While you were sleeping…
I woke up in a pretty foul mood. It happens occasionally. On those days, I get fed up with life on the race, the group culture that I otherwise love, and the people who normally challenge me to be better. And bring me joy. I’ve been short on sleep the past few days, and I’m still trying to get caught up. My tolerance fo people is so much less when I’m tired. So I was fighting the “don’t be a vicious people hating monster” vibe this morning. Hard.
We had breakfast and had a prayer meeting with the staff at the church here in Durrës. (I’m in Durrës, Albania, in case you didn’t know.) After the prayer meeting, I had about an hour before the next scheduled part of the day, so I took a few minutes to read a bit from a book a teammate had loaned me about communication. God is walking me through some learning on how I use my words; I’ve been wrestling with that the past few days, and while there’s been growth, it’s been a tough battle. Some days I lack patience and I really just want to rip someone’s head off. I’m learning. (Really, I swear.)
I left with Ilir, who runs a seafarers’ ministry for sailors. The port here in Durrës is small, so they don’t see a ton of ships, but the few they get are a steady stream. Something about the ocean always just lifts my spirits. The strong wind and the smell of the sea really blessed me; the more we were there, the more my bad mood melted away. God always knows what I need. We had the opportunity to go aboard one of the ships in port this morning and visit briefly with the captain and first mate before they got into the full swing of their morning.
Afterwards, we spent the rest of the morning having some coffee with Ilir, getting to know him and talking about different aspects of the ministry. He’s lived in Durrës his whole life, and now lives here with his wife, their 16-year-old son, and their 9 year old daughter. He’s been running the seafarer ministry for about 12 year now, and before that worked doing evangelism with a team from his church.
I asked him what the most challenging aspect of the ministry is for him. “You can’t always help people,” he said, his English heavily accented. “These guys, they have some tough situations; their captains sometimes withhold their money for a few months, or they treat them badly. There was an Indian man working on a Syrian boat. It was really bad, and he didn’t have any coins. He asked me, ‘Can you help me buy a SIM card so I can contact people at home? I really want to leave.’ So I did that. The next time that boat came through, he was gone. I felt glad that he was able to go, and that I could do that to help him.”
Having finished our coffee and the cake (Ilir insisted on not letting us pay) we loaded up to go back to the church. As we were driving, I asked how we could be praying for him and his ministry. “It’s the finances,” he said. “People don’t know about ministries like this, so they don’t know that we need support. The churches help sometimes, but they want to see people come into the church, so they can’t always see the benefit.” I nodded. “The churches don’t always see the fruit of helping a ministry like this because the population is mobile and people don’t stay.”
He nodded. “There are organizations that will help with projects, like the building we have for the sailors to go to, or purchasing our van, but they don’t fund things like salaries. Some countries, when you come into port, you pay 40 Euro, 50 Euro, and it goes to things like this that are there to help the sailors. They tried that in Albania, but it didn’t work. There’s too much corruption.”
“The church here helps out. It’s a little, but it really helps.”
I was struck, once again, by the incredible ebb and flow between economics and human resources. It seems like places often have one or the other, but not both. I suddenly wanted to be independently wealthy, if only to give it away to people like Ilir and others like him I have met in our travels. It is staggering to me how little it takes to make a huge difference in people’s lives.
Alas, I must go now. It’s lunch time, and then there’s the rest of the day.
Good morning, my friends. I hope God blesses you richly today.
