Carol, Wayne, Meg & I arrived in Albania on Saturday. It was an eventful, but fairly easy trip. We were extremely amused by the airport security screener who wasn't quite sure what to do with the 9 bottles of soy sauce we had packed for Matt. I wanted to take a picture of his face, but learned my lesson about taking pictures in security areas the hard way the last time we came over here. In Munich we had a 40 minute layover and were taking off from gate 25. The gates were labeled 1-24 and 26-40. Hmmmm... I saw a lady in a restaurant wearing a yellow vest who looked like she might know her way around. I interrupted her lunch to ask where gate 25 was. She said, like it made perfect sense, "It's right through that store." Of course! Why didn't we think of that? When they called our flight, we went through the gate, where there was a perfectly good plane connected to the ramp. Instead, we walked down 5 flights of stairs only to find ourselves locked in a glass room. Luckily there was a man from Colorado, who Carol nicknamed John Locke, who had done this before and assured us it would be ok. Then, 5 minutes after we were supposed to take off, a bus came to get us. The bus ride was 15 minutes long and took us WAY out of the airport, past the small planes in the back, to a lot with three planes on it. Finally, a half hour after our scheduled take-off, we left. Catching the bus from the airport into Tirana was also an adventure, and got us to Matt & Cindy's just 2 hours behind schedule. Good thing we have a flexible team :)
Saturday night we walked to church and were all doing very well. We enjoyed seeing many of the people we remember from our last trip. When the sermon started, which was actually very interesting, we all started falling asleep. We ended up having to leave church early. We got our first ice cream and went to bed.
Sunday morning started off with a trip to a new church plant that Caleb has been helping to start. We had a prayer time with Berti (the pastor) and Ava (his wife) and their friend, Sonida. Then 8 children between 5 and 15 showed up. They really enjoyed the worship, singing and clapping a lot. I taught a lesson on Luke 5 while Carol drew a picture of the men lowering their friend through the roof to Jesus. Caleb & Meg sang a song, and then Wayne, Caleb & Meg did a skit. Afterward, we had a snack and visited with the kids.
When we were leaving the church, three cows greeted us in the alley. Here's a picture that shows how close they were to our taxi.
Sunday afternoon we went shopping in Kruja. Afterwards, we helped Cindy prepare dinner for the Brewer's, who are the family we will be working with the rest of the week. Mary & Norman came, but their kids, Bethany & Nathan, couldn't make it. We will meet them tomorrow. We are really looking forward to the rest of the trip. We have a very busy schedule, but the work is perfect for our team. We can't wait to see what the Lord does through this week!
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