Weekend Re-Cap

Somebody's birthday box arrived a little early from America!  We didn't tell him, but he figured it out.  

Nathan provided a great message on Friday night from the book of Daniel.  It's pretty humbling when you're the first one to tell someon the stories we've known since we were little children.  His message was one of lessons from the life of Nebuchadnezzar.

This little guy got a little rowdy in church so he and his mamma joined me in the kitchen while I prepared refreshments.

Our friend Demir lingered longer at the center this weekend.  His kids are at camp and his wife was sick, so I think he was soaking up fellowship.  We didn't mind one bit.  Except he always asks if I've talked to my parents, and if I can't answer in the affirmative, he teasingly calls me "the bad daughter." (vajza e keqe)

Evenings are pretty comfortable in the village and so we pulled out the volleyball after church.

I'm pretty bad about making blanket cultural statements.  But I'm going to make another.  Folks here take competition to a whole 'nother level.  I have a feeling our next Albanian lesson will be in the 'dialect' of trash talk.

When some usually calm kids were getting riled up by another's words, Nathan told them in Shqip 'not to worry, he's just got a big mouth.'  I don't think they have the same expression in Albania, but Nathan's statement succeeded in breaking the tension.

Saturday's kids club was about the Lord's Prayer and Nathan and I have determined we will memorize it in Shqip by the end of August, and we're challenging the kids to do the same.

Afterwards we scrapped craft time for a game of 'hot potato' with water balloon timer bombs.

After a certain point, those who still remained in the circle had to pass it over their heads.  Here's a wet Nathan.

Here's Ellie dropping balloons from the balcony above (the timer bomb was too intense for her).

She had many boys below wanting to get wet.

Of course Reni wanted to join in the fun.

Visitors are a special treat, no matter how short or long they stay.  My college friend, Kami, has been living in France the past couple of years.  She was going to be visiting a friend in Sarajevo and decided to come down to Albania for the weekend.  She is pictured below with her travel companion, Olivier.  It's kind of hard to show anything impressive to folks who live in southern France.  We've got castles!  Oh yeah, you've got castles and they're bigger and prettier.  We've got coastline!  Oh yeah, so do you and it's cleaner...  But one thing that France can't beat is our prices.

After morning ministry in the village and lunch, we took them to Petrela for coffee, ice cream and breezes on Saturday afternoon.

Ellie LOVES having visitors and she was glued to Kami's side.  Check out my instagram feed above for the message she wrote Kami in her farewell card.

Thanks for coming, Kami, even though your 6 hour drive turned into 10!

This sweet girl.  How she's grown up this last year but maintained her innocent love of life.

And finally, traffic on our street.  We love watching who gets off to lighten their beast's load up the hill and who stays on.  And this reminds me of the donkey we saw the day previous so covered in hay that all you saw were four little hooves.  It looked like a hay bale just ambling up the street.  Oh how I wish I had my camera handy!