Leaving Romania and into Albania!

Hey friends, long time no post!

Since I last posted we’ve been to Romania, and Albania and I’ll give you guys a run-down of what Albania (the country we’re in now) has been like! Let’s start with how I felt coming out of Romania. You ever seen luggage coming out of security in the airport? You can just tell it’s been THROUGH the ringer? Beat up and slapped around? That’s similarly to how I felt coming out of Romania. Not because of anything the ministry did wrong, we just had some long days there. I prayed a couple weeks before leaving Romania and asked God to maybe lower the intensity while we’re in Albania?

Here’s a picture of us loaded up and ready to ship out!

Since being in Albania it’s been the most restful and restoring time for my team and I. The Lords answered my prayers in every department, down to the details of Cheez-its!! When we got here we got a bed, pillow, COMFORTER, laundry machine, THREE toilets, FOUR showers :,). After sharing a house with 25 people and two bathrooms, these things felt like a hug from God. I remember in Romania talking about how much I missed Cheez-its…. The first day being here, they gave us CHEEZ-ITS?! They don’t even SELL those in Albania?!! They had them shipped from Germany!! Thanks GOD!! He really is El Roi “The God who sees” (Genesis 16:13).

Let’s talk about my team… y’all remember those girls I talked about in my last blog? Well, month 6 and we’re STILL together. Ha ha. I was convinced we were splitting up before Albania. I was going around talking to people about it as if it was the great divorce. A couple days before we left for Albania we found out our team was staying together but we’d be losing Riley as our team leader and gaining Elora as our new TL. It took us a couple days, and me personally a couple gallons of tears as I processed through what moving forward would look like. Although we were just losing one person and gaining two new squad leaders, we all knew the dynamics would be extremely different.

Our last night all together!

After a 22-hour travel day we were all pretty pooped. Our host, Claus, told us we had the day off to rest before orientation the following day. We’re working for a Bible college called CFN, (Christ For the Nations) so we get to stay in the college while being here! Here’s our host Claus and his wife Marie! They have felt like parents while we’ve been away from ours. They both walk in such intimacy with Jesus it’s been so refreshing being under their leadership.

What does a typical day here look like? Great question! Morning ministry is practical work. Since our whole team and staff of the college live here on campus it’s pretty easy for the building to get dirty. Mornings are spent cleaning the building. Wiping down all tables, chairs, sweeping all the rooms, mopping etc. Some days we spent the mornings in intercession (praying for specific topics), or Claus would teach us biblical principles once a week (these mornings were SO FUN). The first week we learned about Gods character and discipleship, then we went over the book of James, and our final week Mari taught us about Islam and Hinduism. After morning ministry, we have LUNCH (my favorite meal of the day). After lunch, we split off into two different groups. Depending on the day we either host a Women’s Bible study, kids’ ministry, youth events, or house visits.

Here is us with Mari after listening to her Islam and Hinduism class.

House visits and youth nights have been a huge growing point for me. For house visits, we go to villages and visit families, pray over them, speak anything we hear the Lord speaking etc. It’s been so sweet meeting these families for the first time and having them welcome us with open hearts. Youth night we trade off who’s starting the night off in prayer, who’s preaching the message, and who’s running the activity at the end. When it was my turn to preach the message, I had a whole script typed up over James 3: Taming the tongue. Welp, the night before the Lord told me to skip it, and tell my testimony. I was like ugh okay. Y’all I can’t PLAY when I say the day I was giving the message, at lunch our host came up to me and told me youth night would be different that night. A group of kids from the village are coming so it’ll be people who aren’t following Jesus instead of our typical youth kids. So a testimony would be the perfect message to share. WHAT?! HUH?! O K A Y. It was crazy. How cool is HE?!

We have one more week here working with CFN and then we head into ATL for two weeks. ATL means Ask The Lord. So we won’t have a place to stay, a host, really we won’t have much to our name lol. We just pray and listen for God to tell us where to go and who He wants us to minister to. We’ve started praying into it the past couple of weeks and have ideas on where we’ll end up, we just need to solidify an Airbnb! Keep us in your prayers as we navigate what the Lord has for us these next two weeks!

Here’s some pictures to let you see what our ministry looks like!

Women’s bible study!

Intercession mornings

Evangelism by the lake

House visits

Me sharing a testimony at church!

The beautiful lake we live by

Prayer requests:

• Safe travels for my team and I getting to our ATL location
• The Lord would speak clearly about who He is wanting us to minister to
• The people we encounter with to be open to conversation with us
• We would continue to press in as a team and walk in unity