No place for a baby!

Monday morning we got the call. The road to Darshen was open after being snowed in for more than a week. David and I scrapped our plans and headed to this Albanian mountain village where Planters has ministered for more than a decade. This trip was a little different though. Instead of hosting a children's program or visiting and assisting the village school, we were there to meet a family that had somehow fallen through the cracks of even this rural society. Mondi, our colleague and translator, 'found' them a few weeks prior and was shocked by their living conditions. He shared his burden for this family and we talked together of the best way to help.

The 25-mile drive took more than an hour and a half through the slushy road. We stopped in front Darshen's pool hall/post office/bar/convenience store and warmed ourselves by the wood stove while Mondi picked out the food staples we would bring on our home visit. Buying the staples in Darshen helps keep the money in the local community. With bags in tow we began our hike up the mountain towards the edge of town. 

The further we got from our van, the more deserted houses we found. Water is hard to come by in the summer, and many families have abandoned their homes in the country for the concrete jungle of the city of Tirana. Many of these homes will be purchased and destroyed for the centuries-old stones they are made from.

As we reached the top of the hill and the end of the road I saw a house that had remained unchanged for a century or more. Unchanged that is except for the satellite-style TV antenna attached to the corner.

It is customary and practical to take your shoes off at the door as you enter a house, but this was different. Boots were needed inside the kitchen/living room as we dodged mud puddles in the dirt floor from a leaking roof. The walls were black from the smoke of a fire with no recessed fireplace. There was a pot of boiling water on the ground heated on a hotplate fed by a bare wire attached to the 220 voltage provided by the state.



Wind blew in windows that held no glass. The 13-inch TV was on, and chickens constantly wandered into the room only to be shooed away by the lady of the house. But most troubling of all was a tightly bound baby strapped into a tiny wooden box with rough rocking legs. This was no place for a baby! 

He cried as we entered and his mother rocked him with her foot as she talked with us. He was the youngest of three. His sisters were in school. One of them as a baby had been burned badly by the fire and the other had pins in her leg from a bad break. This was no place for a baby!

I took a picture of he and his mother and showed it to them on the back of the camera. His eyes brightened and he cracked a smile. A few more pictures, and bigger smiles! He won my heart and troubled my mind. What does the future hold for this precious boy? How will he live to adulthood? This was no place for a baby!

In a village 1000 miles away, 2000 years earlier, another mother wrapped her baby tightly and placed him in a wooden box to keep him safe. She probably shooed away the chickens and tried to avoid a draft. The shepherds kept their shoes on. It was no place for a baby. 

As we left the little house on the hillside in Darshen our hostess quipped, "I don't think heaven comes this far, this feels more like hell." But heaven DID come to a place just like this! It was no place for a baby, but the perfect place for a savior!

----  Nathan