A day in the life...

So... this has been my day today - April 11, 2007.

After getting out of bed, I started into my usual routine of raising the blinds, getting the coffee going, and setting our birds (Leia, Squeaker, Whiskers and Koli --4 Zebra finches - 2 of whom hatched as we watched) out on the balcony before letting our cat, Shadow, out of the bathroom where he spends the night. After feeding the birds and setting them out on the balcony, I noticed that the little treat that we had given them was upside down in the cage floor. I reached into the cage, and as I did so, Whiskers - one of the birds hatched in our house - flew out of the cage right past my hand and across the street below and landed on a second floor window of the apartment across from us. I quickly ran in to tell Cindy what had happened and we got out onto the balcony just in time to see him flutter off even further away. Not a great start to the day to say the least. I went out looking for him in the hopes that he would be so tired by his flight that he might have landed somewhere we could re-capture him, but with no success. I even talked to a man near where we last saw him, who assured me that the bird was just looking for orange blossoms and that he would be okay since they were native to Albania. (Zebra finches are actually native to Australia, but he would not listen as I told him that...) I am hoping against hope that somehow that little Zebra finch has some homing pigeon in him and will find his way back to our balcony!

After several apologies to the rest of the family, I headed out to the office. Today I am working at the AEP, which is about a 5 minute walk from the house. I was able to help a missionary couple from outside of Tirana be able to connect to our wireless network and check their e-mail - something they had problems with the last time they were in the office. After taking care of some planning stuff for our Annual Conference (to be held in October) I got a call from one of the young guys in our youth group at our church. He wanted to meet for a coffee. I may have said this before, so forgive me if it is redundant, but coffee is the lubricant that keeps everything going here in Albania. When someone invites you for a coffee, it may be simply a coffee, or it may be that they have something important to discuss. That was the way it was today. My friend has been having some very difficult times recently. 4 teens from his neighborhood were recently killed in a car accident. His parents are unemployed. They moved from a village outside of Tirana about 8 months ago into the city in hopes of a better life. Instead things have been very hard for them. To top it all off, his grandfather died just a couple of weeks ago. His spiritual life is stagnant, his friends are all unbelievers, and life is tough. How do you encourage a guy like this? I told him that I wished I had magic words to fix everything that was wrong in his life, but that I didn't. I told him that even in the darkest times God is there with him, and nothing could separate him from God's love. And I told him that I was a sinner too, and would be happy to walk alongside him as we both learn to walk in God's mercy and grace.

After that I went to get some lunch. One of my favorite things to eat here is shishkebab, so I went over to my usual place. While I was there I spoke to the young lady who was cooking it and invited her and her brother to come to church with us sometime. Others from our church have invited them before, but I had not, so I thought it would be good. After giving her directions on how to find where our church meets, she said that she was a Christian too - a Catholic. We started talking some about the differences between the Catholic church and Evangelical or protestant churches. At first she thought we were like the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses (both of whom have a large missionary presence here), and I explained some quick differences between us. The we talked about how we do not pray to Mary or to the saints like the Catholics do, because the bible says that we can go directly to God with our prayers. The she asked me if I knew why they prayed to "Shen Maria" - Saint Mary. I asked her to tell me, and she told me a story: There was a king who ruled over an area, and all of the people wanted to give him gifts. One young boy, who was very poor, had nothing to give but an apple. This apple was not very pretty, it was spotted and dirty, so he took it to a mother who cleaned it and prepared it so it was prettier. Once that was done, he took it to the king who accepted it and was more pleased with the apple than with all of the other gifts he had received. She said that when they prayed to Mary it was like that - she helped them make things better to give to the King. I told her that I did not want to say anything against that - only that the Bible tells us that we can go directly to the king with all that we have. At that, she said," Well, when you get in trouble, it is always better to talk to your mother first then she will help you talk to your father!" I found this all to be pretty interesting. Clearly there is work yet to be done here!!

My conversation with this young lady ended with her comment that it would be better if we had a church building where people knew where we were, instead of moving around all of the time. I told her we were trying to find a place where we could build a church, but that it was hard to find a suitable place that we could afford. In fact, our church has raised enough money to buy land, and we are looking at a piece of property that might work but there are several hurdles with the government that will have to be overcome before we can buy it and build. It illustrated the need for a building though, as the Evangelical church in Albania really has no visible presence as far as buildings go - nothing that the community at large can point to and say, "That is where the protestants have their church." Instead we have small churches, mostly in rented spaces with very small signs (if any) to show that a church is there. Or we have the place where we meet - the office building for Campus Crusade - which has a couple of good sized meeting rooms, and is used by 8 different churches each weekend! This gal had visited one of the churches there, but could not understand how there could be 8 different churches using the same building! Imagine if you were from a Catholic background - could you comprehend it?

Now I am at home, writing this blog entry. Next week I will go to Kosova for a missions conference marking the opening of a training school for Albanian Church planters. This is being started as a ministry of our church, and two of our elders have left to head it up. Pray that God will use it to raise up missionaries to go out from Albania into neighboring areas.

More when I get back from Kosova...