Tirana, Albania

Travel

My team has made it to Tirana and let me just say wow!  I think there’s culture shock being in Europe in and of itself.  We had 3 days of long travel to get here and it was probably the hardest 3 days ever.  We took a 12 hour bus ride from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.  Had an all-nighter in the Bangkok airport, before flying 10ish hours to Turkiye and another flight from Turkiye to Romania.  From Romania we took a bus through Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia to Tirana, where we got a Taxi to our temporary home for 2 days before we made it to our Ywam base.  Thankfully we are now settled into our new home and have been for about 2 weeks.

Ministry

We are helping ICF church with all of their events throughout the week, which includes youth events (13-17) and student events (18+) church on Sundays, and everything in between. We hand out flyers in the streets a lot, so I’ve definitely been pressing into my no fear of man!!  There’s also an event we’ll be helping with through the Jonathon Center called Night To Shine in February.  This event is basically like a huge prom for special needs kids, it’s definitely the event of the year around here.  The event was started by Tim Tebow and they only shoot for the best, the best DJ, the best decorations, the best food.  It’ll be a night to remember for anyone who comes.

We also just started teaching English courses three days a week.  Me and Alia, and then Sophia and Lauryn are teaching the classes, while everyone else uses that time to ATL.  Right now me and Alia only have three students but are hoping that small of a class will make it easier to teach them what they really want to learn the most.  We spent all of yesterday going over vocab words from the kitchen because one of our students is hoping to be a chef, and spends most of her time in the kitchen.  So it’s been nice because we can tailor the classes to the students wants.

How Me and my team are doing

Personally, I love it here.  I think coming from Malaysia and Thailand it was really needed.  Not that either Malaysia or Thailand was bad, it was just different, and I think mentally I wasn’t all there.  What has made Albania so much better is also the feeling of community.  This is the first time on the race it’s felt like I’ve made real friendships.  Not that I didn’t make any friends before because I’ve met so many amazing people along the way, but since you’re always with your team or squad it never quite feels like anyone sees you as an individual as much as they see you as a group.  So i think community wise, it’s been really refreshing here.

My team however, half of them are sick currently with a really bad viral sickness.  So be praying for them to all heal, and that no one else gets sick.  I think my team has been really excited to be here, of course in any place, you have mixed feelings, but overall we’ve been really enjoying it here.

Me N Jesus

If I’m being so real with you all, it’s been the hardest here in Albania with my relationship with Jesus.  It’s just been a struggle getting into the word and even just praying and spending time with Jesus.  Which I can already tell is affecting the simple things like my peace and patience.  I’ve been trying to make more time for reading but with as much as we’re doing it’s been difficult.  Our team has commited to worshipping and having prayer and intercession together, which are really good things, but it’s been hard to find the time on my own outside of that.  So I could use any extra prayers from you all for that.

How you can be praying!!

• The health of my team
• Sofia has an injured foot, so healing for that
• I still have 31% that needs to be funded!! So pray the Lord continues to provide!!
• That Jesus will be at work in our ministry and honestly, just that he shows up in my team in how we treat each other and our friendships with one another.
• Me N Jesus 🙂