Albania

September and October have been pretty slow months, as we plan and gear up for our first big event, Momentum Europe. I’ve been busying myself with a lot of administrative work, but we’ve also had opportunity to begin training our committed believers. Bursting your Bubble In my opinion, our greatest success last year was finding 8 believers who have decided to commit to being part of our ministry. One of the things we asked of them is to commit to be trained in evangelism by our staff. We started that training this month with the series “Bursting Your Bubble”. ...

Well, it’s been a crazy couple months! When I last posted we were about to start Ice and Spice, CRU Albania’s summer camp for high school students. As part of my role on the LLM team, I was also helping out with an International School Project conference for teachers and principals. So I was already a little worn out when Ice and Spice started! But I got energized when my friends arrived from Texas. It was a great week, filled with a lot of good conversations with high school students. And as the Albanian team followed up with the students after my friends left, we heard several times about students who received christ! ...

photo by Ron Acord Day 1 Monday June 27 This year things have been a bit different, but I’m trying as much as possible to feel like I’m part of the American group. For the first 2 days though I also have some other responsibilities. My ministry team here in Albania, Leader-Led Movements, has a 2-day evangelistic conference called Life Choices. The graciously allowed me to go do Ice and Spice instead, but I still want to help them set up and tear down. It’s also different because I won’t stay at the hotel with the team. So this morning I didn’t see them until we all met at the office for orientation. ...

Day 1 Monday July 4 Today was a nice break. We canceled the morning trip to Kruja, because all the Americans (including me) were worn out from the high schoolers. I slept in till about 9:30, then camped out with Wes and Chris at Mulliri Vjeter. They had to finish working on last minute changes to their presentations. We met up with the staff team for a relaxing lunch. The American team and staff got introduced to each-other and we had a nice relaxing time. ...

What time is it? It’s summertime! It’s about time for Ice and Spice, the annual summer camp for high school students here in Tirana! My friends and I have been helping with this camp since the first time I came to Tirana, way back in 2013. A lot has changed since then! Albania Fried Chicken went out of business, but there’s now a legit KFC at the mall (Albania has only one mall). ...

It’s always great to go home. I’ve had multiple definitions of “home” over the years, but right now the place I most identify as “home” is Dallas. Having just spent 5 weeks there, I can totally confirm that is still the case. Since I’ve committed to a second year here, I felt the need to go home and ask my supporters to commit to a second year with me. This was the perfect time to do it, since my cousin was getting married on June 4. The only other opportunity I might have would be in August, and who really wants to go to Dallas in August? ...

This is my happy place Lake Lyndon B. Johnson, about 45 minutes west of Austin. A beautiful constant-level freshwater lake. My grandmother has owned a lakehouse here for more than 30 years. My family and I vacationed here almost every summer. If there were no Good News to preach, I would as much as possible spend my time here. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. ...

We’re moving into the spring now, and as I’m preparing to go back to Dallas for a 1 month fundraising trip, I thought I’d reflect on where we are after 6 months. Towards the Goal We have a growing number of contacts now, young professional believers who have been joining us for seminars and other activities. We’ve had a couple of vision casting meetings with them too. Word is beginning to get around that this is a place to continue what they were doing with student ministries. Most of our volunteers were formerly part of Jete Studentore (CRU’s campus ministry), which is a very good thing. ...

We got to see a really cool musical event this week! A big group of high school students from Colorado came to perform their evangelistic musical, “SHIFT”. CRU’s high school and college ministries invited a lot of students from all around Tirana. I even saw the Elbasan kids show up. Our young professionals all went and sat together near the front. It was pretty awesome to see how many people showed up! ...

I’ve posted a lot about the good times recently on this blog, but I thought with this post I’d let y’all in on the tough parts. Like any job it’s got ups and downs. Sometimes you work real hard for what seems like minimal gain. Sometimes you have all these cool plans and they get interrupted by something out of your control. Especially when your job is people. This past week was tough for me. It started out good, I had a couple good coffees and we planned our social meeting on Wednesday. Tuesday evening we had a bible study, and that was enjoyable. I’m feeling some progress on Albanian, but it’s still tough to understand native speakers. Wednesday we had our social meeting, and we had a bunch of people come, but the two people I specifically invited did not come. So that was a bit disappointing. ...