Week in Review | Old Friends and New, More Snow, Gloves, Doves, and other Randomness

The days keep marching on! We are past the midway point of January already!

Thanks for your prayers regarding the cold.  The worst of it is hopefully past, though it's still quite chilly at night.  Our home is about 15 degrees warmer in the mornings than it was a week ago, which is a big improvement!

Last week we were able to reconnect with some old friends in the Albanian adoption community!  My friend Katie brought her daughter back to Albania from Michigan, along with Katie's mom, for a homeland/heritage visit.  Her daughter's school has a period of time between semesters to pursue elective classes or educational travel. Coming last week meant not missing any school, but the timing also meant they were in Albania during an historic cold snap!

We met up with them one afternoon, down the road in Durres and showed them the amphitheater (one of our favorite places to take guests and share about church history that transpired here), then brought them back to the village for some homemade baklava and byrek.  And no, not made by me! ha ha. They were treated to the authentic dishes delivered by the hands of some talented neighbor friends who generously blessed us! :-)

After our tasty Albanian treats they attended women's Bible study where Katie shared her testimony.

 As I think of all the various visitors who have told a bit of their faith journeys with our local friends, I marvel at what a bigger picture my neighbors get to see about what it means to trust in and follow after Jesus -- and that God uses us in so many different ways!

On a side note, I take for granted all of the wonderful biographies of Christian heroes sit on my shelves.  I recently read that in spiritual formation, after the Bible, biographies play the biggest role in a Believer's development.  I grieve that my Albanian sisters lack such wonderful resources. But thanks to short-term missions, they get a glimpse of the "biography" of real people, albeit from another culture and part of the world. And many times I wish I knew the thoughts that were running through their heads!  They must think that Americans have really large families because most of my friends who have visited in the last few years seem to have three (or more like 4+) children! :-)

Following Bible study we returned them to Tirana where they were staying and we got to experience a SECOND snow!  This time, it didn't just show up in the morning but fell in big fat flakes for about half an hour.  It was delightful and our family relished experiencing our first live snowfall since our last winter in the States four years ago.

We stay overnight in Tirana at the Planters apartment most Wednesday evenings so we have a place to park (seriously impossible after 8AM to find a free parking place) and time to run errands before Ellie's weekly piano lesson on Thursdays.  Those errands might include haircuts, picking up mail, attending home school co-op, or just visiting my favorite butcher to buy a good piece of meat (I am a wimp and have yet to try the local local ones near us).

This last week we used some of our "Tirana time" to reconnect briefly with a young girl who used to be a house-mate of Reni's before he was in our family.  I remember her from the very first ten minutes of our first visit to meet Reni back in 2010.  She and Ellie are the same age, and when she saw Ellie that day, she made a beeline for her and gave her a huge hug -- excited to meet a playmate her age in a house full of babies.  It touched us to learn recently that she had clear memories of both Ellie and Reni from that summer so many years ago and was happy to meet us again.  I know, though, that I never forgot her! We were so pleased to hear that she now has a family of her own and will be going home soon!  We took her and her parents up to the SkyTower to see a lovely view of Tirana.  

Friday the weather started to bump up and things began to thaw, but low and behold, one of our pumps decided to give out.  In came a delivery of water to get us through the day.

Friday night at church Genti challenged our little church body to participate in the 40 Days of Love -- to show love to our neighbors through prayer, service and witness.  It will culminate on February 14.  This is a continuation on our theme of evangelism this year.

We had a prize winner at Kids club on Saturday!  Ami was able to recite all of her verses from from the beginning of the fall and received the purse/bag below.  Luli won a soccer ball.

Last summer, one of our interns, Hannah, brought a couple dozen pairs of gloves.  Given the season (and need), we distributed them Saturday in Metalle.

The lesson was the baptism of Jesus so we made paper doves as our craft!  I do NOT know what missionaries did before the advent of the internet. :-)  Thanks to Google Images for helping locate this bird template. And thanks to everyone who has contributed to our pinter/toner/paper fund.  We keep it humming making copies!

Because of the cold (and the lower numbers as school had not resumed yet, we assume that most of the kids thought we were on break too) we did games indoors.  Nathan brought this table game called "Bounce Off" that Mom brought over from the States in November.  It's been a big hit everywhere we play it!  (By the way, we love any game that doesn't require a working knowledge of English).  The point of the game is for two individuals (or teams) to replicate a pattern from a designated card by bouncing ping pong balls into a grid to form that pattern.

This week we brought a propane heater to Metalle and it made such a difference!  No more "ice block" feet!

Last night we had Girls Night, but sadly, I did not take any photos of that.  I'm just encouraged that we have a very faithful core group who attends each week.  It's one of my highlights of the week!