Ken and Ann's Blog: Youth Camp

Tuesday morning saw us on our way with the leaders and young people from Elbasan to the Camp in Pogradec. Only after half an hour or so we stopped for a breakfast break at a restaurant owned by a cousin of Besnik Nogu. Besnik comes to our church and is married to Valentina. Here is Arjan Emini, one of the leaders tucking into his simite me bogace. Simite is a special bread roll made with maize corn flour, filled with thin layers of pancake with liquid butter poured over it and then sprinkled with salt!! A really healthy mans breakfast! Arjan is enjoying it anyway!

In contrast here are Ann and Ida having their coffee at the same restaurant.
On we travelled to Pogradec which is beside Lake Ohrid that separates Albania from Macedonia. We booked into our hotel and then went to the Nehemiah Centre where most of the young people stay and which acts as the centre for the Camp. There we met all the other young people from the churches we know, 2 churches from Tirana, Librazhd, Burrel and Korca, 156 people at Camp altogether. We met up again of course with Liam, Dave, Josh and Ben who had been in Korca.
It really took off with the evening meeting, Korca church providing the band.

Here is Dave doing his stuff...

Worship...all in Albanian of course.

Then Edi who leads the Korca church spoke and finally the evening was rounded off with a game. Everyone had a piece of jigsaw in a colour. You had to get all the people with the same colour together and then put your jigsaw pieces together to spell out a verse from the Bible. So it looked like this...

Or this...

Ann, Ida and I stay in a hotel and opposite us two of the church groups from Tirana and Burrel, stay in another hotel. The evening meeting finished at 9.45 so then we walk back to our hotel and ate our evening meal outside with dozens of others who either stay at the hotel or who come for a drink and listen or dance to the live music. It wasn't long before Ida was on her feet dancing! (Sorry, no photo)
I feel privileged to be here. This is the view from my breakfast table this morning, Wednesday.

Here below, the early morning sun is clearing the mist from the lake so we can see the mountains in Macedonia.

The morning session saw worship and then Liam speak about having a heart to really follow Jesus. After a drinks break some more games. These were held in the hotel grounds where the Tirana and Burrel churches stay.

Jorida from Tirana speaking after Liam spoke. She would like to come to our Academy. Then here are Ben and Josh during worship.

The young people were in their coloured teams. It is designed to mix them all up so that they get to people from different churches. Here the game is to fill a pipe with water that has holes drilled in it. You have to put your fingers over the holes to stop the water leaking out. It also seems to be a good game to show the different colours of the girls nails!

Then lunchtime.
Here are our guys having eaten their lunch of grilled meat, chips and mixed salad. Mixed salad surprisingly doesn't have tomatoes in it and Dave doesn't like tomatoes!

Life here is just full of things so different from life in Bracknell. The local fishermen row out in their boat, let down their net in a long line and then stand at the lake edge and pull the net in. Catching fish is team work.