November 2025 | Picking time!

November started out as a beautiful month!  We enjoyed a surprise visit with the family of one of Reni's friends.  They came to Albania for holiday and met up with us for supper at a local restaurant on their way to the airport to fly home.  The restaurant has beautiful gardens and Ellie's pullover just so happened to match the mums... she was a good sport to sit for a quick snapshot after supper.

From our living room window, we have a view of the mountains to the east, including the medieval village of Preza that has a historic signal tower used during the rebellion against the Ottomans (signalling between Kruja and Petrela).  A long-time dream has been to have this view painted because I could never capture it with a photo as beautiful as I know it is. Then one night the sun set with clouds that directed the rays like a perfect spotlight. I tried with my cell phone and it didn't turn out too bad! Can you see the signal tower and adjacent minaret?

In November, Jessica and her boys visited for a few weeks from Toccoa.  It was a pleasure to introduce her to Jenny, whose husband is a pastor in Durres and children take part in soccer school and music lessons with Ellie.  Ellie, as you can see, was thrilled to be one of the gals. :-) 

One evening during soccer school, a 10-year-old from our village picked up a computer mouse next to Nathan and casually asked what it was.  We remembered that most of these kids don't get to interact with computers -- at all.  One evening during study hall, I opened up a computer and let a few of the girls play some games on a typing website. They had a blast.  On Black Friday we purchased a few inexpensive android keyboards so we can make keyboarding a regular add-on to Study Hall in the new year.

Before and after kids club you can find me playing table games with the ones who aren't into playing soccer in the kalceto. :-)  I know, tough job, but someone has to do it!

Quiz time at the end of the Kids Club unit!  Using the faithful "jump seats."

Meeting the Dukas in Tirana one Sunday afternoon...

It was our pleasure to host a group of seven from the Torchbearers program during their fall week of practical ministry.  Above, they post with Group A at Valued Treasures during craft time.

November is also olive-picking time!  Reni came out to help Demir, Ismail and I pick the olives off the two trees on Jeta's property.

You can watch a video (1:28) here of our work here!

37.8 kilos!  We took it to the olive oil factory just down the road from Vlashaj.

Later in the afternoon, I returned to see the factory in action (the machines take a break during the day, and resume activity at 4PM, as deliveries begin to arrive from the various farms in the area). 

While Reni and I picked olives, Nathan and the group visited a couple from church at their home.

The next morning, while picking up some students for Valued Treasures, we stopped by the olive oil factory to pick up our oil!  It yielded about 5.5 liters of oil!

The good weather continued so I popped over to Jessica's rental to pick some olives on her trees.  Not quite the same as riding in the combine with Dad, but fall = harvest time, am I right?  Gotta be outside as much as possible before winter!

Before sending our new friends back to Erseke, we took them up to Preza (remember the first pic in this post?) to debrief the week over coffee and some beautiful views on the ridgeline.

I love the friendship between these two!  At church, Friday night.

Saturday morning, the team facilitated a dramatic interpretation of the story of the Good Samaritan, then we broke into small groups to discuss.

Saturday afternoon Ellie and I went out for coffee with Jenny and Jessica as a farewell to Jess before leaving... it was our first spotting of Christmas decorations of the season!

Our weekdays are full of hours at Valued Treasures.  While there, I love to take photos and videos to share the activities and show off our special students to those who support the ministry.  In November, I learned how to find royalty-free music so I could post those short videos on YouTube, a platform more readily available than Instagram and Facebook, which require accounts.  Most of these videos are around 1-minute in length and you can view them here.

The third Friday of the month, after church, we enjoyed the help of the youth group and five of our friends from Torchbearers who returned for a weekend follow-up visit.

It's true that many hands make light work!

Saying goodbye, below, to our friends before they headed back south.

The end of November may mean Thanksgiving in the USA, but in Albania, it is Independence and Liberation Days (November 28 and 29)!

We celebrated with a really fun Indpendence day party, with folks dressing Albania's red and black colors.

Check out this video of Ellie playing the çiftëli -- a traditional two-stringed instrument -- at the party.

After getting our olive oil, we bought smaller, glass bottles for storing it and giving it away.

Reni shows off his finished work.  Maybe we will make a farmer out of him yet!

October '25 | A Campus Visit , Colleague Check-in, and new Collaborators!

October was a beautiful month in Albania! We started the month enjoying a surprise coffee with our friend, Alvi.  Surprise in that we went to Durres for an appointment, found out we had more than an hour to kill, and decided to look up Alvi who took his coffee break to hang out with us while we waited! <3

But with this season, comes the maturation of the grapes... which attract all the insects... which got tangled up in Ellie's hair while facilitating music class.  Poor girl got stung by a bee on her ear in the middle of teaching.  Our friend Ismail promptly broke off some fig leaves and used the milk to draw out the stinger.  You learn something new every day!

When your daughter decides she wants to join her parents on their weekly errand runs, you treat her to a sweet treat for choosing to spend time with you!

A highlight of October was making a campus visit to the Torchbearer's Crossroads campus in Erseke, Albania!  We got to drive a new highway that cut 20-25 minutes off the drive and provided us the opportunity to see some beautiful countryside.

We saved so much time, we stopped for coffee (plus, there are no rest stops on the highway)!

We had not been in this part of Albania since 2014 and had come from the opposite direction.  The new road was amazing too!  I couldn't resist snapping this photo through the dirty windshield.

We arrived to a campus late Sunday afternoon...

...just in time for the weekly student Sunday evening chapel service.

The campus had lots of ways to recreate...

Ellie was thrilled to see where she hopes to spend next year studying.
(Udhekryq = Crossroads)

Monday morning Ellie sat in on the morning lecture with the 51 students they are hosting this fall from 17 countries!

Back at home, Ellie records a final speech for her Principles of Communication class she is taking online from Asbury.

Over the summer we had the clay tiles on our roof re-set.  Unfortunately, it took some heavy autumn rains to reveal that a few of the tiles were cracked. 

I am glad to report the workers returned and the problem seems to be addressed!

Another Sunday afternoon we pulled out the pickleball net and rackets.

It's such a blessing to have this multi-functional court!

On Monday, October 21st we hosted a group from the Netherlands that performed free eye exams for our local friends.

They brought hundreds of eye glass frames from which to choose.  The finished glasses will be shipped within a few weeks!

Nathan supervises the front office at Jeta durnig football school.  Below, he helps one of the boys print a photo from his phone to gift his mother as a surprise.  They had so much fun watching the image materialize on the photo paper!

For several months we have anticipated the absence of varying teammembers while we take our turns on homeland ministry assignment.  We have asked our prayer partners to pray for volunteers to continue operating various programs.  How wonderful to see God's provision!

The first was Tony M, who returned for his fourth visit!  He stayed two months and helped Luli with amputee soccer and futbol school, but he also facilitated morning exercises at Valued Treasures and taught a seminar on restaurant service! What's lovely about Tony is that his faithful presence for a portion of each year means that he is known by the students he serves and our team.  And that familiarity is priceless.

The Blasco family relocated from Tirana to a nearby village and they come every week to provide arts and crafts! They have such kind, patient hearts.  The students love them. 

This summer we received an e-mail from a family who was moving to Albania and simply wanted a way to serve others in their spare time. Oh, and they both had extensive experience working in special education classrooms! Seriously? As soon as we got back to Albania, we worked to connect with them and see if they would be willing to help at Valued Treasures.

Fast forward to today and Timothy and Peyton now come two times per week to teach math and science courses at Valued Treasures.  Their lessons are practical, hands-on demonstrations of what they are teaching -- which appeals to our kinds of learners.  I get to translate their lessons and capture video for VT's Instagram so the student sponsors can see what the students are learning and doing each day!  We are super grateful to the Kona family (not pictured, but just as valuable!) who help babysit their young children so T&P can share their skills and training with the VT students.

Continue praying for God's provision of the right folks to help fill the gaps.  The folks he has sent this fall have been SUCH a blessing.  They LOVE the Lord, the students, and they are so qualified at what they do.  They come prepared and shine as good witnesses for the Lord in their professionalism.

Luli and Hannah leave for the USA and will be gone February through July!  So don't stop praying!

Above, Nathan facilitates the morning exercises at Valued Treasures.  Below, Ellie teaches bells.

When we returned to Albania this fall, we brought brackets to hold Ellie's growing instrument collection.  See her new wall additions below... She continues to work on creating new musical compositions in her free time, which I absolutely love!

The last week of October, our regional director, Joy, arrived for a visit.  We took a road trip overnight up to Kosova to visit two families on our greater team in the region.  Below, Bryan gives us a tour of Prishtina High School where he works.

As Area Team Leaders, our responsibilities include monthly check-ins with our co-workers for accountability and compliance. We approve newsletters, budget adjustments, strategic goals, ministry commitments, etc. for purposes of fiscal and spiritual accountability. God has blessed Nathan with a lot of wisdom and discernment to make him a good fit in this role. So if a someone feels like they need to move to a different home, buy a car, ask permission to travel to his home country for a family emergency, attend a training, require legal assistance for residency, or raise money for a special project (for example), Nathan is the first person in the chain of approval for those decisions.

We try to make trips to Kosova at least once per year. Thankfully, it's only two hours to the border, and another hour beyond to the capital city -- so travel is affordable and not difficult. Seeing where our colleagues live and work certainly helps us understand their context more fully. And the time over meals and in homes provides deeper discussion than a 1-hour Zoom call.

The next day we visited other colleagues in Prizren.

Posing with Joy on the river walk that cuts through the center of Prizren.

Near the end of the October, we received the Artonis' two bulldogs.  They are going to stay in our ground-floor store room and backyard until their return in the new year.  Ellie and Reni take turns feeding and loving on them each day.