We have been in Albania less than a week and God is already moving in my life. But first how we got here….
53 hours of travel—over 24 of those hours was on a bus. This was actually not as torturous as you would think. I not only had a great bus seat partner (Tennyson) but we also got to travel through several countries to get to Albania. Greece and Macedonia were BEAUTIFUL (Macedonia was an accidental detour that the bus driver made). This was a fun time of bonding for our entire squad and it also showed everyone’s attitude about traveling, which was super positive!!
When we got to our contact in Albania that we will be doing ministry with for the month-I was completely amazed. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the camp. We were told that we would be sleeping in our tents this month, and we have bunk beds in actual rooms-16 girls in my room. We are supporting the staff here that are running a summer camp for 130 kids. The kids come from various villages around the area, World Vision partners with our host (who is part of Light Force) to sponsor the kids to come to the camp for a week. Each week we get a new group of kids. Our day looks like this:
7:15 Breakfast
8:00 Proverb studies with our squad
8:30 Camp starts
10:00 Banana break-literally we take 10 and the kids eat a banana and we do to!!
1:00 Lunch/Siesta break for the kids-during this time we can have our team feedbacks, catch up on journaling, do laundry, and our various duties around the camp
3:30 Camp starts back up/croissant break
7:00 Dinner time
Some nights the ministry ends at dinner time and some nights it goes to 9:00After the camp is over for the day we have a worship session with our squad.
On our day off we have been exploring as a squad the surrounding area like the town, beach, and next weekend the castle that is on a mountain. We obviously have to be aware at all times but the town is safe.
One of the most beneficial things that has happened for me this week was working on kitchen duty. After each meal we have to wash the dishes and since the kitchen is smaller we can only have a couple people washing at a time. First thing that so impressed me was the servant heart I saw in many of my squad-mates that would automatically wash the dishes after every meal–and trust me no one is ever really jumping at the opportunity to wash dishes, there are 55 of us. Im not going to lie I had a little bit of a bad attitude because I felt that some of my squad mates were serving more than others since there are 55 of us. I don’t know if that would make since but I just felt bad for them, but God is good and redeems.
Redemption was getting to spend time with the women who cook all our meals and the girls on my squad with huge servant hearts. The local Albanian women are so sweet and just through serving them I was blessed. Some of the girls including me got to pray with the women. One of them was wanting to have a son and the other women’s ankle was swollen. It was awesome getting to bridge the gap of language barriers and share the love of Christ. And then the other amazing blessing was they made us COFFEE!!!!! This makes me sound extremely shallow but it was such a comfort to have that treat. I’m not going to lie I had been homesick earlier in the week and this little bit of home was such a blessing!! Even though we are in a pretty amazing location as far as WR standards go, we have been forgoing the American staples and comforts that are always at our finger tips. It was amazing how something so simple like a shot of coffee and getting to pray for two women was everything to me. I didn’t realize how many comforts I took advantage of and clung to instead of Christ.
Well that was probably just a bunch of rambling- I promise to do better with blogging and making sense and adding pictures!!
Love you all back in the states!
