Hello friends! For the past couple weeks we have been working with LightForce International in Lezhe, Albania. Our ministry site is in a beautiful location, about a 40 minute walk from the city, near . We are thankful to be living in rooms with bunk beds, to have warm showers, and for the delicious food our hosts prepare each day. During the week we have been helping with a youth day camp where we get to play with and love on kids all day!
LightForce also doubles as a farm, helping sustain the camp and the people who work there. Not only do they house us, but hundreds of pigs, goats, and sheep as well. As the camp runs we are also in charge of some simple tasks around the farm including feeding the baby goats. A few of us even got the chance to help the vet castrate about 100 pigs…not something I thought I would ever be doing, but glad I did.
If you are confused about what our ministry actually is, welcome to the club. As I was preparing for the World Race I heard over and over not to have expectations, and now I know why. In just two weeks I have fed baby goats, helped castrate pigs, played in bouncy castles, danced, laughed, been covered in goat poop, climbed a rock wall, worked on my archery skills, and so much more. Sometimes our ministry is showing God’s love to the children at camp, and sometimes it means jumping in the goat pen to feed the babies. So far ministry has not been actually sharing the Gospel with anyone, but showing the Gospel through the way we love others.
Thank you all so much for your prayers, support, encouragement, and love. I am so thankful for each one of you, and will do my best to keep you updated throughout this journey. I hope to get another blog up fairly soon about some of the kids I have come to love very dearly here in Albania.
**It is very difficult to upload pictures here, so look for pictures on Facebook for now**
Financial Update: I am past my October deadline of $11,000. My final deadline is January 1st, 2016, when I need to be fully funded ($16,277).
Next Month: I also have an exciting update on our month in Romania. We will be leaving Albania in one short week. After our month 1 debrief we will make our way to our ministry location for all squad month, however we have been given the opportunity to also travel to GREECE! For our first week some of us (those who have chosen to do so) will travel to Greece for two days of sightseeing (a bit of an out of pocket expense), and another 5 days of ministry! This will be the first time AIM has actively done ministry in Greece.
