To live is Christ and to Die is Gain!

Right,

We've had an interesting few days. That substance we all take for granted and expect to be there all the time had gone, the taps were empty and the city of Gjakove had gone dry (well when I say dry, the man at the petrol station/car wash still had water and the super market had bottled water and the river still ran). The taps though were very empty and that meant the cisterns were too.

We worked out a routine for getting by; so we could flush, clean and drink, we prayed for water and waited expectantly.

Then big Russ asked the question. Why are we praying for us to have water when the whole city has none? the guys on gypsy street struggle with normal life let alone when there's no water. Why do we still pray more for ourselves and our "needs" than for the world at our doorstep?

So at 8.30 in the morning still fuzzy from sleep and not really wanting to think about it we pondered.

Then I had a thought. Maybe those words of Richard Foster are right, 'Our lack is not faith but compassion....if we genuinely love people, we desire for them far more than it is within our power to give, and that will cause us to pray.'

So when will it be that we genuinely love the people of this world enough to pray for them to have more than we can ever possibly give? When will we move away from our deeply ingrained 'daddy daddy bless me pleeaaasse' Christianity, When will we realise that just to give time and money isn't enough (we need to give all of ourselves)? and actually live in the covenant and great co-mission to be a blessing to all people, to give our lives as a sacrifice and to live in the fullness and Joy of giving ourselves wholly to the one thing that blesses us completely!

Why not actually do it? actually give all of ourselves and run with perseverance the race marked out for us. The road may be narrow and we'll have to watch our footing but the rewards of such a life are rich and fulfilling.

From Trio to Team!

It's been a strange few days!

The team arrived from Thurrock and Norfolk on Weds and as we prepared for them to arrive, bought loads of plates, glasses, food and drink and thought about how the general atmosphere would change I pondered lessons learnt and lessons yet to be learnt simply because sometimes absent minded pondering is the best way for my muddled mind to organise itself.

So then the team arrived! 21 people invading our nice organised house where we can sleep on the sofa, sit on the balcony have a hot shower and not bother about other people getting in the way.

Suddenly the whole feel has changed. Most of these people haven't ever been on a team mission trip abroad (myself included) and the motives, ideas, plans and way of living has turned around. relationships in the team have to be watched, issues dealt with, supplies constantly renewed and still the work goes on.

Basically I'm not sure what I'm thinking, but having really enjoyed the first few weeks and I think connected a bit with the locals I'm now getting into the swing of team mission and how that works. I'm actually enjoying having the team here, with the added challenges and diversity that it brings.

Handbags and Gladrags

I don’t know why, but for some reason I’ve had Streophonics’ Handbags and Gladrags going round in my head today. So I’m trying to think what message I should pick up from this song, I guess the main point of which is to not take things for granted and to make the most of what we have especially when someone else had to work hard to get it for us.

There’s so many things we’ve seen here in Kosova that back up this point and that could drive it home, yet it’s not really a thought I’ve been having. I think I’ve been much more struck by the normality of the abnormal. How do unfinished houses become expected? How do stray dogs and kittens become just something to avoid in the car? How does a family living without running water become just another family? How does a hole in the floor become a toilet? How is it that we so easily become immune to the stark differences from what we are used to and maybe miss the impact it should have?

Perhaps I just take for granted which ever situation I find myself in and get on with life. Perhaps I don’t make the most of my opportunities and experiences. Maybe I should actually take hold of the words that have been spoken by many random men whose lives have been high jacked by God: ‘Pray as though it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on you!’ Maybe I should start living what I’ve been talking about, and turning my dreams into actions.

Gary Jones arrived in Gjakova yesterday with his son Sam and we had a small chat about foundations of prayer from a previous generation clearing the way for us to sow seeds for a rich harvest. Other people have worked hard to teach, nurture and pray for me and my generation, I guess it would be a bit rude not to make the most of the opportunities that come out of that foundation.

I wrote a poem a few months ago that ended something like this:
So I’ll give up my Tv and my books,
Leave my social life habits and my good looks,
I’ll give up my family and friends,
My music and my passions use for God’s ends,
I give up on my dreams and my plans for success,
Cos what God has on offer is the BEST!

So I do really want to live this stuff out, but sometimes it’s just hard to know where to start.

How a heart of stone recognises beauty.

Since getting here I’ve been mocked, my words re-arranged and misquoted and my communication with the rest of the world slandered. It’s been tough at times (no joke) I’ve had to remind myself that this is just a joke so I should take it like a joke.

It’s also been noted a few times that I’m not really an emotionally driven person, and that those things which make many people crumble and cry really don’t affect me.
When I see someone’s baby being passed around a room and cooed over I don’t see beauty. I see a person being treated like an object of interest.
When I see a stray kitten in B.Curri, Albania I don’t see a cute fluffy pet. I see a bundle of fleas and disease.
When someone says “oh isn’t that sweet/cute” I mostly think “no it’s not!”

My sub-conscious response to these things is generally to feel annoyed, scrunch up my nose a bit and disengage myself.

So how do I find beauty?
Let me have a go and see where we end up...

I was the first up this morning and as I got out of bed I stood at the window looking at the view down the street. I’ve looked down that street most mornings since I’ve been here, but this morning I looked up. Now I know that here in Gjakova we are surrounded by mountains and that they look quite nice, but these mountains this morning had something extra for me (just typing this actually dampens my eyes). When I see a well formed rose I see beauty, when I see a vivid sunset I see beauty and when Tina and David (mum and Son) play fight on our sofa I see beauty.

My response to beauty?
A small smile, a sense of awe, a damp eye.

Being Martha

Over the last few days we have been:
Driving people to and from their prayer slots, buying materials to sort out the basement, cooking roast dinner for the church leaders, washing up, fixing the leaky toilet, making people coffee, etc...

I think what I’m trying to say is that we seem to have done quite a lot of serving people in everyday practical ways.

For some reason I’ve been thinking a bit about Martha. You know the one everyone berates in their sermons as being too focused on getting stuff done and not taking time out to sit at Jesus’ feet.
I think all those sermons are wrong!
Let me explain:

Jesus needed to eat, the practical side of hospitality still needed to happen. The problem was not that Martha needed to stop preparing food, doing the washing up and tidying things away. The problem I think came in her attitude to it. Had she been doing it to serve and as an act of worship, she wouldn’t have complained that Mary wasn’t helping. Mary worshipped by sitting and listening whilst Martha’s worship could have been to make a lovely meal, do the washing up, fix the leaky toilet. Instead she chose to moan that she wasn’t being helped. Am I making sense? Both roles are needed, we’re not all the same and we can’t all do the same things, Romans 12 v 1-8 makes this abundantly clear.

I don’t really know where this is going but the blog title isn’t just fancy alliteration. This is a muttering of my muddled mind.

The Storm that Never Came.

Watching the dying day, and the slowly gathering clouds, as the air thickens with humidity a few large drops of rain fall. Unnoticed.

The church prays,

We all join in picture aided prophesy, and the gathering dark and bright flashes of lightening are ignored as God speaks to those who are intentionally taking time to listen.

Suddenly the CRASH, like a giant tea tray falling down heaven's stairway, then the instant deluge as the heavens open, the air is cleared and the storm gets going.

If only,

Unfortunately tonight is limited to a few large drops of rain and an impressive light show, the air thickening as the heat is released from the ground and held captive by the clouds, the temperature rising.

We wait, eat ice cream, drink beer and sweat. Until. Finally the day's heat is spent and a gental breeze off the mountians freshens the city.

What to do?

Those frequently occuring words of Faton Berisha, seem to grow louder as we encounter more of life here and the struggles of reaching out to help.

Here's just a few examples:
- What to do, when you take your rubbish to the skip and a little girl takes the bag from your hand as soon as you get out of the car cos she wants to search it for anything useful.
- What to do, when you're staying on Gypsy Street and the kids are sitting on the wall trying to talk to the crazy English people.
- What to do, when you talk about road names being a curse. Yes burgler road has a problem with theft, who'd have thought.
- What to do, when you try to support the needs of a church reaching out, try to build on what they have, try to enable them to do more and try to get them to own things so that when we're gone it won't flop.
- What to do, when an English team of 25 people come to get involved, yet you know the interaction can't possibly be on a level as deep as when there is only 1, 2 or 3 people.
- What to do, when you see a pastor walking the tight rope between encouraging people to get involved yet preventing them from doing so in order to keep the church true to christ and in line with the bible.

What to do?

We just spent the night down on Gypsy Street in the church's building there, praying, reading and some of us sleeping, It was a great experience; roughing it, setting up the camping stove for a cup of coffee, being mocked for having a petrol stove, a petrol lantern and generally being prepared and mulling over and re organising thought's that have been circulating for a few days.

Last night I re-visited a book I read last yr, It was written by Pete Greig and it's called God on Mute. In it Pete talks about prayer in terms of Easter, using Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday to grapple with the questions of unanswered prayer.
He says. 'Holy Saturday is the no-man's land between questions and answers, prayers uttered and miracles yet to come. It's where we wait - with a peculiar mixture of faith and despair - whenever God is silent or life doesn't make sense.'
I think I spend most of my life around Good Friday and Holy Saturday, screaming questions at God, needing answers and God saying nothing. Yet although God is silent and our questions are unanswered there is still a deep sense that God is there. Occasionaly God seems to speak and something shifts. More often tho, it seems we muddle through desperately hoping that God would have said something if we'd gone too far wrong.

Tell me I'm a heretic and that God speaks to you all the time and Guides you in your choice of Sock. I'll answer with this thought. I'm 22, if my parents told me what socks to wear there would be something very wrong, as I grew up and became an adult I made more choices for myself, yes I still refer to my parents for advice but I don't need them to guide every step of the way. I think God's parenting technique is similar, If we have been following christ for many years and still require our nappies changing something is very wrong.

Just another 24hrs.

WOW!!

20+ hrs of none stop prayer! ending with a 3 hr group prayer meeting where we prayed, listened to God, prophesied over each other and explored what it means to be Christ centred in this place.

I think the strangest thing for me was hearing someone pray in Albanian and the others responding with Hallelujah, amen, praise God, etc... seeing God move but not understanding what is being said. Sunday morning was a similar situation during the sung worship time, The challenge for me is how to engage and join in with what's happening when I don't know what is happening. Pastor Faton is great at translating but it's not really practical to translate everything.

The best of it though is that the people here want to keep the prayer room open, to use during the week, and to pray through the day again.
Thank you God, for an enthusiasm to dig deeper into you which stretches beyond cultural differences and accomplished norms to try out the weird and wacky stuff.

Having said all this. Today was just a normal day: the sun shone, the washing got washed, people laughed, people talked, the cockrel over the road woke us up, and coffee was drunk.

Girls Brigade, Bandits and Prayer

Well, since the other day we have been quite busy. I started to set myself up as an international speaker, learn't a bit of traditional dancing, crossed the Albanian border with some girls brigade, played the spoon game on Faton, went to church, set up a prayer room and begun 18hrs of continuous prayer.

Sound like a busy weekend?

The church youth meeting on Friday night involved a bit of singing, a bit of praying and then me sharing something (fortunately I had been given a day to prepare). So I shared about Planning, how we all make plans for our lives; what we want to do when we grow up etc.. but when we start looking for God's plans and aligning ourselves with them our own plans fade to insignificance. For a bit of biblical content we looked at Jeremiah 29 v 11 and then Romans 8 v 28.

Having done the serious bit we got into party mode, One of the girls had an 18th birthday that day so out came the loud music and odd dancing. I easily slipped into my usual party technique of sitting at the side, saying I don't dance and complaining of a bad knee if an excuse is required. however after a while I decided that the traditional dancing didn't look too bad and I'd have a go (actually it's quite easy but does strain the knee).

Bajram Curri village; surrounded by beautiful mountains, flowing rivers and on this particular saturday rain! Rolling into this town deep in bandit country Albania, with a bunch of regular Kosovas and 5 girls from the girls brigade staying at 'smile' who've come with us for the day, we park up and then go for a coffee. Despite the drizzle a few kids turn up to play games and to chat, then we moved to the church building which is little more than a few rooms in a block of flats (did I mention that the town only gets running water between 3 & 4 am?), we played more games, chatted about why we were there, why the girls brigade were there and then prayed.

I haven't really had time to process the day yet but it was strange to be sitting in the middle of a place that has seen so much pain and struggle and to have normal conversations.

Prayer. This has to be the most exciting part of the weekend!

Sunday afternoon saw us wondering around Gjakove looking for a Kosovan flag to be the focus of an area of our prayer space, having found it we got on with the hard work of turning a concrete basement into a cosy, comfortable space where we didn't understand anything written. Faton and Kajmeline arrived to help with the albanian instructions, then we prayed!

The next installment of thought, pondering and inevitably questions will follow shortly. For now though, the sun is shining and the balcony calls.

Mixed Mutterings

well, having ummed and arred about setting up a blog I have taken the plunge,

Sitting in a Kosova Coffee shop at 6.30am while the other guys went running, pondering life and it's diversity I decided that actually my thoughts may be worth something to someone and I should publish them.

So here I am in Kosova, trying to be active in living a real life that will make a difference in the world yet feeling useless and unable to communicate other than to say good morning, good night, thank you, yes or no and of course makiato.
As I'm writing this slightly depressed mumbling I've remembered our visit to Skivjan last night, where once again the trusty team of young christians take the story of Jesus to the poorest people here. Steve had unwittingly volunteered himself to do the story and as he got the young people involved and Afrodita translated, the story of feeding 5000 people was re-enacted by 3 Kosova kids. The point of the story? Jesus is capable of anything and even if we only have a tiny packed lunch he can feed thousands.
Wow.

So maybe, just maybe, my very rudimentary Albanian and a bit of willingness to get involved, given to Jesus will change something in this small world!