We’ve been in Albania for almost 3 weeks now. After spending 5 months in Asia(which I did enjoy! Asia was awesome in a lot of ways but SO different from America) Albania is a breath of fresh air. Literally and figuratively.
The air is cleaner and clearer here and the culture and food is amazing! I’m having a bast and I can’t believe this month is almost over. It’s insane!
First of all, I LOVE it here! I love the culture, the people, the food, and the weather. It’s the land of cheese, crepes, pizza, gelato, gyros and more!
My team is partnered with another team this month so all 16 of us are living in the same tiny “house.” The space is small and it’s really only 4 “bedrooms” and a “bathroom.” But it’s good. I’m thankful.
This month we are working with a local church in the poorest area of the city of Tirana. So far we’ve done a variety of different things here. The first few days we did odd jobs like moving furniture in a house that the church owns that will soon be the very first Christian Pre-School/Kindergarden in Tirana. Later we were all assigned classes, some of us are teaching english, some teach guitar, some teach piano and two of us are teaching voice lessons. I’m doing voice lessons. Which is interesting because if we were to make a list of anyone qualified to teach voice lessons, I’d for sure be pretty close to the bottom. It’s been interesting to say the least but also fun because the girl I’ve been teaching is a sweetheart and has an absolutely beautiful voice!
Last week our two teams were asked to prepare and run a 6 day Vacation Bible School for the kids in the neighborhood. Planning that was interesting because we had to start from scratch. You know how in the states most of the time the church will pick a theme out of whatever they can find online or at the local christian book store and then they go out and purchase the packets and materials. It’ll have lessons plans, songs, crafts and more all planned out for you already. Well, we didn’t have that, which was kind of cool but also kind of difficult. We decided to go with a creation theme and teach the kids about how the Lord created them for a purpose. There was a pretty good turn out and it was really fun.
I worked on VBS for the first few days but then I was called over to help at the new kindergarden center to paint and bring my “expertise” to design murals and pick colors to paint each room. It’s turned out not looking what I had planned or suggested but it does look pretty cool. Not something I would have designed but still cool. One thing I had to come to terms with was just letting go of my plans and desires for it and just be ok with whatever they wanted us to do. So I’ve been working on that project for about a week with 2 days of ministry left to this month, which is INSANE!!!!
While I’ve been working on that, outside of the 3 guys, myself and one of two other girls, our two teams have been putting on a program called Beauty For Ashes. This program is a branch off of Adventures In Missions that reaches young girls and women, teaches them of their worth in Christ and encourages them in who they are as women and who they are seen as by the Lord and so so much more! It’s so cool to hear the stories of what’s been going on at the church this week and how the girls and women have been responding.
So yeah, that’s just a little update on my month in Albania. I don’t want to leave!! But alas, we have to go to Macedonia.
We will start our travels to Macedonia on Sunday afternoon but will not arrive in Macedonia until Tuesday evening. This is because myself and some of my teammates have decided to spend the weekend traveling through Kosovo and Montenegro. We have a few off days and decided to just go somewhere new, get a hotel or Airbnb and relax and get refreshed before we get to our debrief and then go back into ministry in Macedonia. I’ll post another update as soon as I can!
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support.
