The Faces of Our Village

Meet some more of our neighbors!

Little Miss P below was SO excited to wear her brand new school clothes for her photo on Saturday night.  School started on Monday.

There's much I'd love to share about their lives and stories.

It's such a privilege to take their photographs.

I thought some day I would really treasure these images, but I already do.

As I deliver their canvases, I wish I had a wall big enough to keep a copy for myself too!

I started a hashtag on Instagram (#lovemyalbanianvillage)

Keep praying for this project!

Two More Minutes!

This cute boy above is begging that I stick to my 'two more minutes' promise so we can go on to the next house (where his good friend lives).  Yes, the biggest challenge to our family portraits project so far is keeping the Waggoner kids from running into the host family's photo!  (or from terrorizing their chickens!)

We are in the full swing of homeschooling (more on that in an upcoming post, I hope) and it's going great.

We've been taking some family photos in our village and that's going to accelerate over the next several weeks.  We pick up our first batch of canvases later today and will deliver those soon (I can't wait! I will be sure to post photos!)

Partners in the States are signing up to pray for a village family!  It's so fun to see who signs up each day!  We've had three families join the project that we don't even know personally!  How exciting is that?  So far we have about 1/3 of the village spoken for.  If you have signed up, can you e-mail me your family photo (info in right-hand margin of the blog)?  We want to give your photo to your family so they can see who is praying for them.  It doesn't have to be fancy!  We'll put the bio info you provided on the back of your photo.

Speaking of bio info -- what great language practice!  I'm learning all kinds of new words in Shqip as I translate what you have shared about your families!  Thanks, Becca, for giving me the opportunity to learn 'waterfall!' ;-)  Tina -- for some reason, Google Translate didn't have a word in Shqip for 'scrapbooking.' :-)

Last night we had a terrible storm.  It knocked our power out around midnight and as of 9AM this morning, it still wasn't on and we had drained our water tanks dry.  Given that we were sweaty and dirty (we had already been out this morning pulling weeds and cleaning in anticipation of the center resuming programs tonight), we just threw our laundry and a change of clothes in the van.  We're in Tirana (where we had planned to come for a few hours today anyway, to pick up the sample canvases), showered now and getting some work done!
Grateful for this convenience!

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!