It was dark, cold, and not much to see expect the gas station next to me with about twenty men sitting watching as me and my squad of 50 unloaded our ten tons of equipment of the bus. We were told to walk about twenty five feet to the Lightforce sign which we couldn’t see and then take a right down a rocky drive way which was at least a 100 feet in complete darkness so it felt like a mile in my mind, and then to Lightforce where my squad and I would be living . Walking down this long drive way it had just hit me that I was in another country in a different, in a different time zone, and my first time out of America. This was all so new to me and I told myself the whole way on the plane and before then that I would be fine and this is what I wanted, but walking walking down that long road I got that sudden lonely feeling of I am not coming back for a long time and that this is for nine months.
But here I am writing this blog in october looking back realizing, that feeling I had walking down that road was ok and good because after that moment I had quick comfort form my father, my eternal father in heaven who loves moments like this were there is nothing else in the world that steal our attention, nothing that could pull us away from him. I realized then that that what this whole nine months was for, an invitation to leave all things behind and seek him.
Being here in Albania me and my team of seven stayed in the city of Lezhe were my squad first arrived and then the other teams all went to Tirana the capital, and Durres anther city that are both way bigger than Lezhe. In Lezhe my team and I work and live at Lightforce which host kids camps and is also a farm. The work we do here fixing rooms, painting, gardening(a lot), cleaning up and watching after the animals. We work with Frokk the employee here who gives us work for the day starting at 8am to about 4pm monday through friday. This was very challenging and still is for my team and I but once we learned that all the other teams were working with churches and kids it became much harder to keep a good attitude everyday doing the same thing for hours like rubbing a window or giving the same wall 4 to 5 coats of whitewash( basically watered down paint) and pulling weeds out of the ground that come back a week later. Things became very frustrating like pulling the weeds out with our hands not being able to use any chemicals so they won’t come back, doing things only to do them again made the days long and waking up hard. The place where we were staying was also a 45-50min walk away from town where people and stores and everything else is so this mad it harder as well. I then had the quick realization and told my self that this is what I signed up for and most importantly I came here to serve. I also got the strongest feeling form the Lord that he wants to work on me just as much a I wanted to work with other people and help them. That then reminded me of how important to work on myself and rather to help other people because you can’t help people when you are hurting yourself. I read this quote that goes along with this and that I felt like i needed to share this, “ Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then leaning over us, He whispers, Let’s go do that together.” Reading this quote here helped me find the joy in my work everyday and I love it.
