This morning, I volunteered with three others to help Peter, the farm veterinarian, castrate 52 pigs. Despite my phobia of shots, I managed to hold one syringe of evil black serum, needle pointedly pointed away from me at arm’s length, as we walked the 15 feet to the pen of baby boy pigs. Deep in my mind, I knew it was an irrational fear, but I made sure to stand far away from Peter in case he decided to give us helpers shots too. I shifted nervously in my Wellingtons: they were at least four sizes too big. I would trip if I didn’t flee gingerly.
I watched one castration before I knew was too much for me. I’ve come a long way with my fear of needles, and I probably could have held a pig for Peter, but I decided that was a limit I didn’t need to push. I tapped out, giving my rubber boots to Lizzie, an Ambassador with a stronger stomach for surgery than I.
And so I decided to come to our room and write to you all about our life here. Our room has concrete floors and plaster walls with over ten coats of sparkling whitewash on them, because I was one of the people who put them there. There are eight bunk beds topped with thin leopard print mattresses and a narrow walkway between them, but only seven of us girls, so we each have a mattress to keep all our things. We do not have air conditioning, but even with the heat and humidity, it never gets unbearably hot in our room.
Our days are busy here. We wake up at 7:00 to do yoga (usually) or because flies are buzzing in our faces. We eat breakfast at 8:00, and the children arrive early for camp, which begins at 10:00.
Last year, my squad worked on making the camp beautiful and clean for the kids who come, and this year, it’s an honor to actually see the kids we were serving! They are dropped off by parents, or walk, or bike here every day, and enjoy a full day of archery, swimming, ping pong, chess, soccer, volleyball, climbing, team-building activities, bouncy castles, you name it! Our job is to play with them and tell them not to dive in the shallow end.
We are all exhausted and sweaty within an hour, and at 4:30 the kids disappear, leaving us to lie on the ground fanning ourselves or walk to Flora’s store for cold drinks and ice cream. We spend 5:00-6:00 reading our Bibles and praying, and then eat dinner. Fresh pork is a staple food on this pig farm.
After dinner is my favorite time of day, because that is when we do team time. Team time is a time for our group to come together after a day of hard work and give each other feedback, take care of housekeeping things, and most of all, hang out. This week and next, each Ambassador leads his or her own team time, telling us his or her story and leading us in a group activity.
Our team likes each other, so when team time is over, the team keeps hanging out, eating every existing Albanian snack and telling more stories about their lives before falling into bed to wake up and reluctantly, maybe do yoga or be annoyed awake by flies the next morning.
This trip is three weeks long, but it feels like we’ve been gone longer and like we won’t be flying home in one short week. Danielle and I love our Ambassadors. They became friends and supported each other from the start. They are bold. They are ready to try anything, starting with their first day of ministry when they were ordered to cut up four freshly slaughtered pigs into cookable portions. They are quick to share stories of their lives and experiences of God’s grace, both to individuals and to the two World Race teams who are also stationed here for the month. Issues and conflicts arise, like they always do in close communities in new environments, but Danielle and I are consistently impressed with the determination of this group to start over every day, forgive, and speak up.
We also marvel that for many, this journey in Albania is their first mission trip, and first time out of the U.S. When our trip was switched from Ireland to Albania, our group of 15 dropped down to a group of seven, and we were left with the most gutsy, adaptable, tough, adventurous team of 16-18 year olds you could hope to meet. Lilly, Rachel, Flynn, Lizzie, Brody, Caleb, and Andy are some of the most wonderful up and coming missionaries you could hope to meet. Watch for them.
On the Race, the ministries I loved the most were the ones I kept the entire year: blogging, because it meant sharing my life with friends like you. Being with my team, because it meant building friendships that would last a lifetime. Hanging out with wonderful people affects us more profoundly than we realize, and that is one of the places I see God the most.
Now, to be on a trip with Adventures in Missions again in the capacity as a leader, I am always excited about my work. This time, I’m not just here for the camp. This time, my job is to build up my team, listen to them, counsel them, learn from them. I love that my mission is the missionaries. It feels right. Danielle and I both say that we could see ourselves leading trips like this regularly, because we love empowering the community so much.
I thought it would be strange to come back to the place I was last May, and it is. I get nostalgic washing dishes, because it was hunched under that low wooden ceiling that my new Oak teammate Jayce and I had our first long conversation about our favorite podcasts and how much we like stories. Sitting in the main room upstairs reminds me of being tired but afraid to cuddle to close to others, lest the lice we picked up in Central America still lurked in someone’s hair. I feel pride when I see all the white walls because I know how much work we put into them. It’s a pleasure to work again alongside the beautiful people here, like Flora, Sadia, Dousha, Peter, and Frok, most of whom, I was delighted to see, vaguely remembered me from last year. With a little more Albanian at my disposal, talking with them is a great pleasure.
The one place I have not returned to is the concrete slab we laid last year over a large swamp of pig feces. I have orders to check it out and take a picture, see if it lasted a year. I meant to go this morning and look at it, between pig castrations. But, like I said, some jobs are beyond me. Holding that syringe was the bravest thing I’ve done all week.
