One nineteen and a half hour bus ride later, down roads composed almost entirely of potholes, my new team of 7 ladies arrived in Elbasan, Albania. A big blue Mercedes van with a Jesus fish in the back window met us at a gas station. The jovial St. Lucian man driving (with the steering wheel on the right as it was purchased in the UK by his Scottish wife) helped transfer our luggage, and we piled in to be taken to our new home. Transitioning in our minds from Romania through Serbia and Macedonia where we had restroom breaks throughout the night’s drive to this, Albania, with a St. Lucian man and his Scottish wife made for quite the clash of cultures in our sleep-deprived, 19.5 hour bus ride mental state. To throw another fish into the pot, the van turns over a trash covered bridge entering the Roma gypsy community, down a pebbled drive through a tall iron gate and parking in front of a small teal building. “We are here,” Clement announces. We are living IN the gypsy community.
Clement and his wife Fiona have three beautiful boys with skin like honey and curly black hair—Joel (14), Joshua (12), and Timothy (6). They work with another missionary family from Albania serving as Youth With A Mission (YWAM) staff in Elbasan—Ilir and his wife Ola and their three adorable girls, Isabella (7), Iliora (3), and Emily (2). Needless to say, I have had lots of little brother/little sister time this month, which I adore.
Ilir and Ola run a feeding program out of the small kitchen in our little teal home Monday through Friday, serving forty of the Roma children a nutritional lunch preceded by a good hand washing and teeth brushing. We assist with this daily and do home visits with Clement in the mornings, run a children’s church service and adult meeting on Sunday afternoons, a Wednesday night prayer meeting for the community, Thursday evening home bible studies, and a Monday night worship with the YWAM staff. They put us into contact with Campus Crusades at the local university who have a Monday night prayer meeting and a Wednesday night student outreach. And then, there is a Christian English school on Tuesday nights where we assist with a few hours of English lessons. Our schedule stays pretty full, but I like it that way.
I walk out of the door of our home to be pounced on by Shawna and Blackie our two large guard dogs, past the trampoline decorated by the daily dead rat, and through the citric aroma of the orange trees in the front yard. I barely make it out of the front gate before the hugs begin. The children run from all the nooks and crannies of the neighborhood to receive our smiles and hugs and kisses and high fives and we ALWAYS play the name game (which consists of them pointing at themselves saying their name, saying jo jo jo–Albanian “no” pronounced yo–when I get it wrong, and then I have to say my name and they repeat it several times with the hugest, most joyful grins full of rotted teeth that you ever did see).
I revel in it. The girls and boys and their desire to love me without knowing me at all. They love with complete abandon. Embrace without holding back. And I love them right back. I love them in their innocence. Before they reach puberty and marry at age 13 or 14 and start having children of their own as their culture has taught them to do. Cultural norms that trap them. There are no dreams for a successful future as we know it. They know their reality.
But now, part of their reality includes a daily lunch in a small kitchen in a teal house. Part of it is a St. Lucian man and his Scottish wife and their own three gypsy look alikes who live and breathe for the Lord. Its partly a dedicated mother named Ola and a good earthly father named Ilir who have graciously accepted God’s calling to parent 40 more. It consists of the story of Zaccheus that I taught them on Sunday—where Jesus wanted to come and be a part of this “bad” man’s life because He loved Zaccheus just as much as all the “good” people. Part of that reality consists of walking down the streets yelling “I’m gonna sing, sing, sing. I’m gonna shout, shout, shout. I’m gonna sing. I’m gonna shout. Praise the Lord. When those gates are open wide, I’m gonna sit at Jesus’s side. I’m gonna sing. I’m gonna shout. Praise the Lord.”
And for these realities, I praise the Lord.
I praise the Lord for the clash of cultures. For the way He can laugh at our self imposed boundaries and say “Jo jo my dears, you are not all that different. You are all MINE.”
