You will know that we have had a number of Academy Students over the past few years who have spent an academic year with us benefitting from training and teaching. Several of these have come from Poland, Lithuania and Estonia, and because these are EU countries they do not need a visa. Obet from Zambia who was with us this last year had to get a visa which he did succesfully.
We now have some young people from Albania who have applied to come to our Academy for September and been accepted by us. Now for the difficult bit, the visa application. It ought to be straight forward as Kerith is recognised by our Government as a fully A rated sponsor and are granted a certificate to show this. The certificate number is quoted in their application and everything should fall into place. The photo below shows Megi and Barbara both from Shaban's church in Tirana who have been accepted by us. Megi spoke at this mornings meeting and Barbara wants to Social Justice work with us.
And then we also have Nerila from Librazhd who is a physiotherapist but would like to do Youth work with us. Nerila came to our very first Youth Camp where she became a Christian.
And here is Nesti from Burrel who wants to do Children's work. Nesti is organising all our games and activities at Camp as he did last year with great success.
A real issue for all of them is the one of money for the visa. The visa costs £208 and then the company who handle the visa application for the UK Embassy in Tirana want another £100. It has all gone up in price this last year!
To give you some idea of how this relates to earnings here, Nerila works for 20 hours a week for 3 months as a physiotherapist for £200. From this she needs to help pay her way at home and provide clothes and shoes and travel etc. So the visa fee realistically is outside her ability to pay. Their churches too have little money to help them. I bought a new laptop out this time for Nesti's church. A guy in the UK paid the £540 for it as the church does not have that kind of money. So just for once, I am asking if any of you who read this would be willing to help them with say £300 each? If you will then please email me at k.bothamley@ntlworld and let me know by this Saturday 2nd August and I will sort it for them. Not only do they have to pay the quite substantial visa fee it has to be paid in euros by Visa card, so they all have to open a Visa euro bank account just to do this.
At the least please pray for them all, that the money becomes available and their online applications are succesful. It will mean so much not only to them but to their sending churches. We can play a part here in help build the future church in Albania.
From Ken and Ann
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