Today is day six of actually walking. We have had a couple of days in Tirana to rest and it was great. On Saturday I was able to see my oldest daughter, Erin, get baptized and we were able to take part in a worship night at our church. Sunday was a lazy day, trying to stay off of my knee then packing up to be ready to leave this morning. It was so nice to be able to sleep in my own bed again and for 3 nights!!! I guess I am starting to show my age… Jeremy left us on Sunday evening and returned to England, but he sent us an encouraging SMS to let us know he made it home safely.
The Marines have an expression - "Pain is weakness leaving the body." I figured that today I was going to lose a lot of weakness because I was hurting to start out! We started off from Kombinat with Hervin, myself, and Richard walking and Ilir Stavro, the General Secretary of VUSh walking with us too. (Unfortunately, one of the young ladies from the church near Gerdec had died the previous day, so Hervin and Ilir had to leave us early in order to go to the funeral. She was only 19 years old, and leaves behind a 6 month old baby girl and a husband who is only about 20. Surprisingly, even though her family is Muslim, they allowed a Christian funeral in honor of her own Christian beliefs.) My knee started bothering me immediately as my dose of Advil had not yet kicked in. I thought that today was going to be the test to see if I would be able to continue the walk at all. Richard and I led off with Ilir and Hervin behind us. Richard's long strides took us out in front a good ways, but he was holding back a bit for my sake. We had a good chat for a while and had logged 8 km by the time Ilir and Hervin had to leave us. After that Richard and I pressed on and I told him not to hold back on my account. With that, he took off! It was not long before he was a quarter of a mile ahead of me. We made good time though and as the advil went to work, the pain in my knee began to decrease. By the time we stopped for lunch we had logged 17 miles and we figured we were only 5 or 6 miles from our desired stopping point. What we discovered, after eating, was that we were actually only 4 km (2.5 miles or so) from our target, so once we arrived there we decided to continue walking into Durres. Since Durres is a port city, many of the girls who are trafficked out of or through Albania probably pass through here. We prayed as we walked, asking God to deliver the girls, to bring an end to the business of trafficking and the show the churches of Albania what they can do to help. By the time we arrived at the train station, Richard and I had logged just over 23 miles (37.5 km) - our longest day yet, by over 3 miles! Amazingly my knee held up and even now as I type, it is doing pretty good.
We met up again with Tom and Hervin at the entrance to the old Roman Amphitheater in Durres then went and had a coffee while waiting for Gezim, our contact person and a local pastor, to join us. About 6 pm we had a short meeting at his church followed by a time of prayer. Gezim and his wife Ariana then hosted us for a wonderful meal and a great time of fellowship. Gezim is an evangelist I feel, and he delighted in sharing his testimony with us and then shared the gospel pretty clearly with Shaban, our driver friend from Saranda. We are now in an apartment only a few meters from the Adriatic, courtesy of one of the church members.
Tomorrow morning we head towards Kavaja and Rrogozhine. With as good a time as we made today, and having covered as much ground as we did, it will be interesting to see where we end up tomorrow! The plan is to walk to Rrogozhine and then drive in to Lushnje where we will spend the night at the OM center. So - total today was 23 miles - no new blisters, and less pain at the end of the day than at the beginning! Praise the Lord!
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