One of the biggest differences between Americans and Albanians is that Americans like to have everything planned out. We want to know what our friends are doing this weekend so that we can clear our schedules and be able to hang out with them. We want to know when our next family vacation is and we plan for it 8 months before. We are supposed to know what college we want to go to by the time we are 18 and by 20 we are supposed to have decided what we want to do for the next 40 years of work. Now I’m not going to say that planning ahead is a bad thing, but Albania has taught me that you shouldn’t be too attached to your plans, because God might have different ones.
Last Friday we had a youth group service at the church we are working at. The teenagers in the church meet every week to learn about God, hang out, and also worship. The “plan” for me and my team was just to attend the service and to hangout with the youth in the church. When we arrived the worship team was practicing for their set. We sat down next to some of our Albanian friends and started catching up with them.
15 minutes before the service started my friend Gabriel looks at me and tells me that they don’t have a drummer and he’s telling me I need to drum. I look at him like he’s crazy and say “you’re joking right?”. Turns out he was being serious and he really wanted me to get up on stage and play a 4 song set. I was laughing and saying that there was no way I could do it. I didn’t know any of the songs and they were all in Albanian anyways. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t play the drums, but that I hadn’t planned on playing. I was out of practice because I hadn’t played the drums since I was in America. I also had never played music with these guys before.
I almost just wanted to say no because I thought it would be better if they played acoustically. I ended up biting the bullet though and the next thing I knew I was beating on this electric drum kit in front of the whole youth group. My whole team was smiling and laughing at me and I was trying to pretend like I knew what was going on. The only real help I got was when Gabriel would tell me right before the next song started if it was a fast one or a slow one. We ended up finishing the set and I mean it wasn’t the most perfect set anyone has ever heard before but we made it work and it was a lot of fun.
I’ve begun to notice that the Albanians are very good at living in the moment. When we go to get coffee the Americans all try and get money together right when the bill arrives at the table. The Albanians will look at us and say “Why are you worrying about that right now? Enjoy our time together and we will worry about paying when we leave.” Whenever we walk somewhere together all of the Americans walk at double the speed and the Albanians will say “Why are you in such a hurry? Slow down let’s enjoy this moment. We don’t have anywhere to be.”
I got a notecard about a month ago from someone who was at the end of their race. The card had advice for me for the next 9 months. One thing it said was “be where your feet are.” This has proven to be some of the most useful advice I have ever gotten. Before the race all I thought about was that I couldn’t wait until the race started. Then when we were preparing to launch I couldn’t wait until we got to Albania. Then we were in one city (Lezhe) and I couldn’t wait until we got to the next (Durres).
On Friday I was where my feet were. I decided what the heck! Let’s do this thing and not worry about what people are going to think after it’s done. When we make plans and refuse to stray from them we can end up limiting God. Sometimes doing something a little spontaneous and going out on a limb is the right thing to do. Taking risks is part of life and I’m learning this!
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6, 33-34
PS! I still need to raise 3,000 more dollars by the end of november to stay on this trip! I can’t run fundraisers anymore since I’m in Albania so the only fundraising I can do is online! You can donate on my blog home page! Any donations are appreciated. Thank you. 🙂
