All because of a beaded curtain

You know those beaded curtains people hang over doorways?  For some reason, I always associated them with the 1970s.  I think my Grandma Van had one in her basement and we always loved walking back and forth through it.

Ellie is drawn to them too. It's a sensory-seeking thing.  And they seem to be coming back in popularity.  Either that or they serve a very practical purpose here in a land without screen doors or air conditioning.  We see them frequently and I have to pull Ellie away from constantly running her fingers through them.

We were walking to a neighbor's home tonight to take their family's portrait when Ellie saw it.  Through someone's gate she saw it.  One of those beaded curtains hanging over the front door.  But not just any beaded curtain.  The beads on this one aligned to make a the form of a colorful parrot.

On our way home, Ellie had to point it out again. Our gaze lingered too long and we were spotted!  The next thing we knew, we were being urged indoors so insistently, we couldn't politely disengage.  It wasn't that I didn't want to go in -- actually, it was the contrary -- it's just that the kids were melting down near the end of the previous portrait session and I knew they needed to eat like thirty minutes ago.

We went inside and met this lovely couple.  She made us Turkish coffee.

We had a lovely conversation getting acquainted.

We promised we would see them again soon and they sent us home laden with gifts.  Fresh produce from the back garden and a bouquet of roses from the front. 

Have we said how much we love our village?

Ellie's Other Family : )

This family has three daughters.  That's what they tell us, anyway!  

You don't see their third daughter? Oh, you know her.  Her name happens to be Elisona.  

Ellie is so utterly happy at their home, and such a frequent guest, they call her their third daughter!  (fyi: you know your daughter spends a lot of time at someone's house when she tells you her favorite things they cook!)

I really didn't intend to blog each and every set of family photos I capture, but some folks are just so special, I have to share them here on the blog. 

It started after Kid's Club on Saturdays, then after church on Fridays. Ambra was letting Ellie lead her around the center, chatting her ear off about some creature she had found, or another. Before long Xhania (Ambra's mother) was asking if Ellie could spend the night.  That was a big deal because I don't know that Ellie had ever spent the night at a friend's house before, much less stayed the night in a home where language could be a challenge!  Before long, it was a regular occurrence and we were finding ourselves spending more and more time getting to know the family 'at the bottom of the hill'. 

Now they are some of our best teachers of Shqip.  They are infinitely patient with us, speaking slowly and not in any hurry.  At least once a week find ourselves in their home for one reason or another, eating fruit, drinking coffee and learning about their lives.  All the while Ellie's outside chasing the chickens and Reni is in Ambra's arms, right in the middle of the ruckus.

I don't know if you realized how much language is involved in taking someone's photo!  Bend your knee, lift your chin, tilt your head!  Did I mention we haven't yet made it to the imperative case in our Shqip studies?  What does Cydil do when she can't direct someone into the right position?  She puts her camera down and physically begins moving people where she wants them to go! ;-)

It could be awkward, but so far, everyone's been a good sport!  Chalk it up to more language learning opportunities!

(below) Sherif is laughing hugely because I just told his wife to kiss him!  Apparently people don't do that in photos here!

Can you tell I'm having the best time?  I could do this every evening!  Tonight after we finished photos we sat on the porch, drank coffee and talked about how Xhania and Sherif met and all about their hometowns (before they moved to Vlashaj). 

What a treat to get to know these folks!  I really can't believe this is our life.

And this relationship is all because some of you prayed for Ellie and Reni to find a special friend here.  

Thank you!! You have no idea what a difference this relationship has made in their adjustment to Albania and our new village home.

If you want to participate in our prayer project for the village, click here to sign up.

We are looking for individuals/families/groups to pray for a family in our community!  When you sign up, we'll send you a postcard with their photo, along with their names, ages, and prayer requests.  So far, we have about 20% of the village homes spoken for!

Tonight at the K House!

We are SO pleased with the response we've had since we announced the village portrait project!  THANK YOU to everyone who has signed up to pray for one of our families!!!  We hope to start making matches in a few weeks.

I promise I won't post each and every portrait on the blog, but I just had to share these from tonight.  

I don't know what we'd do without the K family.  Let's just say, if we had an emergency situation, they'd be the first people we'd call.  That should tell you everything.

They were also game to be some of our first ones to 'practice' on. :-)

 My lovely photo assistants goofing around...

Reni and Xhaxhi Demir.  Tonight in searching for something else entirely, I stumbled upon this old post...of Reni's first visit to the K house.  My oh my has our boy grown up!!!

On a very different note, I would be remiss not to say thank you, everyone, for praying for Mom Waggoner.  We have been uplifted by the outpouring of your love through note and e-mails today.  Your prayers on her behalf mean so much!.

Portraits of our village

Our friends, the M family (photographed last night)

It's funny the ideas that come to me in the shower.

One morning last month I was suds-ing my hair, thinking about the events of a few nights earlier -- about how much our friends had enjoyed seeing some old photos of themselves and their neighbors, printed as canvas and hanging on the wall of the ministry center. And an idea came to my mind.  Then another.  I shared it with Nathan. Detail after detail, possibility after possibility sprang forth.  I contacted some friends with my 'vision' and asked them to pray about this idea, for discernment that it wasn't just "Cydil and Nathan's" plan, because if so, it wouldn't come to much.

While we don't have an exact date for Planters first visit to Vlashaj, we know it was sometime in the winter of 2000.  That means this winter will mark 15 years!  Since their first trip to Albania more than 21 years ago, Mom and Dad visited several different villages, but the work in Vlashaj was special.  It was one that continually bore fruit.  And thus over the course of time, out of stewardship, more and more resources were re-directed and poured into this community to the point where Vlashaj became the primary focus of Planters' attention.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could say 'thank you' to the community for this relationship?  But not with ink pens or coasters, not with mouse pads nor coffee mugs or whatever a print company will happily slap a logo on. No, something personal that won't eventually be thrown away.  I had just come from delivering some food to a family's home and seen some photos I had gifted them 5 years ago, still displayed in their living room, next to their TV. 

What if we could gift our neighbors with a family photo?  But not just a standard studio photo, taken in front of a generic cloth backdrop.  Rather, a portrait taken in front of their family home -- their most important possession, a place they have usually built with their own hands, surrounded in the image by the people they love most.  As a sidenote, I have long admired  the portraits from the book "Material World" -- which you may have also seen displayed in the International terminal at O'Hare several years ago -- if you're not familiar with these portraits, you need to look them up.  They're fascinating images of families from around the world!   Given my recent discovery of the cost-effectiveness of stretched canvas, I already knew the perfect way to give a ready-to-hang portrait piece!

I was bubbling with excitement (pardon the pun).  While such a task would surely take a lot of time, what better way could we meet the families we don't yet know (and for them to meet us)?  When walking through our village, we will know the names and faces of the people who live behind those gates and walls!  And each of those families will have received a personal invitation to the programs and services at the ministry center!

Then our thoughts went to our partners back home.  What if we could find partners that would agree to pray for a specific family from Vlashaj by name?  If a family here was willing, we could even share specific prayer requests! How different could this community look with prayers being sent to heaven, not just for the community of Vlashaj, but for the families and individuals that comprise it?  Each with their own sets of concerns and needs?  And how much better connected would our partners feel to the work in which they have invested?

It would also be good accountability for us, as missionaries, to be intentional in both sets of our relationships (because, believe me, if a family here knows that they have someone praying for them in America, they will ask us how you're doing, just as we hope you'll ask us how they are doing)!

If you (your small group, Sunday school class, family, etc.) are interested in being paired with a family in our village, please let us know by completing this online form.  

If you can contribute $15, great!  That will  cover the cost of the canvas print (about 16x24 inches on a thin frame). But prayer partners are what we need even more! We will send you a post card with your partner family's photo on one side, their names printed on the reverse, as well as any prayer requests that they might want to share with you.  We estimate that there may be anywhere from 110 to 120 families in our community, so you are welcome to request more than one family, if you like!

In our recent printed newsletter I introduced this project with the title "Changing the Look of Things".  We pray that this project will literally change the look of our community, tangibly demonstrating love, building new relationships. and breaking through strongholds through the power of prayer.  We hope you might jump on board with us!

This will be a family affair!  We're a team and minister together as a family!
Albi requested this photo with his friends, E & R.

Stay tuned for updates on this project.  We anticipate that it will take us several months to complete!

She's Here!

(From Tuesday)

While not returning to Albania to teach our children, she is back this time to teach at a Christian school in Tirana.  Hopefully we'll see her on weekends in the village.

It doesn't matter to our kids.  A special person in their life has returned!

Mire se erdha, Anna!

First Day of [Home] School!

Apparently this is what you do if you're an American!  Except I didn't post them on Facebook, and these are also almost 2 days old...

They each have accordian folders that we let them decorate with stickers (birds for Ellie and race cars for Reni, of course).

Nathan and I have divvied up the subjects.  I take Reading, handwriting, and Specials, and he takes Math and Science and a lot of stuff in between.  The kids split for reading and math, but share Bible, Science, Specials, and History/Geography.

We are using "My Father's World" curriculum for the second year.  This year's theme is Nations and Cultures.  Needless to say, we love it.  We're reading the YWAM series of Christian hero biographies each night before bed.  We started with George Mueller.  For Bible we're using a variety of resources, but my favorite is the Operation World Kids workbook.  Great photographs to engage kids in praying for different countries of the world. Ellie in particular is eating it up.  She's really engaged as we have already studied the evolution of maps and the difference between maps and a globe.  Reni is technically a year younger than the curriculum is geared towards (though he's age appropriate for the math and reading), which means he could be repeating the theme come middle school years, assuming we're still using MFW then, but for our schedule and lifestyle, being able to overlap some subjects between the two of them may be all the difference for us staying on track!

   Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart!  We believe the key to success will be staying on a disciplined schedule of starting early (we're starting an hour earlier than last year) and finishing each subject in the alotted time, to finish before lunch.  But so far, so good, and we all are happy!

Blerta Gets Married Day 2

I'm going to let the photos do most of the explaining in this post -- there are a lot of them!

The Mother-of-the-Bride and her mother

The Bride's baby brother stayed busy documenting the day.

Friends from the center (they take English classes) and are school mates of Blerta's!

Our abundantly supplied lunch table

The 'Head Table'

The brides parents and grandparents welcome the guests.

After all the guests were brought in and seated, the bridesmaids entered waving red scarves.  Then a flower girl and ring bearer sprinkled flower petals before the bride who was brought in by her father.  They immediately danced. (If you are reading this via e-mail, the embedded video will not show -- click the link at the top to view this post online to see the videos)
Caution!  Turn down your speakers!!!

Father-Daughter Dance

Then the dance floor opened and everyone who wanted to got up and danced while Blerta watched from the head table, accompanied by her brother.  Contrary to the photo below, she actually was almost always smiling.  I don't know how she did it, but for 5 straight hours, I hardly saw her not smiling!  Shortly after this photo, she left and changed gowns.

About an hour and a half into dancing, the groom's family arrives to a standing ovation and more music and dancing.

They all sat together at a large table in the front corner of the room.

Here is a video of the groom's entrance (only 0:43)

with the mother-of-the-bride

The couple came and greeted each table.

Her hair was a work of art!

I need to interject here with photos of food.  I'm not sure that I could adequately describe all the food we were served, so here's a collage (which doesn't include photos of the bowls of bread, fruit, and platters of grilled vegetables and bruschetta):

Only the Tave dish in the upper right was a shared dish.  Each of those other plates were food just served to ME during the course of the reception, from 12:30 until we left around 5:30.

This table, cousins to the bride's father, warmly included us.  There were the parents, their four daughters and 3 sons-in-law.  I think we could have really enjoyed visiting with them except we were so close to the sound system, it made conversation difficult.

Side note.  Whenever we turned around, there was a waiter refilling our beverage glass.  At the conclusion of our 6 hours at the wedding, Nathan figured out that he had consumed 2 liters of Coke, or more than 800 calories!!!

Xheni and her new fiance`.

Several hours after the groom arrived, the couple finally joined the party on the dance floor, and people started throwing money at them.
Or sticking it to the groom's face or putting it on the bride's head.

The cake was wheeled out to the tune of the wedding march, lit with candles and showered with bubbles.

We're not sure what they cut because the cake was actually just a box with icing on it.  We were all later served ice cream, which suited me just fine!

Then out of no where, a group of children runs onto the floor in costume, as you see below.  They start dancing with the bride to 'Everybody Dance Now.'  The only song of the day in English. ;-)

I was very confused until this character walked in with a basket of apples.

Yep, you guessed it.  They were acting out Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  (Side note: did I tell you about the one time I told someone here that Ellie liked "White Man and the 7 Dwarfs"? in stead of Snow White?  Yes, the other sounds kind of disturbing.  It would be less surprising if you knew that  'snow' and 'man' are only 1 vowel different in Albanian).

So the Prince is brought in to revive the dead princess.

And like that, the wedding was basically over!  The groom's family all departed, taking the groom with him, leaving the bride with her family and friends.  For us, the wedding celebrations were over.  But for the couple? No, they still had Days 3 and 4 to go!   On Day 3, they would repeat it all over again, but with the groom's family and friends! Then on Day 4, the bride pays her last farewells to her parents and family.

I tell you, as much as I respect tradition, I don't think I have the stamina to do what they do here! ;-)

I hope you enjoyed this little re-cap of our first Albanian wedding experience!