first things first


A blog about whatever crosses my mind, ordered by importance.


It's Summertime!

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).

This time it’s a little different, since I’ve been here for almost a full year. I’m pretty much conversational in Albanian now, which will make for a more interesting experience with the students. In fact, I’m planning to play a little joke on them. For the first 2 days of the camp, I’m going to get someone to translate for me and not use any of my Albanian. Then, on Wednesday, in the middle of coffee, I’ll just randomly start speaking Albanian ;)

It’s going to be awesome hanging out with the team again! I hope it will feel like it did the past couple years, where I get to be one of “the Americans”. It’s also great that a lot of them are my good friends. Unfortunately I don’t get to go to Elbasan this year because I need to be around in Tirana to help plan for next week.

Albania team 2016

After the summer camp for the high school students, we’re going to have a conference for the Young Professionals. That will be mostly in the evening. We will have 2 seminars and a social event, then on Friday we’ll spend time getting coffee with them as much as possible. On the weekend we’re planning to have a retreat for the believers. This will be a good time to encourage them and challenge them to be a crucial part of our ministry for next year.

Young Professionals working with us

It’s going to be an exciting couple weeks, and afterwards I’ll be pretty exhausted! But At least I get a week off after the young professionals conference. I’m hoping to go to south Albania & Greece, in Seranda and Korfu. I hear it’s very beautiful down there but I haven’t been yet.

Follow along with my journal for Ice and Spice 2016 and the Young Professionals Conference!

Read my journals from previous years:

Please pray for these next two weeks! It’s a critical time where we’ll be sharing the Gospel with a lot of people.