First team meeting

Hi everyone! Greetings in the Lord from Tirana. We've had such a wonderful first week here, we just had to update you on the progress we're making getting settled. We've had some success searching for an apartment. Our prayer is that we would find the God-appointed apartment in the right part of the city for the right amount of money. We don't believe that God's leading is elusive, but it has been very mentally draining to look at so many apartments in such a short amount of time. We've trekked across the capital city, Tirana, for hours with an Albanian realtor looking at 20+ plus apartments in the last two days. We've met so many landlords and seen so many places that it's hard to keep them all straight in our minds. Even though I (Gretchen) have taken notes and drawn little diagrams of the layouts for each apartment. Needless to say, we will not choose the apartment building whose electrical system looks like this:


But, seriously, we've narrowed it down to about 4 places that we will be pursuing. We need to negotiate with the owners to see if they can come down in price. Our target ministry area is this area of the city called "the block", which is in general, more expensive then the rest of the city...well, really the rest of Albania. But we really desire to reside in the heart of the city where most of the "action" happens with the youth here. We want our place to eventually be the place where the youth can meet regularly, or just stop in to say "hi". So...the search continues until we find a place that we feel at peace about. So we keep praying, and our team here is praying for us as well.

Here is a random picture from all of our travels around, and around, and around, and around the city... I tried to be discreet with the camera, cuz i hate looking like a tourist :)


Our First Team Meeting

Tonight was wonderful. We had our first team meeting. Four other families with kids, 3 singles, and ourselves make up the team. It was so encouraging to meet with and be refreshed by seasoned Kingdom Workers here in Albania. Here are pictures of the men and women (all the kids were at another house with a few babysitters):

Women left to right: Pam, MaryBeth, Julie, Mina, Gretchen, Heather

Men front row left to right: Jeremy, Roger, Robb, Ryan; back row left to right: Gordy, Justin, Brad

(we won't be posting people's last names or their exact ministry role in order to protect their ministry here in Albania.)

Oh yeah, and here's Sammy, MaryBeth & Gordy's dog, who (I guess you could say) is also a part of our team :)


Well, folks, it's late here and I have shin splints from walking so much today. Yes, I'm out of shape. Speaking of being out of shape, we've been thinking of joining a fitness club here. Taking an aerobics class or something would be a great way for me to meet women in the community on a regular basis and build relationships. So you can pray for opportunities like that as we make decisions about how to invest our time for the sake of the Kingdom.

We miss you all dearly and love receiving your emails and comments on our blog. Here are some prayer requests for the weekend:
- tomorrow (Saturday) we do more apartment searching...you pretty much know how you can pray for that.
- Sunday is first time we get to attend church here, which is exciting. Also, the church is having a welcome lunch for us that afternoon, we'll get to meet with all our friends and acquaintances that we have not yet seen here. Pray for genuine fellowship and for the church body to catch a vision for youth ministry here. There is already a spark.

Thank you and God bless you!