After months of anticipation, weeks of preparation, and days of transportation – WE’RE HERE! We all gathered in Atlanta for Launch (a few final days of training before we fly out), then flew to Chicago, and on to Istanbul. We spent the night in the Istanbul airport before flying on to Tirana, the capital of Albania. From Tirana, we had a 45-minute car ride out to Lezhe (Lejh).
This month, we are serving alongside another team from R (our) Squad – Team Intrepid. They are a great group of young ladies, and I have enjoyed getting to know them a little better over the first week or so, and look forward to continuing to do so for the remainder of the month, and year. There also is an Ambassador group from AIM here. There are seven of them (5 women and 2 men) ages 16-18 (either recent HS graduates or rising seniors), led by 2 World Race alumnae. They also are a great group, and I have enjoyed serving alongside them as well.
Our ministry this month is helping at a kids camp here in Lezhe. They have a rock wall, a swimming pool, a small archery range, an awesome playground, a couple of bounce houses, a small football (soccer) pitch, and lots of other equipment, like mini bowling, giant chess, Frisbees, etc. It has been a blast! I clearly do not have as much energy as I used to, but I am enjoying myself thoroughly chasing these kids around, and watching them have such a grand time. There are a couple of small pool tables in the game room, so I’ve been trying to teach a few of them how to shoot pool, but only being able to say “yes” and “no” (“po” and “jo” – pronounced “yo”) in Albanian makes it rather challenging…
They also do a bit of farming in the compound. There are sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens. The goats recently had their kids, so they still need to be fed at meal times (the farmers harvest the goats’ milk, so the kids get a fortified supplement). The Ambassador team, Team Intrepid, and Team Galene rotate goat duty, so every third day part of our team has goat duty, which works out to mean that roughly every fifth or sixth day an individual can expect goat duty. There really isn’t much to it, except making sure that all of the kids get fed – there must be 25-30 of them. On a related note: after my group had goat duty on Monday morning, the goat ladies (I believe their names are Ducha and Flora) let us try to milk the goats. That was a sight. I was able to get a few ounces, but only in a very tiny stream. It would have taken hours to milk a single goat at the rate that I was going. The goat ladies just milk away, and go through a goat in a matter of a minute or two. It is quite impressive.
Well that was an exciting update. Don’t get used to it. We’re not sure yet if there will be kids (human children) here next week. Originally there were supposed to be, then there weren’t, and now we just don’t know. So pray that there are kids next week!
Update 2015/07/13:
We do have kids this week! Thanks for the prayers!
