Another Week in the Life: Albania

Hey everyone! I’m sorry It’s been awhile since I posted a blog. Hopefully the blog site is fully up and running but I never know. Here’s another letter to home for ya.

Dear home,

I writing this time from a hostel hidden in a little corner of Tirana, Albania. I have been living in this hostel for about 3 or 4 weeks and have had a bed and a pillow for almost the entire time! Unusual I know! But I am so thankful! My time in Albania started with a new team of 6 women. We are StopDrop&Roll! We also had with us one squad leader in training and one squad leader who was training her. So that makes for 8 women all living together and working together everyday. It was quite the adventure and I have grown so close to all of them. Each day was a mystery but I’ll give you a general look at what it was like here in my time in Tirana.

Each morning I would wake up and right down what I was thankful for that day on a paper the was taped to the wall. We all did that every morning (we remembered) to remind us to be a team with thankful hearts. Then I would head to the terrance for a quick workout and jump in and out of the shower. Just like that it would be 10am and the whole team would meet for team time and feedback. We would spend the morning having fun together and talking about ways we are striving and ways we could be doing better in ministry. Then the rest of the day we would focus on ministry, typically breaking off into pairs and splitting up.

So you’re probably wondering what in the world our ministry was. Well here in Tirana we worked with a church called Eagle church. It is small and they meet in a hidden corner not far from our hostel. When we arrived they told us that we would be putting on a youth group of sorts on Saturdays (much like we did in Romania) and we would also share a testimony every Sunday at their service. We told them about ATL and the pastor loved it so he told us to do that too. So leading up to Saturdays and Sundays our only job really was to find friends to bring to church. So that’s what we did; and boy did we make a lot of friends. Now when we walk down the street from our hostel it feels like there’s a person we connected with in every store.

We put on a few events as well. Some more successful then others. The most successful one being a women’s event where we talking about hope in the mist of depression. Almost 20 women showed up and even some Muslim women came. They asked us to pray for them at the end of the night. It was amazing! I was on childcare and I had such fun hanging out with the kids. There was this little girl there, she was so cute, but she didn’t know English so we communicated through math problems on the white board. She was so smart for her age and got almost every math equation I wrote for her right.

On top of our official ministry with Eagle church we decided to do some unofficial ministry as a team. We did a worship burn one day. We worshipped from 10:30am to 3:30pm and we did it right smack in the middle of the towns square where a lot of people walk. On one corner of the square was a Muslim mosque. We got so many weird looks and a couple of people recording us but it was fun nonetheless. A couple of the girls on my team decided to set reminders on their phone for the call to prayer so every time their phone reminded them or we heard it ourselves we stopped what we were doing and prayed for all Muslim people.

Since being here we as a team have made so many connections. Both with fellow believers and with nonbelievers. It’s been awesome to see where that has lead us; And is still leading us. We officially finished our time with Eagle church so now we can use those connections for the last couple weeks in Albania to try and serve other ministries. We already somehow got connected with the people who host “Night to Shine” Albania and helped out with that event. (If you don’t know what Night to Shine is you should look it up. It’s so cool! And it happens the same day all over the world.)

And now I am preparing to move out of this hostel and into another. We will stay in Tirana for a little bit and do some ATL until Turkey.

And that’s all that’s been happening over here in Albania. The Lord is working and we are trying to do our best to serve His people.

Sincerely, me

P. S.  pray for turkey and the aftermath of their earthquake. I hope we can bring some hope and help to the people suffering over there. See you in 11 days Turkey!