Our time here in Albania is wrapping up. I haven’t written much about it yet, but this has been one of my favorite months. Our ministry has been a bit unusual – the first week we helped renovate our pastor’s old church and into a youth center. We then were asked to go around the city and make contacts to bring to the church and youth center. That sounded like an easy task – I mean, it’s not super hard to go hit up a few coffee shops and talk to strangers – but it was more challenging than expected. Due to the long history of turkish influence, many people here are muslim. Not all are practicing muslims, but their families are muslims and so they claim it as their religion. It was easy to make friends this month – most people love to practice their English with us – but much harder to get them to come to church with us. Despite that, a few people did venture in to church! Our pastor told us that is a rare occurrence!
As we leave Albania, I will continue to be praying for the people here – that God would break down the barriers that they have to receiving the gospel. Prayers for peace as election results are announced in the upcoming weeks. Prayers for the seeds that we have planted, that they would continue to grow. And prayers for the pastor that we have been working with, that he would get rest and be renewed, and that he would continue to grow the church (he has been church planting for years, and has big visions for his church).
Thank you all for your support!
If you want to see the promo video my talented teammate created for the youth center that we’ve been working on, you can click on this link:
http://sarasantiago.theworldrace.org/post/this-is-ethos
