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.
Sounds like you had a cool weekend, the photo look cool, good job everyone on the prayer space
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