The sun does not shine every day...

Yesterday Sunday it rained, with thunderstorms, most of the day. On Monday it was still wet but we needed to go shopping. First to a Supermarket for the necessities of life, coffee, jam, honey, green peppers which are now in a dish and waiting to be roasted, butter, milk, eggs etc. And then some unnecessaries but nice. Having said that, it is not true. Ann is coeliac and therefore so many desserts she cannot eat because they have flour in them. So we called into the Pastiçeri Milan for meringues and lokumb that Ann can eat, (and a zup for me). There is no photo of the zup, a small trifle, because I have already eaten it!!

Then through the rain to a coffee shop, and then on again through the rain to the market. Here are the peppers ready to be cooked.

Here is another zup, just to show you what they are like.

After lunch on Tuesday we went to the church building to see Ilir and look at the building work they have done. On the way we met a funeral cortège. As it is a Muslim culture here, people are buried the next day after dying. You can just tell your employer you need the day off and every understands the situation. There was a long line of cars following the coffin and then two bus loads of people. Many people don't have a car, and so a bus, provided free of charge by the bereaved family, will take you to the bereavement parlour, the only way I can describe it, where after filing by the coffin, you are given a free meal. Another reason why a lot of elderly people go.

In the evening we had a meal at Ilir and Rudina's home, with yet another wonderful meal cooked by Rudina. Here is Rudina with her youngest daughter Abigaila. Ilir and Rudina have two other daughters, Sara and Eliada who are both now as tall as their mother. They are at that stage of teenage life!

One of the things Rudina cooks is this, below, aubergines with tomatoes, onions and garlic in olive oil. I cannot describe how yummy it is.

Ann in the kitchen with Rudina and Abigaila.

We have had quite a lot of rain since we have been here. The mountains around Elbasan are high enough and the nights cold enough for it to snow on the mountains, and so in the morning we can look out from our balcony at the snow capped mountains.

Now it is Thursday morning, and I will send this off quickly as Edi Morava is about to come and pick us up on our way to Pogradec. There we will finalise the accommodation for our 18-30's weekend in July. We have held a Youth Camp in Pogradec for the last 8 years but now time has come to hold an 18-30's weekend as those who once were teenagers and came to Camp have grown up! They have been to college or university, have jobs and are moving on in their life and their needs have changed.

Do pray that we find as good place just right for the weekend and for safety as we travel. Tomorrow Friday we travel to Tirana and meet up with Miranda to go through all the preparations for the up coming ladies Conference UNIKE. Please pray for this, all the ladies who will come and our ladies from Bracknell who will come with Catrina Benham.

Bekime=Blessings.

Ken

 

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Back in Elbasan, Albania

Ann and I are now in Elbasan. We had the final session yesterday morning of the Newfrontiers European Leaders Conference that we have been at in Athens for four days. We lunch together and then people went on their way home to the 30 or so countries represented. We ate with Edi and Arta and Ilir and Rudina. Arta, who is organising the bookings for the UNIKE Ladies Conference in Tirana in 2 weeks time, said that we have over 300 already booked in. Wow, that is so good especially as this year the first day of the Conference on Friday is not a Bank Holiday as last year. On the next table to us was Tomor and Miranda Ajeti who travelled with Annie and her husband from Lushnje. Annie was one of the translators last year and will be there again this year. UNIKE is a Ladies Conference that Miranda Ajeti from Victory Church,Tirana organises. We held our first such Conference last year and we look forward to what will happen this year. Catrina Benham from Kerith Community Church with a team of 8 ladies will fly in in just under 2 weeks time to speak and be involved in the Conference.

Ilir and Rudina and 8 others from Elbasan (including Sokol a BIG guy who is the Elbasan mayor's bodyguard and comes to Ilir's church) travelled back to Elbasan overnight by a 14 hour bus journey arriving at 8am this morning, Saturday. Ann and I are too old for that lark and we flew with Aegean Airlines for an hour and a quarter from Athens to Tirana. Blerim, whose apartment we stay in, met us at the airport and brought us to Elbasan. We travelled with Robert and Nicky Thursfield, who are retired church leaders and teach at a number of churches here in Albania. They were met by Robert Cook at the airport. We have known Robert for 9 years, married to Mira, and they lead a small church in Lezhe in the north off Albania.

When we got into our apartment we met with Blerim's wife Rudina and their 3 year old daughter Amaris. Rudina had been to see her mother and picked the lilies from her garden that you see above to put in our apartment. We quickly unpacked and then headed off for some fast food before bed.

This morning, we gathered our thoughts, had coffee and went to the pazaar, the fruit and veg market. So here is what we bought. Lettuce, spinach, garlic, onions, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers and yes, strawberries, all locally grown. We could have bought cherries too, but I resisted.

This may give you a clue as to how much warmer it is here than in the UK right now. Temperatures last week at 30C, were what they would expect in June, though today it is cooler with a shower of rain last night.
Ann is cooking bolognaise sauce right now, add some spaghetti and we will have something to eat!
I will now run through what I am speaking on at church tomorrow morning. This will be the first time we have been at the church since they were joined by another church, that split away from them 15 years ago. It is almost unheard of here for churches to come together. So often churches split and split again. In society here there is no real understanding of how to sort differences or how to agree to disagree and still remain friends or work together. So the church with childrens work and youth work has doubled in size to about 70-80 people. It is the church here in Elbasan that we have given money to recently to help them finish the building work on the ground floor, so we really look forward to seeing the work that has been done, meeting people we have known for many years and making friends with new faces.
Do pray for us and the upcoming UNIKE Conference, that many women be encouraged in their faith in Jesus and others come to a relationship with him for the first time.
Much love,
Ken and Ann

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At last the photos!!!

Now here are the photos I wanted to upload in Albania.  Easy enough when one is at home on your own computer. This is the restaurant by a river that looks likes a ruined castle in the village of Mullett.  Tomor and Miranda took us here to talk through the arrangements for next years Ladies UNIKE conference.  

Ann with Miranda

and inside the restaurant.

On Friday evening Mira, Ida's sister, and her husband Gjergji took us to a fish restaurant in Tirana for a wonderful meal.

Prawns with pomegranate seeds

Then a raw fish salad with pomegranate seeds, though we think the fish had been cured in lime juice,

noodles with mussels

and then sea bream cooked with cherry tomatoes and olives

and finally fresh fruit for desert all In season, new oranges, mandarin oranges, persimmon and kiwi fruit.

The church in Elbasan have just finished installing underfloor heating pipes in the main hall and three rooms off this corridor.  The ceilings and walls have been plastered and painted and now the concrete is being laid on the floor covering the pipes.  It is left to cure for a month.  

The main boulevard in Elbasan on a fine November day. Blue sky and 22C at midday.

And finally, orange trees grow alongside several of the roads in central Elbasan.  They are a lovely sight with their bright orange fruit, almost like Christmas decorations. Now you have been able to see what we see and understand how enjoyable it is for us to be in Albania. 

What good is a blog with no photos?

In the early days of writing a blog I bought Blogging for Dummies thinking that it would help me. I soon discovered two things. It was largely focused on how you could use your blog to raise money by advertising and increasing your viewing audience, and secondly it assumed you were at home using your home computer and keyboard. I wasn't really interested in the first and I wasn't doing the second. My blogs are written on the move. And therein potentially lies a huge problem. I am writing this with my iPad. I can include photos if I have taken them with my iPad, but not otherwise. Whilst I can connect Ann's camera, to my iPad, the iPad of itself does not have the power to download the photos. So it tells me. So then I go to a local internet cafe, use their computer and keyboard, connect Ann's camera and hey presto,we have it! But life is not that simple. There used to be an Internet cafe on nearly every main street here in Elbasan, Albania but not any more. Worse still, try even FINDING an internet cafe in the Cyrillic writing nations, Macedonia, Serbia and so on and then you are confronted with a Cyrillic keyboard! The Internet cafe I have always used here in Elbasan has become a betting shop with a few computers upstairs and they now all have German keyboards. It is not just that the Y and Z have changed places and the @ sign is elsewhere, this computer try as I may wanted all script centred, in blue and underlined and it wouldn't fit the text round the photos. Agh! I gave up and came home.

So, I was going to show you the restaurant that looks like a ruined castle that Miranda and Tomor took us to on Friday morning to talk through next years Ladies UNIKE Conference.

And I was going to show you some of the wonderful food at a fish restaurant that Ida's Astley's (nee Sinakoli) sister Mira and her husband George took us to in Tirana on Friday night. I have never had a fish meal like it. It was absolutely superb!

And I was going to show you up to date photos of the underfloor heating that has been laid in the church here in Elbasan, and all the plastering and painting work they have done on the building, with some money we gave them last summer. It just needs now to have the doors and windows put in and the floors tiled and electric fitments so that the ground floor is finished off and they can use the main hall and three rooms for youth and childrens work.

How much better the blog would be with photos!!! Hopefully, normal service will resume as soon as possible.

Much love from Ann and me.

 

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Albania Youth Camp 2015

Once Youth Camp begins it is full on for 3 long days. After breakfast and morning devotions there is the first session with worship and 3 speakers each for 10 minutes, each one is a youth leader in their church, and then games for 2 hours in the heat 35-40C, lunch then free time. The evening meal is at 7pm followed by a meeting with worship, leaders from different churches being interviewed and then Liam our Youth Pastor speaking. Here is Megi from Tirana speaking on the first day at one of the 10 minute sessions. The band members are from the Albanian churches, but they had no drummer so our very own Jacob Benham came to the rescue.

After the morning session there are games organised by Nesti from Burrel. How does this guy think of these crazy things to do year after year? Fortunately most of the games involve water, and as it is so hot clothes dry in minutes. And when you are young, who cares?? Here is one crazy game. Holding up a young guy off the ground, one of the team, on a chair and walking him towards a paddling pool with balls in it that he has to fish out. A good job I wasnt sitting on the chair. I dont think they would have lifted it!!

And another one. Running and then sliding along a plastic sheet covered with soapy water!! That looked great to me.

Or this one. Climbing a rope ladder tied to a tree in the local park with a small bucket of water in your mouth to empty into a bigger bucket in the tree.

What makes Camp are the young people themselves and here a few photos of some of them.

 

Our guys Jack, Nick and Sam below

Miri a leader from the village of Kajan, in the blue shirt centre, and Matilda, a leader in the white cap, from Victory Church, Tirana, and their group.

Matilda and some of the girls.

And some of our guys, Nick, Sam, Jacob, Nick and Ben enjoying their ice creams (akullore) with Edi Morava who organises the Camp.

I recognise Paola from Librazhd in the yellow top.

What makes the Camp is not just the young people but God himself moving in power in a persons life. Here is Liam speaking on the first night of the Camp bringing the good news that God loves us, and that we can know him in a personal way through his son Jesus.

After speaking there is always time to respond to what has been said and pray for one another.

 

The three days go quickly and all too soon it is time to say our farewells. Friendships have been formed across the churches and the Nations, that continue on FB, but more importantly lives have been changed. Only afterwards do leaders tell me how wonderful and worthwhile it has been and how some of their young people have become Christians or made a move forward in their walk with God.

We had so many young people this year, more than ever before, that I have begun to think we must have a Youth Camp just for teenagers 13-18 years, and a separate weekend away for students and twenties. For the first time we had a leader and 4 young men from a church in Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro, the country that borders the north of Albania. The guys had been Kosovan refugees, so were Albanian speaking. Some of the young people have been coming for 8 years now from when they were young teenagers, and though they are no longer teenagers they come because it is the best Camp they know. Time has come I feel to do something fresh, challenging and relevant for them. Please pray about this as we seek to serve the young people of Albania in the best way we know how.

So on Saturday morning, we all went our separate ways. Liam and the team stayed another night and spent some time together as a team, and then caught an early flight home on Sunday via Istanbul. Ann and I returned to Elbasan and i spoke at the Sunday meeting. Another wonderful, fruitful Youth Camp was over for another year!

Much love from Ann and me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Youth Team to Albania Camp

Liam and the team of nine set off on Sunday evening for Stansted Airport to catch their Pegasus Airlines flight to Istanbul, a brief stay in the airport overnight and then fly from Istanbul to Tirana arriving at 8am on Monday. That was the plan. But the plan was thrown completely when their fight was cancelled. Pegasus, like a lot of budget airlines, don't fly everywhere on their route plan every day. Suddenly phone calls and texts are flying all over the place even if the plane wasn't! Pegasus could get them to Istanbul on Monday after midday but then they didnt fly to Tirana until Thursday, and they could only take 9 not all 10 of them. Um! This is Sunday evening when the church office is closed and some key staff are on holiday! But we all have mobile phones! In the end they all stayed overnight in an hotel near Stansted on Sunday night and then Pegasus flew them to Istanbul on Monday. The onward flight was with Turkish Airlines to Tirana who fly from the main international Ataturk airport, so that meant being transported from one side of Istanbul (Asian side) to the other European side. This was followed by futile attempts to sleep in the airport on Monday night before catching their early morning, now Tuesday, flight to Tirana, Albania.

I met them at the airport soon after 9am, all looking VERY tired. Bottles of cold water all round was the first thing and then all aboard the air conditioned minibus where they could relax knowing they really were now on the last leg of the journey. It didnt take long for most of them to fall asleep. This photo of Olu probably sums it up. No, he is not thinking with his eyes closed, he is fast asleep!

After 90 minutes or so we were in Elbasan the main city Ann and I stay in and a good place to have a break. Liam and others were hungry so fast food was the order of the day. Sufllaques were orderd with a bottle of cold water all for 200 Leke =£1each. It is amazing how food revives the spirits.

 

 

Another of couple of hours and we arrived at the Nehemiah Centre, Pogradec where we hold the Youth Camp. Sheer relief that the journey was over. Here we are right by Lake Ohrid and much higher up so the air is fresher and cooler. The team were greeted by Ben and Jack from our church who have been here a week already.

Bags and suitcases put in their rooms and then it was time to eat again. And this is what they tucked into, a hearty helping of a baked pasta dish with vegetables in it and cheese on top, a sausage, salad, potato soup if you wanted it, and watermelon.

Here is one young girl with her tray of food, and Ann in the background.

It was great to go round all the tables meeting the young people and their leaders from the churches represented here. Many have been coming for several years and we have got to know them well.

Finally, to show that Ann is here with me one of her by the lake this evening.

Lots of love from Ann and me, and grateful to God and to many of our staff playing their part for getting the team here safe and sound ready for the Youth Camp to begin.

Ken

 

 

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