Tuesday May 19th

Mom-I looked up the boys game in the reporter herald online ::shaking head:: i hate games like that, especially when they are the last ones. but i'm glad that they took it with class. tell them i love them both dearly.

our Internet was down all weekend. Friday's presentations went pretty well. Corbin left in the morning so we were without professors for the day. The discussions and presentations were really interesting and controversial but i'm going to have to blog about that when I have a little more time than I do now.

Saturday morning was our crashing morning. The three boys (Elijah, Burk and Wyatt) slept late and most of the girls took naps after breakfast (holy naps, right DavidL?) The plan was to spend the day having coffee with the UNYT students and working on our joint presentations. Elijah and I met with a student named Aleta for about a hour until the UNYT library closed for the afternoon. She had to get back to whatever she had been doing before meeting with us, so we spent a the rest of our lazy afternoon making our way back to where we are staying (UNYT and The Christian Center we are at are on opposite sides of Tirana. Its about a 30 minute walk, but its a nice walk so we don't mind it). We had incredible seafood spaghetti at Tirana's "hotspot" and just relaxed enjoying the sunny weather. We went to church that night at IJR (Tiran's the campus crusade center). It just so happened that we sat in front of two ladies, one American and one European, who had come to Albania in the 1990's as missionaries and had been instrumental in the establishment of the church. as the night wore on we realized that the European lady (who, to the utter delight of our team, spoke with a Scottish accent) was one of the ladies who was caught smuggling bible tracts into Albania during communism!! She had been with a different lady and every night their prison guards would tell them "tomorrow you will die".(http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrow-You-Die-International-Adventures/dp/0927545926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242768129&sr=1-1 there is the link to the amazon page selling their book) it was amazing. We went to the House of Beer and some of the Americans in the church came with us. We went to The House of Beer. Anna Elijah and I had gone there for a quick dinner a couple days prior. I am not a fan of the taste, smell or look of beer, so i am biased. But everyone else loved the spicy sausages, salty salads and light Tirana beer.

Sunday we took a day trip out of Tirana to one of Skanderbag's Castles(he was the ancient hero of Albania). Eri graduated from Kings a couple weeks ago and her sister Geirti graduated in 2007(sorry I can't spell the beautiful albanian names!!). They are both native Albanians and their parents live here in Tirana. Every year Kings comes here, the family hosts our team for an ethnic albanian dinner. So Saturday night we all went over to their house near UNYT for an entirely home made meal. Skinder, the father, share his homemade wine with us (incredible..and i'm not a big wine fan!) we had two different types of cheese, grilled lamb, special sausages, greek salad, homemade cake, tirana beer, etc etc etc. it was all soo good. about every 15 or 20 minutes, Ina, the youngest daughter who served as our brilliant translator, would turn up the traditional albanian music and we all got up from the table and danced around the living room. there is no way to explain the dancing in word. but we all had such a good time with a lot of laughs. We had said goodbye to Aleta before we went to dinner, but when we got back, she was still here. Apparently, Aleta had planned her trip and gone to the airport thinking her flight was Sunday night. It wasn't. It was on Monday. So we got a whole extra day with her! Dr. Bleatler came in Sunday afternoon as well.

Monday was our final presentation day. I will have to blog about this later because all of the notes I took on the presentations are upstairs. and i am downstairs in the computer lab and its late and i'm tired.

Today, Tuesday May 19th, was our first day of taking a politics, philosophy and economics survey of the students at the major public university in tirana (note: UNYT, the university of new york-tirana is a private and expensive college. public education, from prek to university is all free in albania. thus the level of education between public and private can be vastly different because of the incentives. but that is a different discussion for a different day). I was partner with Burk and Ina Kumi (an Albanian business prof at Kings who happened to be home visiting this month and came with us to translate). Many of the other groups were able to find english speaking albanians so that the surveys could be what we intended them to be--points of contact with the students to begin further discussion and build relationships. Burk and I had no such luck. We couldn't find any students that spoke english! so we were lucky Mrs. Kumi was with us. We got into a good discussion with a couple of girls (via Mrs. Kumi) about economic policy in Albania and how economic growth and unemployment ought to be handled. The girl wanted to lower taxes and have the government provide substitutes to small growing business. We asked where the money would come from if taxes were lowered and she said that they were already stifling with the 51% income tax (she was an economics student so we got into a little deeper econ but i won't bore you with that :)

Burk Mrs Kumi and I broke for lunch at a cafe across from the university. Mrs. Kumi pointed out that three prominent members of Albania's socialist party were sitting at the table next to us (note: there are 2 major parties in albania. the democratic party which is in power now and the Socialist party who is hoping to gain power in the election happening a few months from now). Burk and I tried to have them take our survey but they brushed us off and said they were too busy discussing "election matters" which is albanian for corruption. Mrs Kumi had to leave after lunch so burk and i wandered around. we did a couple more surveys and two of the guys asked us to coffee. so we went (who ever does the asking has to pay for coffee..it was nice!) as we sat down with them, the boys admitted that they didn't like talking about politics. my kingsian heart skipped a beat and we spent the next couple hours small talking (ew!) about rap music and American culture and dancing around the big (and interesting!) ideas. Burk and i walked back to the christian center to freshen up.

I was with two women who worked for Campus Crusade tonight on the University of Tirana campus (the public one) and we met three freshmen girls who said they were muslim by tradition. They didn't speak English so the two women I was with began to engage the girls and lead the conversation to Christ. They shared a campus crusade tract with the girls. They freshmen girls seemed very responsive and we sat with them for over an hour just talking and discussing Christ. They asked good questions and genuinly seemed interested. They did't speek english so i found myself mostly observing and praying for the girls and the conversation. As I sat there listening to the women I didn't really know share in a language i could barely understand, the story of a man I'm intimately pursuing a relationship with (aka Jesus) was incredible. It was also utterly humbling because (alongside the combination of monday's intellectual presentations not leading anyone to a commitment to Chris )I was really able to realize that as a blue eyes American, I have no hope of every assimilating into this culture and being able to persuade any of them that Jesus is who he says he is and that they need them and that they ought to become his disciples. I'm only here for three weeks!!! At first I was discouraged, but I started praying for the girls and for the women speaking to the girls and it hit me (or more like the Holy Spirit gently whispered it into my heart) that none of us really can do anything to turn other people's hearts towards Christ. All I can do is pray. But not "all I can do" because prayer is incredibly powerful!! and that is where all of you come in.

After we left the girls dorm room, I met up with the team and we went to Geirta's (the oldest albanin sister who graduated from Kings) apartment. Geirta is married to Tim and they have a 6month old boy named Isaiah. She seated us in the living room and told us that she wanted to share with us what she had learned after graduation from Kings and returning to Albania. She brought out a tub of water and (quite literally) Tim and Geirta washed all of our feet. For most of the team it was the first time someone had washed feet like this. It is such an incredibly humbling experience to have a beautiful Albanian Kingsian woman washing the Balkan dirt off your feet. Over her husband Tim's homemade curry, she shared her life coming back to Albania and about how she had been prepared to lead at kings, but how she had found that the only way to do that was by serving. She shared how her country needed to be shown how the truths of the bible interacted in the public square. There wasn't any application of Christ's word in many Albanian lives. Tim and Geirta shared how Islam is starting to take a hold of Albania again and how they can see how the old "ottoman empire" could be preparing to take over Europe. The conversation we had with them was incredible and was one of those eye-opening, life changing conversations. i want to digest is more and think about it more before I spew forth conclusions from the evening. Basically though, this night was a night of encouragement of why we are in Albanian and how this country does need Christ and how discussing the ideas we are here discussing will help.

We heard it before we came here, we've been told it while we are here, and we have seen it in our own interactions with the Albanians: the spiritual soil here is hard, dry and rocky. "planting seeds and watching the fruit grow" will take a lot more time than the few weeks we are here. some of us in the team feel called to spend more time here in the future, some dont. But tonight we realized (thanks Elijah for the great metaphor) that our team is that pointy garden tool (yes those were the words we used) that breaks up the soil so it can be moistened and softened and eventually tilled. The ideas we are discussing are true ideas and have heavy consequences. The Albanians won't easily be able to forgot them. God is using us in small ways, and it was wonderful for the whole team to be humbled and encouraged tonight at Geirta and Tim's.

We are surveying more tomorrow. Please continue to pray for strength and health and weariness (David Leedy got in today and is exhausted from jet lag). We've been blessed with incredible team unity, pray that it holds. Pray that our conversations and relationships with the Albanian students continue to be genuine and that we continue to put forth the effort to engage the students.