When I imagined being a missionary, I imagined living with a bunch of other people who are crazy for God in a church or something on the other side of the world from where I grew up. Now I live in a church with a bunch of other Jesus freaks in Albania. We play with children, talk with local people, prepare bible studies, and hare our stories with the believers here.
My team now lives in Albania in the city of Durres. Durres is technically a tourist town, but there is basically just a little strip by the beach that is touristy and the rest is super run down and poor looking. We are living on the third floor of a church. Our ministry here is helping with kids mostly preschool age, and helping the church with anything they want us for. So far that has included teaching at bible studies, morning devotion times, youth groups, handing out food, hanging out with sailors at the port, and working with kids. Our main ministry is working with kids, but since school hasn’t started yet we have mostly just been playing with them in the morning. The people around here are super awesome, there have been several times when some of us have gone to a café (there is literally 1 every 20 steps or so) and then some local has paid for our drinks. Most of the people here seem to really hate Albania though, not because of the government or anything like that but because there are no jobs here. Almost every Albanian I have met has said that Albanian people are awesome but Albania itself really sucks. It is very strange to hear this coming from a country where being patriotic is so valued.
Right now we have not really gotten in to the full swing of things yet though. We will get into more of a schedule when school starts here, when that comes I will try to go more in depth about what we are doing. This is just sort of a short update on what life is looking like at the moment in Durres.
