Kosovo - and beyond...

I said I would write more once I got back from Kosovo, so here I am. The trip up was for a conference for the Albanian Church Planter’s Mission. You may remember that it was with this group that I went to Bosnia last year about this time. ACPM was started by three guys from our church here in Tirana and its goal is to raise up and equip Albanian church planters. This spring and summer they will be operating a school up in Gjilane, Kosovo and they are looking to begin a church plant in a nearby village. It was a small conference, only about 20-25 people, but it was really good! Along with the team of workers that are living and working there in Gjilane, there were a few of us from Tirana that came and a couple of guys from England, as well as a worker from Macedonia.

The speaker was a man named Jack Dabney – someone for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. He pastored in the US for many years and then 6 years ago, when many his age were retiring, he and his wife came over to Albania to serve the Lord here. He has been a blessing to other missionaries in addition to teaching at the Center for Christian Leadership, the school we helped start back in 1999. Jack and his wife ( and the churches they served) had been praying for Albania from the mid-1970s and their testimony is really cool.

Jack started with the theme passage of the conference where Caleb said “Give me this mountain!” and showed that it is not really about us, but it is all about God being faithful to fulfill His promises, then over the next two days we looked at the roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in missions. It was so good! I told Cindy during one of my phone calls to her, that even though I “get” about 70-80% of the messages in Shqip at our church, I had not realized how dry I was. It was so good to hear some messages in English (translated into Shqip) and be able to get 100%. It really was a time of refreshing and challenge for me. Perhaps one thing that really stuck out was that God’s desire is for every family to be blessed – that is what He told Abraham (Genesis 12:3). It kind of changes the measure of whether or not a people group is “reached” - have we really reached each family? Food for thought…

We had some excitement on the way up to Kosova – car issues that had us concerned for a bit. As we entered into one town, the car just died! We could not figure out what was going on, then I remembered that an adjustment had been made recently to the idle speed connected with the A/C , so once we turned off the A/C the car ran well. On the way we stopped in Skopje, Macedonia to eat at McDonalds – at 6 hours away, it is the closest one to our house. It was fun, and the Albanian guys riding with me really enjoyed it. From there, we went on into Gjilane. The trip was about 500 km (Approx. 310 miles), involved crossing the borders of two countries, using three different currencies, and took about 8 hours. We went through some beautiful country along the way and had great fellowship.

During the conference we discovered that the “kryqi” was bad on my Hyundai – I think that is the universal joint. It had to be repaired before we could make the trip back to Tirana, so we took it to a local mechanic. He confirmed our initial diagnosis and said to come back the next day for the repair. He had it done in half a day, and when I asked about the price he said, “Well the part was 30 euros, and I had to go all the way to Ferizhaj to find the part, would 20 euros be okay for the labor?” So I paid 50 euros for the repair (about $65) – I do not even want to think what it would have cost in the US!!

I ended up staying for an extra two days in order to save Jack the plane fare back to Tirana, and I got to listen in on his teaching. The school only has one official student, but the three organizers and their wives are also learning a lot from the teachers who will come. We praise the Lord for one young lady, Irena, who left behind a very good teaching job in Albania in order to follow God’s leading and be trained as a missionary. Please keep her in your prayers, along with Geni, Soni, Memli, Luiza, Gregor, and Kela and all of their children. They have embarked a real journey of faith.

The family is doing well, we have adopted a new kitten, about 5-6 weeks old. As of today, he still does not have a name. We are hoping that he will be more trainable than our last cat. Shadow was too wild at heart for us to tame, and rather than continue with the daily bites and scratching, we decided he would be better off as an outside kitty. Since we are starting at a much earlier point with the new kitten, we are confident that he will be more “family-friendly”.


More later…