Hello from the farm! I am on the World Race! I have had a wonderful few wireless days but it is great to have a few minutes of Internet to be able to send this message across the ocean 🙂
Right now, there are THREE Adventures in Missions teams living and working at Lightforce Ministries in Lezhe, Albania: the 2 World Race teams and an “Ambassadors” team of 16-18 year olds. It has already been such a blessing to have them here with us, since they’ve done most of the cleaning up around the ministry’s campus.
The majority of our ministry this month will be helping to run a day camp – basically we’re going to be camp counselors, supporting an Albanian group leader. They didn’t have a camp this week, so when we arrived on Friday, we had a quick briefing and tour of the campus, and then most of us alternated napping and meals for the rest of the day. (None of us got a great night’s sleep during our 14 hour layover in Istanbul – I was excited to be back in a familiar airport!)
Yesterday, we sampled all of the activities that we’ll be helping with. We started out the day with rock climbing and ended with archery, with lots of different games in between. We could have between 40 and 60 kids descending on the property tomorrow morning and while it’s going to be a lot of work in the hot sun, it’s going to be very fun.
Today, we did our own worship service at camp and then hiked over to some beautiful ruins of a castle/fortress. I forgot my picture connector or I would be sharing some of those photos now (only about 100 so far). On the way there and back we stopped at a mall in town to take advantage of the wifi, rest up our feet and get some supplies/money from the ATM.
Last, a note about our lodging – it is amazing! The girls are sharing a bunk room with plenty of space for all the gear that we’re not using, because we have beds! And pillows! And sheets! Really, the only thing distinguishing this from an American overnight camp is the incredible food we’re being served and the squatty-potties. (Google that if you need a visual reference, I draw the line at taking pictures of bathrooms.) The camp doubles as a working farm, so we are also splitting baby goat feeding duty between our teams. Once the Ambassadors team leaves, we’ll probably take on some extra cleaning too.
I doubt I’ll be able to get two posts up every week since the main wifi area is a 40 minute walk away, but know that my team and I are working hard and are excited to share a spirit of love and teamwork with the kids we’re about to meet!
Thank you for all your prayers and support that have enabled me to be here!
