Yesterday was our first full day of ministry! We spent Sunday, Monday & Tues flying out of America and bus-ing it through Turkey and Greece (we even drove through the mountains of Macedonia!). A total of 40-something odd hours of travel. The bus was 20-something hours alone. But praaaise, the biggest illness on the trip was probably my cold. An hour into our extended bus ride God gave us a warm welcome of orange skies and sunflowers.. thousands. We fell asleep and woke up to a sunrise overlooking mountains and ocean in Greece.
A couple days before all of that we were told in Atlanta that our first month of ministry would be working with children at a kids camp. I'd like to say that I hooted and hollered like most of the women on my squad.. let's just say children hold a special place in my heart. Very special. I remember walking along the beach a few weeks ago with my mom. We were heading back up to where our stuff was laid out and this little boy was running really fast and looking straight down at the sand as he was running. He wasn't even running towards me but I said, "If this little kid runs into me –" he did. He took a step back without looking up and kept running in another direction. I stopped in my tracks to stare at him. My mom cracked up laughing. I did too. I wasn't really annoyed. Just a little impatient. So believe it or not, I was actually just excited as the rest of my squad for this month of ministry. Even though I wasn't squealing like a lot of our ladies, their happiness brought me immediate joy and anticipation. And plus, it's full time ministry!!
Our first couple days with the kids has been great. Our Ministry contact, George, started Project Light Force through World Vision a couple decades ago and he now has booming facilities out here in the middle of a lower class rural community in Albania. Each of our teams take the kids around to different stations where they can do crafts, archery, swimming, soccer, rock wall climbing, bounce houses and more. Most of these kids, especially the boys, don't know of life outside of their community. These people are sustained by their farms and some of the children can't even go to school because their families need help. We got word that one of the little boys who we met on Wednesday had to leave camp early because his father needed him to come home and supervise the cattle while he went away. And that's life for many of them. We've spent only two days with this same group of kids and we've gotten to love the mess out of them! They leave tomorrow and we'll get a new group on Monday.
In other news, one of my team members (Susannah) has a birthday today! Me and the only Canadian (Nikki) kidnapped her out of bed at midnight and took her up to the balcony where we have squad meetings. Our other team members were waiting there with a cake made up of a pile of Albanian sugar cookies stuck together with Albanian chocolate icing. Nikki & I recounted the story of the kidnapping and how we actually had to wait for Susannah to get dressed and then drag her blindfolded up three flights of stairs. All the surrounding cattle neeeighed and baaaaa-ed in a hearty 'Amen' at our laughter at one o' clock in the morning. I love our team.
