I thought for a little change of pace I would give you a picture snapshot blog of our first week in Tirana, Albania. We are so blessed to to be working with the Church of the Nazarene, a local church that serves this beautiful community. We are painting and preparing a space that they will use for a kindergarten coming in September. Guess what we are artists?? Who knew? Okay maybe not but we have a yes in our heart, were asked to paint murals and pretty detailed things on the wall and that’s what we are doing! It’s pretty hot here like over 100 degrees and we don’t have any air conditioning. Honestly that has been an adjustment, but we are getting there. We also may have used up all the water (non-drinking) in our living space and are not sure when that will be refilled. You know adjustments! But we are learning to live in community and see the value of having 11 girls under one roof!
My teammates tracing and painting a mural for the Kindergarten court yard. Most of our days have been spent tracing, painting, and cleaning up the building.
This is the hallway I worked with other teammates to paint. We painted flowers and butterflies. I never saw myself as an artist but I think it turned out well. We have some professionals on our team that help us not so artistic folk! Teamwork makes the dream work!
Today we got to go on an adventure into the main part of the city with our friend Kliton from the church. Albanians love quality time and we do too! We asked for directions and he insisted on taking us! We got to see some sights and spend some time getting to know him and Albanian culture better.
This is coffee from a shop we visited the other night for team time. Our plan was to go hang out and discuss what we needed to discuss. But God interrupted our plan. Don’t you just love when He does that? When we got there we met the owner Roni. After talking with him for a while he shared he was a devout Muslim. He talked with us for over an hour and we plan on coming back to this awesome coffee shop again to talk more. He was very open to hear our perspective and why we believe Jesus is the true God. The cool thing is at Launch we were able to choose a book from our mentor’s library to read on the race and pass along. I chose No God But One: Allah or Jesus? That’s no coincidence my friends! I pray that it will be a good resource when speaking with him about the differences of Islam and Christianity. Please pray for Roni as we continue to spend time with him that he will accept the truth of Christ.
We have some energetic boys that love to hang out with us. We played soccer with them the other night and want to continue building a relationship with them. They don’t speak a lot of english but are hilarious and enjoy hanging out with us. Pray for them as well.
As you can see it’s been a busy but AMAZING week! It’s only beginning! We still have about three or so weeks left here. Please pray for the things that I mentioned above, any new relationships that the Lord would have us make, unity in our teams and group of 11 lovely ladies, being able to give honest and helpful feedback to each other, that we will be wise with our resources and better understand them (ex. water situation) and that we will be able to adjust to the heat without a spirit of complaining. We are so blessed here in Tirana and I look forward to what the Lord has in store for this month!
