Well, I’m finally here. After all this preparing, struggling, begging for money, and following God, He has finally led me here; to a farm in Lezhe, Albania. Life in Albania is slow. Almost too slow. A day in my life looks like this: Wake up, go eat a boiled egg and piece of toast, squad Bible study, scoop pig poop or garden, take a nap, go to the market and get ice cream with Claudia, take another nap, complain to Clauds that I’m fat and no more ice-cream, spend some time with Jesus, play card games, eat dinner, team time, lay in bed and listen to Sycamore and Seamore (mystery animals living in the walls of our room), fall asleep listening to the dogs, goats, sheep, pigs, and the cow. Life is sweet.
In these 2 weeks, God has shown me how to have a servant’s heart. The farm is also a campground for kids. The kids aren’t here, so we have been doing stuff around the farm to get ready for the kids. This looks like white lime washing, gardening, scooping pig poop, helping the kitchen ladies, and unloading hay bales. The first few days, I had the absolute worst attitude. I just sat there watching everyone work while thinking to myself, “why did I ask all these people for money so I could fly to Albania and pick weeds?” After taking this up with God, He showed me that just because I am not seeing the results immediately that He’s using our manual labor to affect others. I went into the next day with a fresh start, better attitude, and open mind. Then I hear the words, “get a shovel and meet me at the pig pen”. Yeah, the whole open mind thing went out the window. As I’m sliding around in poop, with it seeping in between my toes (bad day to wear sandals), I just had to stand back and laugh. God didn’t bring me here for my own desires. He brought me here for Him, so I could serve and get out of my comfort zone. He brought me here so I could put others before myself, so I could get a deeper understanding of what it looks like to be more like Him. It’s not at all about me.
Today while I was spending time with Jesus in this Bible study on my phone, the title was, “You’re a work in progress”. It talked about how we’re always going to be ‘under construction’ and God is always ‘renovating’ parts in your life so we can grow more and more into Christ’s imagine. Then it continued to talk about how we’re not growing if we’re not stepping out of our comfort zone. This really stuck with me. Believe me, spending my days in a pig’s pen is not exactly what I call comfortable. As weird as it sounds, I am so thankful that I got to spend 2 weeks on the farm serving. He really reminded me why I’m actually here.
Next we’re going to Tirana, the capital of Albania. We will be staying there the rest of the time we have in Albania. I will be living at a church with my team of 7 girls. Our ministry will include doing a VBS, prayer walking around the neighborhood and telling the community about the VBS, hanging out with the youth, and evangelizing to the gypsy community. We can’t wait to see how God is going to use us in Tirana.
Make sure you subscribe so you can follow along this journey!
Love y’all deep,
-Mal
