kosovo has only been a country since 2008. Some consider it to still just be an Albanian state.
-The Kosovar language is Albanian, which means we know some basic phrases from last month!
-What we thought was going to be a month working with Operation Christmas Child turned into a month of teaching English, home visits, and prayer meetings. It’s nice, but it’s definitely not what we expected.
-Domestic violence is a reality for many of the women here. To check out one of our home visit experiences, read my teammate Nikki’s blog 🙂
-There’s this restaurant called Happy that we frequent because it’s cheap (our food budget is very, very small) and they sell gyros that are basically in Panera bread bowls. The Lord himself crafted these sandwiches with His mighty hands because Oh. My. Gracious.
-I eat tomatoes now. By choice.
-I have officially been sick every month on the Race so far, which is super fun.
-The entire church (except of course, the bathroom) is heated by one wood-burning stove. My little southern heart is 1) fascinated by this (THE FIRE IS INSIDE THE HOUSE IT’S SO COOL) and 2) very, very, very, very cold.
-The wifi works… sometimes.
-The laundry machine works… sometimes.
-The Lord is teaching me a lot about making my own decisions, living in confidence, and not letting shame take root in my heart.
-Being away from home for the holidays has proved to be one of the hardest things on the Race so far, and we would definitely all appreciate your prayers.
For Christmas, a few of us will be going to the capital to spend time with one of our other teams, and then a few days later we will head back to Albania for a few days of rest and debrief with our whole squad. At the first of the year, we will all be going to ZAMBIA instead of Mozambique!
I love you all and I am praying for you! Let me know what’s going on in your life!
Hugs,
Anne
