Since all of my blog titles are from songs, I think it is so perfect that this Michael Jackson song was the first song that played on my iPod! What a fitting way to remind me why I am here and the different types of people I will be ministering to throughout the year… It doesn’t matter their age, size, hair color, eye color (Generalization here: Albanians have BEAUTIFUL eyes, by the way) background stories, race, gender, or even religion, I will be around them and showing Gods love to them, by just living. Let’s be honest, the best way to model love, is by thinking of the way God loves you. Super cheesy, I know, but it’s true! I mean, I don’t know anyone that I would give my son’s life for… the God guy is pretty amazing.
Is it possible to have a tangent before you even start writing about what the topic is? Ehh, who knows, but my tangent is over!
We are so incredibly blessed to be staying with this wonderful Albanian family.
A man
His wife.
And their 17 year old daughter.
They rock!
They are so hospitable. While we were here, on this little Christian mission trip of ours, we learned that the family we had been staying with is Muslim. At first we’re like “What?! We thought we would be staying with Christian contacts!” Not gonna lie, it would have been nice if we had been told this beforehand… then maybe we wouldn’t have invited the daughter to do a Bible study with us. I hope we weren’t inconsiderate. We weren’t told, so we were shocked with this information. Some of us had different reactions, some were angry, some were just caught off guard, some didn’t really care at all.
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” — John 15:12
Here is how God slapped us all in the face with this verse:
One day, my team had the roughest day. We left at 6am and didn’t get back to the house until 9:30 at night. I won’t go into drawn out details about the whole day, but let’s just say tensions were high between many of the members of this team. We had to take a bus to get to another bus to get home. We actually missed the other bus, and our current bus driver was driving along next to it, yelling to the guy to pull over, so we could get home that night… and that is just one of the many stressful moments that happened that day. On the 10 minute walk back to the house, we were starving, upset, and tired… no one was talking to each other. Pretty awkward. THEN we finally got back, and there was our host family, staying up, waiting for us to get home safely before they went to bed. We walked inside and the mother had made us all dinner. She set the table for us, and man… we wanted to cry. How wonderful to come home and see people that love us and take care of us. It was just what we needed.
Look… we may have been unaware that they were Muslim, but they knew they were opening their house to a group of six Christian girls… and they have treated us like we are their long lost relatives since the moment they laid eyes on us. They might not believe in same way we do, but that doesn’t mean that I should look at them any differently.
Roman 1:14-15 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
Wow, I LOVE this family that we are with, and I am so pleased that God put us in their care. He knows what He’s doing.
By the way, the first night we were here, the daughter told me that she really likes Michael Jackson. I think God may have been foreshadowing a bit there. What a good director!
It Don’t Matter if you’re Black or White!
I hope you love someone today!
Until next time,
Leah 
