It’s been a very busy week! I spent very little time at the office this week. On Wednesday I went to Tirana with Ken to meet with an organization called Save the Children. Throughout my interviews with schools, I discovered that they have done a significant amount of work in Albania to improve the well-being of children. Since we are searching for partners to help out in the Kënet, we really wanted to discover what type of work they do. We had a very helpful meeting with two of their program coordinators. Save the Children has a good relationship with the national education department and the municipalities in which they work, including Durrës. Save the Children works with one of the schools I interviewed to train staff and students on dealing with violence against children.
Ethnic tension between northern Albanians and southern Albanians is a big problem. It prevents cooperation within the community of the Kënet, making infrastructural, economic, and social development even more difficult. This problem is heavy upon Dawn’s heart, because she has friends from both groups who refuse to be in the same house with one another. Conflict like that seems to be an insurmountable problem, and most everyone in Albania seems to believe it can’t ever change. That’s hopelessness – to have nothing to hold on to for a better future, believing nothing can change. As I’ve observed this sense of hopelessness, it makes me realize how powerful Christ is and how blessed I am to have him. In a sense, the people are right – they can’t change. BUT with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27). Such truths from the scriptures are coming alive for me, as I observe the hopelessness that exists, and indeed it stretches the faith of even the most committed Christians here.
The superstitious beliefs and lack of morality throughout Albania in many cases are one of the sources of their poverty, particularly among those from the villages. For example, I met a 19-year-old girl last week who use to live in a village. She had worts covering one of her hands. When she was a child, she was told that counting stars would cause breakouts of worts; this was a common belief among the people of her village, so she has accepted it as her fate and never received treatment. She believes it is her fault and that it can’t be changed. I was quick to judge her for being naïve, but the Holy Spirit quickly reminded me of the plank in my eye. I am challenged by this thought – how many times have I fatalistically accepted things in my own life that I don’t believe can change? How many times have I thought, “That person can’t possibly change. He or she is too far-gone for God to be able to do anything good with them him/her”? Hopelessness creeps into my own life in subtle ways. Do I believe that God is who He says He is? Do I believe that all things are possible with God? There are still many facets of my life where He is challenging me to believe Him. I thank God for grace and the fact that sanctification is a process, because if it were supposed to happen all at once, there would be no point in me even trying.
The Global Partners team from America are on their way here! They will be here all next week putting on an English camp for teens here at the mission center. I just finished a good clean on the second floor. Knowing people are coming to use the facility was a good excuse to clean everything, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while anyway, because it’s terribly dusty. Since all the roads except the one immediately in front of us are not paved and because it hardly ever rains in the summer, everything gets very, very dusty. Albanians seem to be much better at cleaning, and they do it often. We haven’t mastered that skill quite yet.
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